Subject: Review: Contact (1997)

From: Alexadnre Tylski <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Oct 1997 16:30:52 GMT

CONTACT. (1997)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis. 
Performed by Jodie Foster.
Music by Alan Silvestri. 

If we see Zemeckis' s career, we can say that this is a director quite
interested in the themes of past and youth. In Forrest Gump or in the Back
to the Future trilogy, those themes are explored in every way possible.
With Contact, Zemeckis shows us again how essential is our knowledge of
history and our ability to dream.

Contact is a high budget movie and what is quite surprising, is that it is
an interesting film! Indeed, its secret aims have nothing to do with
business, but with ideas. To serve some interesting reflections on
religion, death or life, Zemeckis has hired a spectacular cast: Jodie
Foster, Mathew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skeritt or Angela Bassett.
Thus, the film is entertaining and can be appreciated by any kind of
persons - even those who do not like science-fiction movies since that
Contact is not really a movie dealing with extra-terrestrials or the
discovery of space, but rather a (re)discovery of human kind, its history
(references to Hitler notably) and its emotions. This is not only a
spectacular film, it is an intimate one, an inner journey. Besides, it can
be said that all the films Jodie Foster is used to playing in are kind of
inner journeys. In this film, she really shines, as usual, and she succeeds
in exploring her own emotions very deeply and those of the audience at the
same time. Will she receive another Academy Award? She deserves it again
anyway.
 
In Contact, the special effects are not there because it is up to date to
make movies with special effects, but they really serve the aim of the
film: searching for human basic feelings. It is even the paradox of the
whole film: new technologies do not really transform us into machines, but
make our reactions more human actually! When the E.T. signal is heard for
the first time in the movie, the characters (and the audience) feel more
human paradoxically, all excited like kids.

The word "kid" is obviously a key-word for describing Contact. Just like
Forrest, Foster's character is still a child, fragile but passionate. When
we see Contact, we feel the same emotions we had when very young. That is
all the magic and the interest of this movie. The film is a homage to the
power of imagination. Besides, it has a magical and onirical atmosphere as
if the whole movie was like a child dream. And as dreams always reveal who
we are, Contact talks to all of us very deeply.