Contact (1997) dir. Robert Zemeckis
“I’ll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it’s just us… seems like an awful waste of space. Right?”
Science fiction has always been the greatest medium for artists to hold a mirror up to humanity and illuminate the darkness of our flaws, but it is the stories involving extraterrestrial life which truly lay bare who we are or should strive to be as a species. In Kubrick/Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, remnants of an intergalactic species drive humanity to the far reaches of the solar system; in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival the sudden landing of twelve spacecraft across the world send scientists and militaries scrambling; and in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind lights dart through the sky calling to a select few believers. Robert Zemeckis’ Contact brings all of these elements, and more, together in a glorious ode to humanity and our quest for meaning beyond our pale blue dot.
The story of Contact exists at the tiny junction where politics, faith and science intersect and none on their own are enough to provide all the answers. It is at this junction that we meet Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) in Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory waiting for her allotted time on the telescope. In a childhood riddled with tragedy, Ellie found solace in radios and communicating with unseen operators around the United States. Now she seeks communication beyond the solar system, scanning the heavens for radio waves with signs of intelligent life. It is in this world of poorly funded sciences surrounded by desperate scientists that Ellie meets Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) a former pastor whose faith and scepticism of modern reliance on technology clashes with Ellie’s atheism and diligent focus on her work. Ellie and the other members of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) program – notably Kent (William Fitchner) – in Puerto Rico lose funding when political leach David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) declares the program futile. The pull between these three disparate forces is expertly established, determining the conflict that will carry through the remainder of the film.
This expert craftsmanship is indicative of the master blockbuster filmmaker behind the camera, Robert Zemeckis. While his recent endeavours are lacking – anything he’s made in the 21st century doesn’t come close to the quality of his early works, largely due to his obsession with pushing the technological envelope that errs to the side of gimmick more often than not – Zemeckis was a powerhouse of the movies in the eighties and nineties. Zemeckis’ long-time collaborator Alan Silvestri composed the score and it’s excellent. Taking a note from John Williams which Hans Zimmer will further utilise in Interstellar and Dune – the best sci-fi scores are orchestral; they provide a sense of grandiosity and opera.
The screenplay is based on the novel of the same name by Carl Sagan who based the novel off a screenplay treatment he and Ann Druyan – Sagan’s wife – wrote. Production of that version stalled out in the late 1970’s when hard sci-fi was out and fantasy sci-fi chasing the dragon of Star Wars was all investors cared for. The novel was a great success and led Sagan to become and even more prominent household name in the late twentieth century. Unfortunately, Sagan never saw the finished film, dying in December 1996 at the age of 62 a few months before he was scheduled to film a cameo in the movie.
Upon its release in 1997, Contact received moderate success at the box office and while it was largely enjoyed by general audiences (it is a very crowd-pleasing movie and all the better for it) critical reception was divided. Most notably the film was criticised for its humanistic, ‘lets all be friends and get along’ attitude, but what is sci-fi for it not showing what we could be doing better? Ray Bradbury understood this maybe more than any other artist who operated in the genre. Bradbury portrayed peoples and the worlds of the future as awfully as one can imagine but he always ended with a spark of hope. Hope that humanity can weather any storm and come out of it better because of our inherent goodness. Contact shares that philosophy.
Contact isn’t subtle, and it isn’t trying to be. It wears its meanings and themes on its sleeve and it wears them proud. The thematic catharsis of the movie comes with a simple piece of dialogue that when read alone seems the worldview of a child who doesn’t understand how the world truly is, but it may be the child who views the world as it should be.
“[We’re] an interesting species. An interesting mix. [We’re] capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. [We] feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only [we’re] not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”
In 1977 Carl Sagan was the head of the committee to develop a greeting from humanity to any extraterrestrial life who may discover the Voyager 1 probe. This greeting was called the Golden Record and it contained humanity’s hope that we are not alone in this beautiful, vast cosmos. When played the record would provide extraterrestrials with the sounds of earth; waves crashing to shore, thunder rolling in the distance, questions from a child, laughter, and footsteps. They would hear our music; Beethoven, opera, the blues and Chuck Berry and they would hear the music of earth; the sombre cries of humpback whales and the joyful twitter of birds. With the record was a series of photographs – people eating ice cream, drinking water, and running a race – and a map showing where we are. And inscribed on the cover in morse code, the Latin phrase, Per Aspera Ad Astra. No four words better summarise the philosophy of Robert Zemeckis’ Contact.
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