Monday, February 25, 2008

Critique of the Motion Picture "Contact"

The opening sequence of Contact tells the entire story… It is both spectacular and humbling at the same time as we begin with a view of Earth gleaming in a sunrise. An almost frantic jumble of broadcasts— news, TV shows, music—assail our ears. As we pull back from Earth and pass the outer planets, we hear older broadcasts… disco…Kennedy… the Beatles… Hitler…then ultimately the unintelligible static of all the radio stations on Earth. Then, as we leave the solar system, passing breathtaking nebulae, the sounds give way to silence. A dead silence, as we continue to pull back out of the galaxy and out of the local group of galaxies into the quiet depth of our vast universe. “It’s enough to make you feel tiny and insignificant and alone,” says Maryann Johanson of FlickFilosopher.com. “Which is precisely the feeling it’s meant to evoke.” From that vastness, we are brought back to our own “mundane” existence within it as the universe transforms into a dark reflection in the protagonist’s eye.

With a powerful entrance like that, it is hard to imagine that this 1997 movie directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) and based on the novel by Carl Sagan, received very mixed reviews by critics.
Cindy Fuchs of the Philadelphia City Paper called it “far more mundane than its aspirations to cosmic insights might have produced.” Kevin N. Laforest with the Montreal Film Journal said, “Contact is not a bad film, but I can’t say it’s all that good either.” Even TVGuide.com rated it a two out of four: “It’s really about [Jodie] Foster, and with her lips pressed tightly together and her hair carelessly shoved behind her ears, she’s utterly convincing as a researcher who’s subverted everything to a life of the mind. Unfortunately that adds up to a rather remote protagonist and Ellie is surrounded by a supporting cast of one-dimensional types…far too cold-blooded for summer audiences.” This is ironic, considering that the advertizing pitch calls Contact “a journey to the heart of the universe.” Finally, Christopher Null (Filmcritic.com) recommended it for its looks but not highly. Said Null: “Carl Sagan’s ode to the superior intelligence of aliens (and how us darned humans mess everything up) is consistently beautiful and interesting, but it never makes a point (except for that bit about the darned humans). Well, Mr. Null, I think you’ve missed the point, as have some of the critics I have just quoted. Contact—and its somewhat tortured protagonist—demonstrates much in the way of “heart” and in doing so, makes a compelling story. Hearts beat deeply inside us, and this movie is no different; its “heart” runs deep, deep beneath the surface rhetoric that seems to have distracted several critics who likely prefer to take a shallow sip of their coffee steaming hot than wait and savor the rich flavor of a dark blend in a deep swallow. Perhaps I’m too harsh, you say. Well, hear me out. Here’s my argument:

First of all, for those of you who have not yet seen this 1997 motion picture by Time Warner, Contact examines the moral, social and religious implications of our first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence through the personal journey of astronomer, Eleanor (Ellie) Arroway (played impeccably and sensitively by Jodie Foster). Never knowing her mother (who died at child birth) and having lost her father when she was ten, Ellie grows into a strong-willed scientist who dedicates her life to finding alien life in the universe by foregoing a career at Harvard to join a SETI Observatory in the Puerto Rico jungle. In an earlier scene with her father, she asks the question we have all pondered at least once: “Do you think there are people on other planets?” to which her father blithely answers, “if it’s just us, seems like an awful lot of wasted space,” a simple argument that appeals to the young logically-minded Ellie and one that will dominate the perseverance of her adult life in her resolute search for life in the universe.

And persevere Ellie must, because nothing comes easy for her. Shortly after she settles at the SETI Observatory her teacher (and nemesis) David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) pays her a visit with implied threats of shutting the place down. Ellie also meets Palmer Joss (Mathew McConaughey), a man of faith, who is writing a book about the effects of science and technology on the third world. Although she is attracted to him, alarm bells go off in Ellie, who feels threatened by his faith (something she does not outwardly understand yet clings to in another form). Wanting to see him again, she introduces him to the man he wants to interview: Drumlin. And one of the most poignant conversations follows:

When Ellie challenges Drumlin’s apparent wish to do away with all pure research, he responds with, “What’s wrong with science being practical, even profitable? Nothing—”
Palmer cuts in, “—As long as your motive is the search for truth, which is exactly what the pursuit of science is.” Drumlin counters peevishly, “Well, that’s an interesting position coming from a man who crusades against the evils of technology.” To which Palmer responds, “I’m not against technology; I’m against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth.”

Palmer and Ellie collide from two different worlds and despite their differences, they are profoundly attracted to one another. But as quickly as she falls for Palmer, she recoils from him.

Nothing comes easy for Ellie: “small moves, Ellie,” her father is accustomed to telling her, “small moves…” Shortly after she and her colleagues have been shut down by Drumlin and have set up anew (thanks to eccentric billionaire entrepreneur, S.R. Hadden, played by John Hurt), Drumlin and others shut them down yet again. But, as though a greater force intervenes, this is when Ellie makes her momentous discovery and intercepts an alien message from Vega, a young star still surrounded by a proto-planetary cloud of debris about 27 light years away from us. The scene is scientifically plausible and elegantly powerful— it gave my husband goose-bumps (even the second time watching!)—as we witness the drama of this phenomenal discovery unfold in a frisson of action. Zemeckis wisely shows us exactly how such an event would really play out. And Sagan didn’t pick Vega out of whimsy: a sphere sixty light years thick of radio communication radiates from Earth from our radio and TV broadcasts. These signals may be captured by alien technology and sent back as a “message”. In theory, such a signal could be received on Earth anytime after 1990, the round trip time for a light or radio signal to travel to Vega and back from the first global signal, which in itself is momentous and telling. In another spine-tingling scene, the scientists who have descended upon Ellie decipher the arcane harmonics of the “message” as the broadcast of the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics in 1936 (the first truly global TV broadcast made) over which Hitler presided. In fact, in another stroke of irony, the now infamous swastika is the first icon they decipher. Later still, they discover embedded instructions to build a machine that appears made to take a human on an extra-galactic trip.

At the same time that Ellie intercepts this message, Palmer Joss experiences a meteoric rise to stardom with his bestselling book, Losing Faith: the Search for Meaning in the Age of Reason (which could well have been the alternate title for the film; it certainly describes the subtext of the story and the major thematic element: Faith & Meaning). In an interview with a prominent news show host, Palmer asks the question that most of us have avoided: “The question that I’m asking is this: are we happier? Is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology?...We shop at home, we search the web—at the same time we feel emptier, lonelier, and more cut off from each other than any other time in human history…We have meaningless jobs, we take frantic vacations [and] trips to the mall to buy more things to fill these holes in our lives.” Ironically, Palmer touches a similar nerve in Ellie when he brings up her dead parents: “It must have been hard… being alone…” insinuating that her fanatical search for intelligent alien life may simply be filling a hole in her heart. She flees Palmer shortly after, fearing his revealing intimacy. When they next meet, years later, they fall naturally into their familiar banter and she turns the table to challenge his faith in the same way: “What if science simply revealed that [God] never existed in the first place?” She then evokes Occam’s Razor, which says that “…all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one…what’s more likely? An all powerful mysterious God [who] created the universe then decided not to give us proof of his existence or that he simply doesn’t exist at all and we created him so we wouldn’t have to feel so small and alone?” Both of them are saved from an answer by the intrusive rings of their cell phones.

Ironically again, it is Ellie’s lack of belief in God that causes her to be overlooked for the momentous journey in the alien craft, in favor of the crafty Drumlin with the oily smile. Unfortunately, a religious zealot sabotages the mission and Drumlin, along with the whole alien craft and construct, are blown up in a spectacular explosion at NASA’s Cape Canaveral. Ellie gets her chance after all when they build a second one. Her journey in the alien space craft, which we are later told takes up eighteen hours of her time but passes instantaneously on Earth (to the point where they all think nothing actually happened), is truly epic and elegantly portrayed. Her encounter with the aliens is also in keeping with the plot and imagery of the story. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is the one where Ellie is introduced to the incredible and indescribable beauty of the vast Universe. It is at this point that she experiences her epiphany: science is not the sole purveyor of truth in the Universe. As she gazes at the splendor revealed before her, she acknowledges that the language of science is unable to express the sheer magnitude of the breathtaking scene. Grasping at something to say, she blusters with a scientific term then finally gasps, “No words…to describe it…they should have sent a poet...”
Upon her return, Ellie is challenged by skeptics who think she suffered a giant delusion (remember that on Earth, no time had passed during her supposed eighteen-hour voyage). Ellie offers up a strained scientific explanation (e.g., wormhole travel through space-time also called Einstein-Rosen bridges) which is challenged by National Security Advisor, Michael Kitz (James Woods) as only theory, and must finally resort to her faith; one she selflessly offers to the world: “I... had an experience. I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe, that tells us undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are. A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that none of us are alone.”

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat of Spirituality Practice said it best: “Robert Zemeckis has fashioned a truly awesome movie that celebrates the spiritual practices of listening, wonder, love, and zeal. It affirms that there are times and places where reason must yield to mystery.”

The SETI Institute, who currently conduct the search for alien life, have a website dedicated to the move: http://www.seti-Inst.edu/phoenix/contact.html.




Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

15 comments:

Jean-Luc Picard said...

I haven't seen 'Contact', but think Jodie Foster is a real talented lady.

DANIELBLOOM said...

I have seen CONTACT a few times on TV here in Taiwan, and every time I see, it blows me away. Great movie making and great ideas. But I must confess, Nina, deep creative mind that I sometimes have, I do not believe in alien life or ET life or anything like that. Deep in my heart/mind/DNA/body brainwaves, the only thing I can come up with is we are here by complete random chance accident of cosmos and there is no life out there, but empty space and stars and stardust, and we are stardust ourselves. So I don't believe in UFOs or alients or alien abductions or life on other planets. Although I love reading your ideas and Carl Sagan etc etc., but my own conclusion is this is all there is. No God, no gods, no afterlife, no pre-life, just this one life, one time, here and now, and we came from stardust, Earthville, DNA arises via evolution, and we came then from monkeys and fish long ago, and here we are, looking for something else, but there is nothing else. I know it's boring, and I feel boring to tell you my own boring feeling, but it's my confession. Just us. SMILE

But still, I love THINKING about these ideas you and CONTACT present. They are worth thinking about and being entertained by.

Sorry to be so one dimensional. But I never ever believed in UFOs or aliens or God or gods or anything i cannot see with my eyes.
SHOW ME, I am from missouri!

danny

DANIELBLOOM said...

By the way, I do agree with this good statement:

"Robert Zemeckis has fashioned a truly awesome movie that celebrates the spiritual practices of listening, wonder, love, and zeal. It affirms that there are times and places where reason must yield to mystery.”

Yes, mystery. It's worthwhile to think about. And experience. I agree. Life IS a mystery. But I stick with reason, in the final analysis.......boring, I know!

Nina Munteanu said...

I lot of people think as you do, Dan... I personally don't think we live in a "boring" world...and to think that "this is all there is" rings a wee bit hubristic to me as well... There is bound to be more than US in the universe, whether we ever witness the "other" or not (as in it's just too far away or limited by our imaginations and capability to measure), now THAT's the real question to me... "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Nina Munteanu said...

Jean-Luc, I agree with you that Jodie Foster is a fine actress with great breadth. Contact is a worthwhile see.

DANIELBLOOM said...

Nina
I didn't mean it that way, that the world is boring. No way. Life is anything BUT boring. I was just being a bit self-deprecating by saying to you, a well-established sci fi writer, that I myself might seem boring to some people because I am from Missouri the show me state and I only believe things I can see and hear, for the most part, so i meant that you probably find ME boring. But I was just joking. I am also keenly interested in the mysteries of life and the stars and yes yes yes, there must be something out there, let's keep looking. I am was just joshing. Don't ever take me seriously. I am a kidder from way back....

But I am also a very good skeptic. It IS hurbristic to think we are the only ones in the cosmos, yes yes yes, there must be someone, something else. I do believe.

Reading you loud and clear!

DANIELBLOOM said...

And CONTACT touched me deeply. Go figure. A nonbeliever, sort of, believes! The zen of it all. Yes yes yes.

I esp liked the religious stuff in that movie!

MYM said...

I saw that movie when it came out, wow...I didn't realize that was mathew mcconaughey ... had forgotten about that. I liked the movie but not the relationship between him and jodie...I found that took away from the story.

I think the movie Arrival came out around the same time ... as a movie I enjoyed that one more. I'm sure it was far less "scientific" ;)

Nina Munteanu said...

Gee... I didn't see Arrival. I'll have to look for it.

Nina Munteanu said...

p.s. .... though, I bet it doesn't have Mathew McConaughy in it... sigh...

Anonymous said...

Jodi Foster seems to take a lot of roles that involve her being really stressed out... at the same time she's usually a character who goes against the advise of everyone around her until the end of the movie, when everyone figures out she's right. just an observation.

Nina Munteanu said...

I think she picks those roles on purpose, Patrick. Unconventional characters, who strike a different path. Plus, she plays the stressed out character well, don't you think?

Anonymous said...

The closing scene of them leaving the Capital building must be computer animated as they are leaving the wrong side of the capital in perspective to how it is constructed and the access roads. Any comments?

Nina Munteanu said...

What a COOL observation! I will have to re-view that. I thought it looked right. As for computer animation, well, so much is done that way, it's hard to know these days. Was that a REAL Toyota sailing down that dirt road? Nah... I was told by a friend in the business that when you want something to look REALLY nice, use CGI... Hope that doesn't include people (hard to imagine Matthew McConaughey improved upon by CGI...)

Unknown said...

Yes, I think that it good idea. More than such films and then our WORLD becomes better.