Contact Movie Review

Contact (1997)

Rent Contact on Amazon Video (paid link) // Buy the book (paid link) 
Written by: James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg (screenplay by), Carl Sagan (based on the novel by), Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan (based on the story by)
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Skerritt, James Woods, John Hurt, Angela Bassett
Rated: PG
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Plot
Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, in the form of plans for a mysterious machine.

Verdict
While it's sci-fi, exploring a first contact, it's grounded in what feels like believable science. The two protagonists represent science and faith. That line blurs, and the instrument at work may just be the human factor. Scientist Ellie, who has relied on hard facts, meets an alien, but her experience is reduced to faith as she's unable to provide any tangible proof. She admits as much and for the first time realizes true faith. It's a well written movie designed to make you wonder about the world and beliefs. It does a great job of that. Even science is a faith in what we know to be true. Throughout the centuries, that belief has changed as we learn more through scientific breakthroughs.
Watch It.

Review
This opens with radio waves traveling through space. We hear different pop hits and news reports through the age before shifting to Ellie. She's a kid trying to contact people through a ham radio. Ellie (Jodie Foster) grows up and gets a job with SETI, still listening to radios searching for evidence of extra terrestrials.

Years later Ellie is still chasing funding to scan radio waves while her one time fling Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) has become a renowned author and advisor to the President. Facing budget cuts yet again, she finds a signal from outer space. It's one of the earliest televised images, sent back to Earth. It's soon discovered the video image contains encrypted data. The government argues over what to do. The information could be a trap or ruse, but Ellie wants to pursue it, arguing that the entity used the universal language of math, and if they wanted to cause harm there are easier methods.

The data is plans to build a machine. While no one knows what it does, the assumption is that it will allow travel to the alien home world. Ellie is competing for the lone spot to test the machine, but it's much coveted. In an interview she admits she doesn't believe in God which hurts her chances. She loses the spot to Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), who cut her funding years earlier as the President's science advisor. He'd say whatever it takes to get selected.

Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey play Ellie, Palmer

Fun fact, the space travel device is based on an unused design for The Terminator (1984).

When the first test doesn't go as planned, Ellie gets a second chance to go. The government built two machines for twice the price with the second machine hidden in Japan.

I love how this toys with science, faith, and fate. Religious zealots are indirectly the reason Ellie gets an opportunity to use the second machine. She discovered the signal, so it's fitting, fate even, that she gets to investigate. Then it's the compass Palmer gave her that saved her from injury while in the machine. You could explain it away with science, but it still seems like a higher power. If she hadn't gotten the compass from Palmer, the chair in the device would have crushed her. Then again, safety advisors requested the chair. If they had followed the alien plans implicitly, there wouldn't even have been a chair. That was Ellie's faith in science and the plans.

No one knows what happens when the device is activated, and this builds the tension well. The device creates tremors as the spinning rings reach speed. Communication deteriorates as control debates whether to abort until they can just barely hear Ellie repeating, "Okay to go."

The space travel device

The first contact is unique, the aliens using her memories to make the encounter easier.  While she experienced this long encounter, what everyone saw was the sphere fall through the rings, with the event lasting mere seconds. Ellie endures an inquiry about the events. She admits all she has is her story. While the panel wants something tangible, she can't provide that. Ellie asks the panel to take her story on faith. It's an ironic twist with someone so focused on science.

The stinger is that the confidential report of the event wasn't released. While Ellie fell through the machine and her trip appeared to last seconds, her camera recorded eighteen hours of static, the length of time she estimated she was gone. It's fitting, a government cover up on a global scale.

Throughout the movie, science and faith are poised as opposites. The avatars are Ellie and Palmer. The bad actors are humans. A religious zealot attacks the first machine. That was an act of selfishness, not faith. Drumlin was selected as the messenger, but he lied to do so and paid a price for that. It wasn't science that saved Ellie. It was faith in part, and people's faith that things will work out and the aliens are not intending to harm. Where's the line between science and facts versus faith and a simple belief? Ellie, adamant in her belief in facts, is left with a faith in science that she can neither explain nor prove. It's not dissimilar to Palmer's belief in God.

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