Contact

A Robert Zemeckis Film

Starring Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Skerrit, Angela Basset, John Hurt, James Woods

Christina says:

Aliens make contact with us. A familiar theme, but with a difference. No droning colossal spaceship roaming the vacuum of space. This project was not simply handed over to the Special Effects artists. Here, the aliens are of marginal interest only. It’s not slimy creatures from outer space who are the menace, but bureaucrats, the military and self-appointed religious leaders instead – more realistic, hence far more scary.

Firmly convinced that there is intelligent life somewhere in our universe and resolute to find it, Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) passes up her scientific career and settles down in into the desert of New Mexico, accompanied by a bunch of soul mates. When actually successful one night, she is immediately hounded by a flock of civil servants as well as UFO buffs.

The aliens have sent a construction manual to earth. Michael Kitz (James Woods), a paranoid Security Advisor, refuses to build the thing – what ever it may be. Arroway’s ex-boss David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) first and foremost wants to reap the laurels. A priest named Palmer Joss (Matthew McConnaughey) would like to acquaint the aliens with God – or is it just that he doesn’t want Arroway to risk her life in the contact with the aliens, because he could naturally never forget her after they got between the sheets one night?

Before being allowed a glimpse of the aliens, Arroway and the audience have to wrestle with terrestrial bureaucracy initiating a lengthy discussion about the dichotomy between science and religion and the question whether or not someone who doesn’t believe in God may be entrusted with the first contact with another species. In fact, the unauthorised use of film material showing President Clinton kicked up more dust than the film itself. But even so lifting the lid off perfidious political correctness remains to be relished.

In the end Arroway herself is to use the transportation vehicle. The aliens use – surprise, surprise! – images from her childhood to communicate with her. Thus Arroway materialises in a coastal scenery she had painted as a child and talks to a man resembling her father who died early.

Certainly, Zemeckis has not created a major work of the century, but a science fiction film blissfully standing out among your ordinary crash-boom-bang razzle-dazzle. Perhaps someone else might think of the possibility that girls don’t actually need a childhood trauma to grow up into ambitious scientists. Perhaps one day mankind will be ready to encounter aliens who don’t have to disguise themselves as fathers or anything. We’ll see.

Monika says:

Even as a child Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) shows a strong affinity for natural sciences fostered by her father until his untimely death. She has a particular predilection for astronomy and the search for intelligent life on other planets. After obtaining her doctorate at MIT she gets a job at the SETI institute in New Mexico. When after years of unavailing research the money for further projects is denied to her, the most incredible thing happens: she receives signals originating on a star named Vega 26 light years away. Having grappled with the initially alarming nature of the message (a TV coverage of the 1936 Olympic Games’ inauguration at Berlin), they discover coded information containing the construction manual for a mysterious machine. The United States decide to build it, turning a blind eye to opponents who suspect a diabolical instrument for the elimination of mankind. In fact, the first test run ends in a catastrophe, albeit in a somewhat different way than most people had feared. The project seems to be finished, but Ellie is still in for a surprise.

CONTACT presents Jodie Foster in one of her best parts ever, namely an ambitious scientist called Dr. Ellie Arroway who has to stand her ground in a field traditionally belonging to the men’s world. The only trouble is that she does it because of a childhood trauma – she never managed to overcome the loss of her beloved father. Quite obviously, Hollywood still hasn’t grappled with the dilemma of accepting a strong female character simply behaving in a ‘normal’ way as it would be naturally expected of a man. This can also be seen from the fact that previous to a press conference at which to report her research results to the public Ellie, who otherwise seems to have rather little interest in secular things, is preoccupied with only one thought: where to get a particularly attractive and extravagant dress. In a film such as CONTACT, which contrasts agreeably with science fiction films commonly produced in tinsel town, this detail is especially conspicuous.

Robert Zemeckis’ film is a strikingly close adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel and consequently encompasses the ‘faith versus science’ issue repeatedly touched on by Sagan. For example, the construction of the ‘machine’ attracts a phalanx of religious fanatics preaching the end of the world. In many individuals the impending turn of the century evokes the angst of the Judgement Day, equally well known to our modern society as to medieval Europe 1000 years ago. Another matter of great human concern is the question about the existence of God, or whether it is right to send scientists to a remote star although they don’t believe in God. The church is embodied by ‘Father’ Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a former priest who appears as a confirmed representative of the Catholic faith although for personal reasons he did not finish the seminary. The love story, which seems to be compulsory in Hollywood, starts to blossom between him and Ellie; in this film however, it is a drawback rather than an asset because it is virtually redundant and does not promote the action.

Having said that, CONTACT is one of the films most worthy to view this year with its placid yet not boring narrative and a flood of fantastic pictures especially captivating. The special effects do not simply function in their own right, but because they are elements required by the plot. They provide the film with an aesthetic quality rarely to be found in this genre. Right at the beginning for example the audience is taken on a ride through the solar system to the centre of the Milky Way, the significance of which is only revealed in the course of the film.

Some may think that with a 2½ hours’ run CONTACT is unreasonably long, but that way the story has time enough to develop. The main cast is perfect and several cameos of American TV celebrities render the scenario even more realistic. So if an action spectacle featuring many explosions, shoot-outs, spaceships and chases is something you can very well do without, you should not miss out on this one.

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Monika Hübner
Christina Gross