Contact (1997)
'Contact' is almost a great film which I feel compelled to revisit every few years, there are things I hate but much more that I love.
Jodie Foster's character Dr. Ellie Arroway is such an inspiring hero, who stands for everything good and noble. The bits that make me want to shout at the film, are like when
Matthew McConaughey's Palmer comes back at Ellie's statement that there is no proof of God's existence with asking her to prove her love for her father. She looks dumbfounded and we quickly cut to the next bit of the plot as if there is no answer she could possibly give to such a "profound" piece of sophistry, when there are many obvious retorts. Not least that the correct analogy would be
"prove your father existed", not proving that Ellie loved him, because nobody disbelieves that some people love God. Proving that Ellie's father existed is easy, proving that God exists is difficult. There are a few other moments where Ellie has the opportunity to give a spirited defence of her principles (a "Picard speech" if you will) but she crumples under the pressure of hectoring, louder voices. The irritation of these sequences is often magnified by McConaughey giving this unbearably condescending and self-satisfied performance and I usually love McConaughey's folksy charm.
The real kicker for me is the end where we're left with Ellie learning the lesson that she should except things on blind faith, instead of her defiantly saying something like
"Okay I'm left with no proof for what I just experienced, so I'm going to continue my life-long search for that proof". The script sort of has her half-heartedly saying something along those lines, to a kid but it's too vague and immediately follows her saying the opposite thing. While
Tom Skerritt's close-minded and cynical scientist antagonist feels fully rounded, motivated in his actions (or lack thereof) and an interesting screen presence,
James Woods' belligerent politician antagonist seems to oppose Ellie, just to be a d*ck. The usually excellent
Alan Silvestri provides an at times cloying and sentimental score and the FX and cinematography look very 90s in a bad way. I can't get over the repeated pronunciation of "primer" like "prim and proper", instead of like "prime position", or "primed to explode", it's painful to hear. I genuinely didn't know what the hell the characters were talking about the first time I watched this movie.
Despite some of these flaws, 'Contact' has a lot to say and much of it has become more relevant in the last quarter century. Including social media hysteria, denial of reality, privately funded space travel and the easy overshadowing of scientific uncertainty, by moral certainty. Plus it now feels like a welcome companion piece to the more artistically successful
'Interstellar' (coincidentally also starring McConaughey), exploring similar intersections between time, space travel, belief, disbelief and the love between a father and daughter bridging worlds. 'Contact' captures something ineffable about the thrill of exploration into the unknown and the wonder of scientific discovery, that really makes me smile. I didn't know that
George Miller did a couple of years of pre-production on 'Contact', including the decision to cast Foster, before being fired at the last minute. I wonder what that would've been like?