# Contact (1997)

### reviewed by
Dennis Schwartz

CONTACT (director: Robert Zemeckis; screenwriters: Jim V, Hart/Michael Goldenberg; cinematographer: Don Burgess; cast: Jodie Foster (Ellie Arroway), Matthew McConaughey (Palmer Joss), James Woods (Michael Kitz), Tom Skerritt (David Drumlin), William Fichtner (Kent), Angela Bassett (Rachel Constantine), John Hurt (S.R. Hadden), Rob Lowe (Richard Rank), David Morse (Ted Arroway), Jena Malone (Little Ellie), 1997)

    Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

This film, based on Carl Sagan's novel, is a mixture of sci-fi, romance, sentimentality, and drama, brought to screen by the director of Forreset Gump. It relies on its ideas and its mild convictions to sustain its powerful but soppy story, rather than its special effects, contrary to many modern films that have just become special effect vehicles. The Ellie Arroway (Jodie) role as a child of 8, is played by Jena Malone, who is being raised by her father with tender loving care (her mother died at childbirth) and with respect for her ability to learn, as he encourages her interest in astronomy. Unfortunately, he dies of a heart attack when she is just ten.

At last, we see Ellie, grown-up as an independent, intelligent young lady, working for the National Science Foundation on a project of cutting-edge technology. Jodie Foster is feisty, vulnerable, appealing, self-righteous, and obsessed with seeking scientific truths. She is the alter-ego for Sagan, challenging the scientific and religious dogmas of the day, championing a call for poetry and vision in our lives.

Her boss, Palmer Joss (Matthew), feels her research is futile and of no utilitarian value. He stops her alien contact project and is pictured as the perfect bureaucrat. Governments seem to trust this type and like to put them in charge of things.

Ellie falls for a spiritual popularizer of worldly causes ( Tom Skeritt), who left divinity school because he didn't want to remain celibate.The attraction between them is overshadowed by idealogical differences, and nothing can get in the way of Ellie's belief in evolution, not even this hunk who is a ridiculously loopy caricature of a religious zealot, one of those religious Johnny-come-lately types.

S.R. Hadden (John Hurt) comes to her rescue as an eccentric, wealthy scientist, on the lookout for adventurious scientists; his foundation privately sponsors her research. Ellie succeeds in making contact with some sort of life in outer space; and, the government, with Michael Kitz (James Woods) in charge of security, co-opts her project for national security reasons. Here the story turns melodramatic and goes off on too many different tangents to adequately keep its focus on its primary aim-- that there is life in outer space. For these scenes, the film should have used the dictum from Occam's Razor: The simplest way to do something is the best way.

As a sci-fi'er, with a good storyline that tends to get too schmaltzy, this film is up to par with those STAR WARS films, but is outclassed by 2001. Sagan would have been proud of the accuracy and content of this work had he lived to see the film through to its conclusion, but I don't think he would have been to happy with the elementary-school theological debate between the space pioneer and the government officials. The main argument in the film, is when Jodi is asked by that government panel whether she believes in the God of the Bible. It is an embarrassing scene, as she waivers, not trying to answer the question directly, because if she said she didn't believe in God, they wouldn't let her go up in space. I think the best answer a scientist could give in this scenario, was not given by Jodi...but, then again, she got to go up in space. A Steven Hawkings might have said that it is through these scientific machines that we will come closest to reading the mind of God. Albert Einstein might have said that the God of order created this beautiful world we live in, and that the other kind of God, the one of prayer and the one of interpretation by man and interjection, is a speculative one. That the world had to be created out of the first concept of God; the world is not a result of an accident. It is a thing of great beauty. At least, this is what my science friends tell me is the more typical attitude toward God in their community.

    REVIEWED ON 8/3/98                 GRADE: C+

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

    http://www.sover.net/~ozus

    ozus@sover.net

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