Contact | Jena Malone, David Morse

Contact | Jena Malone, David Morse | for Carl

vhs video:

Contact

	Contact Jena Malone, David Morse Warner Studios, 1997 average customer review:based on 423 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Multi-dimensional

This movie is so layered that every time you watch it you catch something new and it makes you think of a multitued of possibilies.

for Carl

This is science fiction, and should be watched as such. Many of the premises are credible, and many are incredible. I'm not sure that I would call 26 light-years as deep space (26 thousand ly would be), that would be our close neighbor, but it makes the possibility of a message being received and resent in 52 years. The first time I watched it, I was not thrilled, maybe since it seem too far-fetched. I recently saw it again and was able to enjoy as straight science fiction. I was not sure what to make of the relationship between the preacher (Matt), and Jodie Foster. I think he was added to buffer religious sentiments.

for more information click here

Good mix of science fact and fiction

It seems that the best science fiction is written by real scientists: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Carl Sagan. Even though "Contact" is Sagan's only novel, it's a very good one, with a firm basis in real-world science. Adapted to the screen, it loses a lot, but the story is compelling, and the cast does a very good job of making it work. The special effects are impressive, too. One day, we may actually receive an interstellar welcome. The scenario presented in "Contact" may not be all that far off the mark as to how and what that message may be and how we'll work on reading it.

for more information click here

Good film, could've been great...

"Contact" is the filmed version of Carl Sagan's novel of the same name, and was completed after his early death. I can imagine Carl having as mixed feelings about this movie as I do, but overall, I think he would've been generally pleased. However, there are so many things, so many details, and extrapolations in this filmed version which were dealt with so much more satisfying and explanatory in the novel, that I wonder.

Generally, "wonder" and a sense of "awe" at the scope and size and meaning of the universe, and whether or not we are "all alone" (as far as technological, advanced, intelligent OTHER civilizations in the cosmos are concerned), or not, is at the heart of this movie. And considering Hollywood's reluctance to tackle such weighty cosmic matters, overall, this film has to be considered a moderate success.

Unfortunately, crucial elements from the novel are simply ignored here or are given lip service at best, and the result is a film which is compelling and eye-candy in some parts, but in the end especially, lacks any solid ground and is overlong and in too many sections, insufficiently explained for the layman/average viewer. Also, while the beginning of the film is one of the coolest major motion picture beginnings of all time, the payoff and end leave something to be desired.

Technically, the film is almost perfect, with great pace, acting, and a mostly intelligent screenplay. The opening sequence, in which we travel from our own little noisy corner of the universe, zooming out towards our real, rather insignificant and silent place in the greater scheme of things, is amazing. It's just too bad that the whole film couldn't have kept up that quality. And the end, in various ways, seems to contradict and/or diminish the same.

Having read the novel long ago, I remembered an ending even more cosmic and mind-blowing than that which is exhibited here. Perhaps, in retrospect, the ending of Sagan's novel, in which the whole question of "religion" and "God" and the "cosmos" is given as compelling an ending as the film's beginning, couldn't really have been "filmed." Perhaps during the production, it was decided that the end of Sagan's novel, really couldn't be visualized with film, so while the movie as a whole is generally satisfying, the end is very disappointing.

"Religion" and humankind's views of such and how they may or may not explain our being and place in the cosmos, play a significant part here, but a more undefined "belief in a God" is confused with "terrestrial" religious tenets and symbols here. And the whole government/taxpayer supported SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) "scientific" project and "mission" is eventually revealed to be nothing much more than just another "religious" idea, explored with science and technology and MONEY, instead of meaningless ancient voodoo and superstition.

This leads to a confusion between "faith" and "evidence" which the movie never really addresses. In a crucial scene, the question is asked, "You loved your father? Prove it." I'm sure Sagan could've and did (in the book) explain this, but in the film, this is left unanswered unnnecessarily. As are so many questions and answers, up until the end.

Many parts of the film and premise, are just too simple-minded and too much a set-up for easy answers later on, when it all could have been so much more. And yet, a lot of this I'm sure, will fly light years above most people's heads. Still, as one who has studied both UFO/ET/Abduction evidence along with that of the continuing mission of SETI, I'd have to call it a draw so far.

In the end, the film comes nowhere near the truly mind-expanding conclusions and questions of the novel, but again, perhaps, this was just too much to be put in a Hollywood movie, and may even have been impossible to visualize with mere cinema. The main problem here is that a very patronizing ending is tacked on where something more in keeping with the general spirit of the novel's original ending, would've been so much better.

We are told, in the end, that the traveler's journey and contact with real ET, can somehow be proved beyond faith, with science and human measurement instruments, but besides the temporal moments the traveler spent light years away, the only proof of such, could lay in a 1000 different explanations, including the first one that came to mind. The traveler could've dreamed it all up, in a split second. While observers (and human science) recorded it as something more.

This is an overall entertaining and intelligent movie, with some great special effects and wonderful music, but its basic premise, that of SETI itself, is flawed in my view, and is never fully and satisfyingly addressed within. In the beginning, the young girl is told by her father, when asked if there was anyone else out there, "if not, it would be an awful waste of space." Sadly, the end of the movie, refinforces this general idea, but it is as much a "religious" idea as is anything the movie preaches against.

Space and our universe is big, really, really big. But size and numbers of planets do not posit some sort of religious idea that life, let alone intelligent life, is somehow "common" in the cosmos. And really, if there were such advanced civilizations, I think a more likely explanation would be that they've already been here for eons, and that primitive "radio" signals we might someday receive from them, would've been discovered long ago. Long before the "UFO" phenomenon, long before our technologies, and perhaps beyond the reach and imagination of SETI scientists and researchers, who after all, depend upon money and peer status, for everything they pursue and have the courage to pursue.

I would've loved to have read Carl Sagan's review of this film, because in his dying days, a lot of what he seemed to think and say, he seemed to refute, and was strangely contradictory to this pretty but too much shallow rendering of his great novel.

for more information click here

Good but flawed

This is NEARLY a superb film. An extra-terrestrial communication is picked up and (eventually) Jodie Foster goes on a very surreal space trip while apparently not moving. Foster is excellent throughout, but the film is spoilt by a crass sub-plot concerning so-called religious right politicians who try to prevent her going on the misson because she doesn't believe in God. The over-coiffured Matthew McConaughey looks far too well groomed for a priest, and is unconvincing in his role.
There are some great moments though, and some excellent special effects, so there's enough here to interest the average sc-fi fan.

for more information click here