Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers: James V. Hart, Michael Goldenberg, Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan
Photography: Don Burgess
Music: Alan Silvestri
Editor: Arthur Schmidt
Cast: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, David Morse, William Fichtner, Jake Busey, Larry King
I had to start by asking myself what kind of a nut am I for movies about UFOs and first contact with aliens from outer space? Some kind of a nut anyway, as I tallied the titles from a generic “best first contact movies” search of the internet: The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and especially Close Encounters of the Third Kind are favorites I have looked at over and over, as it happens, with others I have at least appreciated (Arrival, Interstellar, E.T., even The Abyss). Contact is high on a lot of those lists too, although I hadn’t seen it since it was new. I liked it then but, more than 25 years later, I felt some trepidation about approaching it again.
Part of the reason I’ve been working at a roundup of movies by director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, and I probably should have got to Romancing the Stone) was exactly about that trepidation, hoping to get some perspective on the intriguing Zemeckis before I returned to Contact. On that point, I think now that Zemeckis’s strongest period was in the late ‘80s, with Roger Rabbit and the respectably resolved (and family-friendly!) complexities of his Back to the Future trilogy. Forrest Gump was a kind of crucible from which Zemeckis may never have fully recovered, leaning into flashy distracting special effects by rote, for their own sake, and putting narrative coherence into the backseat. There’s a lot of that in Contact. Start with the ridiculously repurposed footage of Bill Clinton, which has not aged well.
I had to start by asking myself what kind of a nut am I for movies about UFOs and first contact with aliens from outer space? Some kind of a nut anyway, as I tallied the titles from a generic “best first contact movies” search of the internet: The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and especially Close Encounters of the Third Kind are favorites I have looked at over and over, as it happens, with others I have at least appreciated (Arrival, Interstellar, E.T., even The Abyss). Contact is high on a lot of those lists too, although I hadn’t seen it since it was new. I liked it then but, more than 25 years later, I felt some trepidation about approaching it again.
Part of the reason I’ve been working at a roundup of movies by director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, and I probably should have got to Romancing the Stone) was exactly about that trepidation, hoping to get some perspective on the intriguing Zemeckis before I returned to Contact. On that point, I think now that Zemeckis’s strongest period was in the late ‘80s, with Roger Rabbit and the respectably resolved (and family-friendly!) complexities of his Back to the Future trilogy. Forrest Gump was a kind of crucible from which Zemeckis may never have fully recovered, leaning into flashy distracting special effects by rote, for their own sake, and putting narrative coherence into the backseat. There’s a lot of that in Contact. Start with the ridiculously repurposed footage of Bill Clinton, which has not aged well.
The Halliwell’s film guide notes that Contact “soon settles for sentimentality and psychobabble,” which is true enough. It’s also long, two and a half hours, a big movie with lots going on, not all of it necessary, more like epic for the sake of being epic. It’s decorated with lots of stars and familiar faces (check the list above). Carl Sagan was on hand as well, reportedly there to defend from Hollywood the scientific veracity of his 1985 source novel. He died during production. The film is dedicated to him. You see the temptation for jokes about losing the fight.
But it’s not really fair to say the picture is all sentimentality and psychobabble. Jodie Foster is as excellent as ever as Ellie Arroway, a woman who grew up in love with ham radio communication, science, and outer space. Jena Malone plays Ellie as a kid—the resemblance to Foster is uncanny enough to note. The script slyly makes much of the history of science and the tendency for men to steal credit from the women who have done much work for science that goes uncredited. The rascal in this case is played by Tom Skerritt in his TV-friendly way, comforting even as a bad guy. Another first contact movie I happen to like a lot, This Island Earth, is evoked nicely when the aliens in Contact transmit the earthlings the schematics for a machine that will enable us to travel the universe and meet them. All we have to do is build it. They have already established their intellect with a show of prime numbers. UNLESS IT’S A TRAP!! OR THE WORK OF SATAN!!!
Contact is also good on imagining the mulish panic that could set in as a result of contact with aliens. In fact, religion is a big element here, with a typically self-serious Matthew McConaughey playing Palmer Joss, a lapsed priest, lusty lover, and dedicated defender of God. We’re seeing a different kind of panic today, about pandemics and climate change, that is often similar to the religious hysteria here, with various self-contradicting claims about God and His Word, etc. These scenes in Contact feel obvious and predictable more than prescient, yet in many ways they are the parts of the movie that have aged the best. There was very little social media in 1997, but social media dynamics are all over Contact.
Another good point, I have to admit almost in spite of myself, is the whole “sense of wonder” thing, which still works on me to some extent. Even though I would also say that everything Contact can do on that score Interstellar can do better. Part of the problem is how painfully clear Zemeckis makes it that he is a student of Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t happen often, but often enough, that Zemeckis feels well on the wrong side of homage here. He even uses signature Spielberg setups, for no apparent reason except maybe he couldn’t think of a better way—cars arriving on an angle in sequence, for example, the last to arrive appearing in tight close-up.
Roger Ebert loved Contact and he still loved it when he looked at it again in 2011 for one of his Great Movies essay collections. He had no problem with the conundrum of the ending—many first contact movies end in elaborately ambiguous ways. Start with 2001. So, in Contact, it’s not entirely clear what happens at the end, where Ellie is reduced to an argument based on faith. Yet even here the picture tips its hand—maybe that’s Sagan’s influence reaching out to it from the grave. Tremendously significant evidence is overlooked by most in this movie, and underplayed by those who do catch it. You don’t even know how anyone could miss it. It’s evidence that solidifies the case for Ellie’s argument, lost in this God-obsessed movie in the court of public opinion. Thus science wins the battle but apparently God is still winning the war? Is that it? Or is it the other way? Anyway, that’s the way Contact finishes off. I guess I like first contact movies better when they don’t include God.
But it’s not really fair to say the picture is all sentimentality and psychobabble. Jodie Foster is as excellent as ever as Ellie Arroway, a woman who grew up in love with ham radio communication, science, and outer space. Jena Malone plays Ellie as a kid—the resemblance to Foster is uncanny enough to note. The script slyly makes much of the history of science and the tendency for men to steal credit from the women who have done much work for science that goes uncredited. The rascal in this case is played by Tom Skerritt in his TV-friendly way, comforting even as a bad guy. Another first contact movie I happen to like a lot, This Island Earth, is evoked nicely when the aliens in Contact transmit the earthlings the schematics for a machine that will enable us to travel the universe and meet them. All we have to do is build it. They have already established their intellect with a show of prime numbers. UNLESS IT’S A TRAP!! OR THE WORK OF SATAN!!!
Contact is also good on imagining the mulish panic that could set in as a result of contact with aliens. In fact, religion is a big element here, with a typically self-serious Matthew McConaughey playing Palmer Joss, a lapsed priest, lusty lover, and dedicated defender of God. We’re seeing a different kind of panic today, about pandemics and climate change, that is often similar to the religious hysteria here, with various self-contradicting claims about God and His Word, etc. These scenes in Contact feel obvious and predictable more than prescient, yet in many ways they are the parts of the movie that have aged the best. There was very little social media in 1997, but social media dynamics are all over Contact.
Another good point, I have to admit almost in spite of myself, is the whole “sense of wonder” thing, which still works on me to some extent. Even though I would also say that everything Contact can do on that score Interstellar can do better. Part of the problem is how painfully clear Zemeckis makes it that he is a student of Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t happen often, but often enough, that Zemeckis feels well on the wrong side of homage here. He even uses signature Spielberg setups, for no apparent reason except maybe he couldn’t think of a better way—cars arriving on an angle in sequence, for example, the last to arrive appearing in tight close-up.
Roger Ebert loved Contact and he still loved it when he looked at it again in 2011 for one of his Great Movies essay collections. He had no problem with the conundrum of the ending—many first contact movies end in elaborately ambiguous ways. Start with 2001. So, in Contact, it’s not entirely clear what happens at the end, where Ellie is reduced to an argument based on faith. Yet even here the picture tips its hand—maybe that’s Sagan’s influence reaching out to it from the grave. Tremendously significant evidence is overlooked by most in this movie, and underplayed by those who do catch it. You don’t even know how anyone could miss it. It’s evidence that solidifies the case for Ellie’s argument, lost in this God-obsessed movie in the court of public opinion. Thus science wins the battle but apparently God is still winning the war? Is that it? Or is it the other way? Anyway, that’s the way Contact finishes off. I guess I like first contact movies better when they don’t include God.
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