/ Film History : Contact / REVIEW

Contact had its premiere in 1997 and although it seems that the 1990s were only recently, it was on June 11, 2017 that it was the 20th anniversary of this film. Contact is inspired by the eponymous SF novel by American scientist Carl Sagan, first published in 1985. In the film, Jodie Foster plays a young scientist, Eleanor Arroway, obsessed with finding alien life, and her atheist and empirically grounded perspective on the world and the universe is opposed by the character of Palmer Joss, a former priest, embodied in the film by, then much less glorified, Matthew McConaughey.

Although relatively long ago, Contact is a remarkably contemporary film (or just an indication that mankind has not progressed much in the last 20 years) insofar as the main figure is educated, highly talented and independent woman who can't express her opinion. Stereotypic male-female roles are reversed in a way that Palmer is the one that is presented as emotional and who wants something more after "one night stand" while Eleanor is the one who approaches their relationship from a cold and rational perspective, which was certainly innovation in movies of that period, and it's not much different today.



Despite the fact that it's a SF subject and contact with extraterrestrial beings, the theme of the film is still strongly colored by (this) world's dilemmas and the conflict of politics, public opinion, religion and science. When asked who would be the best envoy and representative of the human race before an extraterrestrial species, the main problem is created by Eleanor's atheism.

The question arises whether a person who doesn't believe in "something more" and who considers every form of belief as a sort of delusion, which statistically belongs to a lower percentage of people on Earth, represents the entire human race in front of other intelligent beings. Apart from the fundamental religious issues, there is also an eternal conflict of scientific research, and the overlapping of the public and private sphere.

In addition, the character of Palmer is concerned with the dilemma that continues to be fueled by public discourse on technology - are we fundamentally happier now that we are technologically advanced than ever before? "We are buying from home, surfing the Internet and at the same time we feel empty, lonely, and more cut off from each other than at any time in human history." It seems that Palmer's quotation was almost intruding into a wormhole and was translated into the media of the 21st century who continually pull out the same complaint from the hat again and present it as something new and exclusively related to the present time.



Contact was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who is known for using virtual cinematography.
Prior to the CGI he experimented with a mixture of animation and real action in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and in Forrest Gump (1994) he "inserted" archival recordings of celebrities such as Nixon, whom Forrest meets and talks. He reiterated the same in Contact with this then-American President Clinton.
Although it's a small thing today, it's important to remember that it was a 1997 movie.
In order to make the feeling of the reality of the events taking place on the film more powerful, media reports in the film were shot with the real CNN tv presenters and journalists. In addition, the film has several CGI scenes that are still visually impressive and breathtaking.



In the face of high-quality SF movies such as Arrival (2016), Interstellar (2014) and The Martian (2015), it is praiseworthy how much the Contact is still extremely topical and top-notch compared to them. Although it's not without a flaw and has some logical errors in the story and at least two deus ex machina moments, there remains a reading that is not bad to repeat.

This was my translation from Ziher hr aricle ''Contact: Netko nas zove odozgo'' by M.Vuksic