Contact
As a teenager, I used to enter competitions to see movies for free or
before they were released to the general public. A contest came about to go
into the draw for a sneak peak of the new film “Contact” starring Jodie Foster.
The entry required me to answer a question. I can’t quite remember what that
questions was (had something to do with outer space) but the answer couldn’t be
longer than 25 words. I wrote a few versions, coming to a final answer and sent
it off (in the mail, not online) and hoped for the best.
A couple of weeks later, I got a reply, awarding me with two free tickets
to see Contact at the Hoyts Cinema on Bourke Street, Melbourne (which are no
longer there). My dad was keen to see the film as well, as he had read the book
by Carl Sagan. I knew nothing of the book but was obsessed with any film
dealing with aliens and the universe. Around this time, my dad was working at
the Crown Casino in Melbourne. He would finish work around 6pm. I made the
journey into the city by train on my own (which was a first for me) and met my
dad outside one of the Casino entrances. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, and
then walked over to Bourke Street in the city.
We watched the film, along with a packed theatre of other competition
winners and possibly a few film critics. A staff member from the theatre came
out before the screening, thanking us for entering the competition and let the
whole audience know we were amongst the first people in the country to be
seeing the much anticipated film. Knowing that, I watched the film from a
different point of view. I aimed to take in every single details about it; the
story, the cast, etc so I could tell others all about it before it was
released.
As the curtain opened and the lights went down, the movie began. I loved it
from the very start. The film was carried all the way through by the terrific
performance of Jodie Foster. The slow but engrossing build up to when a signal
from outer space is recieved by earth,; Fosters character is the first to hear
it (after a lifetime of listening to silence through her headphones)and the
film kicks into high gear from there. The signal is recieved in code, and is
gradually deciphered by the world’s top scientists. Through their discovery,
they unravel blue prints of some sort which give instructions on how to build a
machine.
Contact was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who had previously helmed “Forrest
Gump”. He incorporated many of the same filmmaking talents and techniques he
did on Gump to create this film. For example, in Forrest Gump he cleverly
incorporated Tom Hanks into real footage of historic events and made it look
like he was meeting actual US Presidents, including Nixon and Kennedy. In
contact, Bill Clinton makes a few appearances in the film but is never billed
as playing a part. Instead, they cleverly add him in with the wonder of CGI at several important points in the story.
What made this film for me was the performance of Jodie Foster. She plays
Ellie Arroway; an intelligent and passionate astronomer who has dedicated her
life to the stars, and even though she goes years without a hint of
communication or any proof that life exists on other planets, she
perseveres.
Ellie recieves knock back after knock back in her pursuit for answers, but
never veers off track, despite the pressure she gets from her superiors. Her
mission pays off when she and her team recieve the first signal sent to earth
from space. She tries to uphold her dignity and beliefs when the government get
involved, wanting to militarise the operation and basically take the discovery
away from her. Even amidst all that, Ellie just keeps on fighting (aided by a
reclusive astronomer played by John Hurt) and in time, gets the chance to
fulfil her dream. When she makes her “journey” on the machine the humans built
as instructed by the aliens, she’s taken on a ride like no other, discovering
things and places beyond our world she cannot explain. On this journey, she
lands on some distant worlds where she is reunited with someone she’d lost from
her past. It’s a touching moment that really sums up what life and human
existence are all about.
Contact is a beautifully made film, with a strong message at its heart –
never give up on your dreams, never stop believing and never stop
fighting.
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