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Contact_(film)
Contact_(film)

Contact (film)
Contact is a 1997 science fiction film adapted from the novel by Carl Sagan. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor Ann Arroway, Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss, James Woods as National Security Advisor Michael Kitz, and Tom Skerritt as Dr. David Drumlin.

The story follows the relentless efforts of the film's protagonist, Dr. Eleanor Arroway, or "Ellie," to advance research with the SETI project and search for evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence by listening for contact via radio astronomy, something which she feels would be the greatest possible human achievement "for the history of history". The film explores what might happen if such contact indeed were made, and the enormous difficulties the human race might encounter in coming to understand that contact, with significant internal conflict occurring in differences over culture, religion, politics, and human perception as the story plays out. Sagan also explores what kind of message a much older alien civilization might hold for humanity in its fledging steps to join an interstellar community of sentient beings.

Plot

Contact is presented as the story of the protagonist, Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster). As a gifted young child (played by Jena Malone), she is encouraged by her father Theodore (David Morse) to study amateur radio and the possibilities of extra-terrestrial communications. After her father passes away, Arroway continues her studies, completing her graduate degree under Dr. David Drumlin (Tom Skeritt), and becoming involved in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. There, she meets Kent (William Fichtner), a blind researcher that assists her by listening to the radio signals for patterns in the noise, and Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a Christian theology student writing a book on the effects of science on the Third World and who becomes romantically involved with Ellie. After some time, Drumlin decides to pull the funding from SETI, and Arroway is forced to find other sources of funding to continue on the program. After eighteen months of searching, Arroway is able to gain funding from the reclusive billionaire industrialist, S.R. Hadden (John Hurt), allowing her to continue her program at the Very Large Array in New Mexico.

Four years later, with Drumlin putting pressure to close the program and funding sources low, Arroway manages to find a strong signal from the Vega star, and with her team, are able to tell it is not natural, repeating a sequence of prime numbers. Arroway tells other observatories around the globe about the source to avoid losing the signal and maintain continuous tracking. This announcement causes both Drumlin and the National Security Agency (NSA), led by Michael Kitz (James Woods), to attempt to take control of the facility. As Arroway, Drumlin, and Kitz argue, Kent and the other team members discover that a video source is buried in the signal; this eventually resolves into footage of Adolf Hilters welcoming address to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Though Arroway and her team postulate that this would have been the first television signal broadcast outside of Earth's atmosphere, and has been trasmitted then relayed back from Vega, 27 light years away, the project is brought under tight security. As President Bill Clinton and Drumlin give a television address to downplay the impact of the Hitler image, Arroway learns that a third set of data was found in the signal; over 60,000 "pages" of what appear to be technical drawings. Specialists are brought in to attempt to decode the drawings but have no luck. As Arroway returns home one night, she is contacted by Hadden, offering to meet her at a remote airport. Aboard his private plane, Hadden introduces himself to Arroway, and reveals that he has found the means to decode the message, as the pages are meant to be interpreted in three dimensions. Arroway gives this information to the decoding team, and the pages are slowly deciphered, eventually revealing the workings of some machine which allows for one human occupant inside a pod to be dropped into three rapidly spinning rings, but its exact purpose unknown.

The nations of the world come together to fund the construction of The Machine at Cape Canaveral, and an international panel is put together to select one of nine candidates (including both Arroway and Drumlin) for the first run. While Arroway is one of the top selections, her lack of religious faith is called out by Joss, one of the panel members, and Drumlin is ultimately selected. During the first test run of the system, Joseph (Jake Busey), a religious fanatic that has outspoken on the evils of technology, sneaks onto the Machine and detonates explosives he carries, killing himself and many members of the Machine crew, including Drumlin, and completely wiping out the machine. With the rest of the world unable to justify the cost of rebuilding the Machine, Arroway dejectedly returns home to find another message from Hadden, who has now taken residence on the Mir space station for medical reasons. Hadden shows Arroway that a second Machine was secretly constructed at Hokkaidō, Japan at a much more secure facility, and that Arroway is the top candidate to travel in it.

At Hokkaidō, Arroway is prepared for her journey, and outfitted with several recording devices. The Machine is successfully brought to full power and the pod is dropped into the center. Arroway experiences travels through a series of wormholes, separated by a brief period of time where she can observe the outside environment, including a radio array-like structure at Vega, and signs of a highly-advanced civilization on some unknown planet. Arroway eventually finds herself in a surreal landscape similar to one of her childhood pictures of Pensacola, Florida, and approached by a blurry figure that resolves into that of her father. Though initially shocked by his appearance, Arroway regains her thoughts and recognizes him as an alien taking her father's form, and attempts to ask several questions about the aliens. The alien doesn't answer these but simply points out that this journey was humanity's first small step to joining other intergalactic species, and more steps will come later. As Arroway considers these answers, she falls unconscious and finds herself at the bottom of the pod, with the control team trying to figure out if she is okay. As she is recovered, she learns that from all external vantage points, she or the pod never traveled anywhere and simply dropped through the Machine, despite Arroway insisting she was gone for 18 hours, and that her recording devices only show static.

Kitz resigns as the head of the NSA to lead a Congressional committee to determine if the Machine was all a fraud by Hadden, who had the resources to set up an elaborate hoax but has since passed away. Arroway is accused of collaborating with Hadden to waste trillions of dollars, but she asks them to accept her testimony on faith. As she leaves the committee, she is joined by Joss, and is cheered on by a crowd who believe in her story. As Kitz discusses the case with the White House chief of staff Rachel Constantine (Angela Bassett), Constantine notes that Arroway's recording devices contained 18 hours of static. Kitz concedes that Arroway's story may be true, and together, they give Arroway continued grant money for the SETI program. As the film closes, Arroway is shown at the Very Large Array describing the universe to a group of schoolchildren, telling them to believe what they want to believe, but that if the universe was just composed of us, it would be "an awful waste of space".

Cast

Production

Development

Sagan had intended Eleanor Arroway's story to be a movie even before he published the novel of Contact in 1985; the book had its origins in a 60-page film treatment Sagan wrote with his wife, Ann Druyan, from 1980-81. Though the author had been interested in the movies since the 1960s, when he advised Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke during the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and he had talked with Francis Ford Coppola about "the possibility of making a film about alien contact," the movie version of Contact would languish in various stages of pre-production for more than a decade before finally getting made.

Sagan, Druyan, and film producer Lynda Obst spent hundreds of hours discussing how Contact could be adapted for the screen, in conversations that were tape-recorded and to which Sagan biographer Keay Davidson later received access. Davidson wrote, "These transcripts make enthralling reading [and] show how seriously these bright, enthusiastic, middle-aged children of postwar America and the 1960s wanted to make a movie that would intellectually entice viewers." Along with conducting scientist think tanks and talking to female scientists about sexism in the field, the discussions included how scientifically complex the final film could be. Scientific accuracy was crucial in Sagan's mind; Druyan later said that, whenever they were watching a movie together and the filmmakers made a scientific error, Sagan would sarcastically ask, "Couldn't they afford to hire a graduate student?"

After years in limbo (Obst lost control of the project in the early 1980s, and she didn't begin working on it again until she was hired at Warner Bros., who owned the rights), the project was greenlit in 1993, with George Miller attached to direct. Jodie Foster signed on to play Ellie after reading the screenplay's second draft, and Ralph Fiennes was approached for the role of Palmer Joss.

Warner Bros. had hoped to release the film by Christmas 1996, but after Miller asked several times to push back production, the studio fired him. Druyan later told Entertainment Weekly that "Warner Bros. finally came to the conclusion that George would make a great movie, but [that] it wouldn't be ready until after the millennium." Robert Zemeckis (who had been offered the project before Miller) took the project over, making a series of quick decisions: he changed the ending, kept Foster, and cast Matthew McConaughey as Joss. Carl Sagan died during the film's production, just seven months before its release.

Adaptation

Although the film remained relatively true to the plot of the original novel, it differed from the original book in several notable respects. In the novel, for example, five scientists undertake the journey in the "machine," whereas in the film Ellie takes the journey alone. In the novel there is a female President in office, but the film uses footage of then-President Bill Clinton. Much of the characterization and dialogue of the President in the novel (including, with a few small changes, the memorable line "Twenty million people died defeating that son of a bitch, and he's our first ambassador to outer space?") was transferred to the Presidential advisor played by Angela Bassett. Due to the movie being made after the fall of the Soviet Union, the novel's subplot of a Cold War-era world united by the message (and the character of a Russian scientist with whom Ellie has a turbulent friendship) was dropped.

Also, in the novel, the destruction of the first Machine is due to sabotage, while in the film this is dramatized to be a suicide bombing by a religious cult leader identified as "Joseph." This character may be based on a fundamentalist religious leader from the novel, Billy Jo Rankin, who vigorously opposed the construction of the Machine on theological grounds.

In the novel, Ellie has a sporadic romance with Presidential science advisor Ken van der Heer. The filmmakers left der Heer out entirely and "seriously discussed characters as varied as David Drumlin and the Russian scientist who collected dirty playing cards" as Ellie's love interest before settling on Palmer Joss, played in the film by Matthew McConaughey. The end of the novel does hint at the possibility of a relationship between Ellie and Palmer for the future. Ellie's character remains the lead, in a role reversal that inspired Foster to quip, of McConaughey, "He's got the girl's part." In the novel, Joss plays a much smaller role, though he does send Ellie a talisman shortly before she goes on board the machine (a pendulum in the novel and a compass in the movie). McConaughey, who is religious, refused to deliver his character's line "My God was too small," telling Druyan that it was sacrilegious.

Obst has said that the studio sent her notes warning her against "nerdifying" Ellie and, eventually, the novel's coda (in which Ellie discovers a hidden message deep within the digits of pi) was dropped, partly because executives thought that "pi would be too difficult a concept to explain to a mass audience." Ideas that were discussed (and rejected) as possible replacement endings included a spectacular finale in which a light show in the sky is created by the extraterrestrials to prove their existence, and an ending in which Ellie (who, as the machine is taking off in the novel, thinks to herself she wishes she had had a baby) gives birth to a child.

The Machine

The Machine itself underwent a radical redesign from its novel counterpart:

  • In the novel, it is described as a dodecahedron-shaped vessel wrapped inside of three separate-free-floating spherical shells called benzels (the largest outer shell being approximately 30' in diameter), with a single hatch along the top of each segment. The Machine was also both built inside of- and activated from- a large hangar bay; which took the better part of ten years from when the US President authorized its construction to when it is activated. Through complex descriptions of what each part of the machine is and how it operates (or is thought to operate), the inner vessel remains stationary while the three outer shells counter-rotate perpendicular to each other along each axis (X, Y, and Z). Three Machines are built- one by the United States (which is sabotaged), one by Russia (which is plagued by malfunctions and never used), and a third one in Hokkaidō, Japan which was finally used. There is enough room inside for five occupants in cushioned seats which face each other. When the Machine arrives at its destination, the hatch opens automatically, and all five passengers exit the Machine onto a sandy beach. Later, they re-enter the Machine, and it automatically returns to Earth.

  • By contrast, the Machine design in the film is composed of two parts — a very large, crane-like structure standing well over 300ft-tall, and the smaller rigged traveling capsule which will make the trip to its final destination. Two identical copies are assembled, one at the Kennedy Space Center and another in Hokkaidō, Japan. Each machine consists of three massive rotating rings, supported at their points of rotation by large pillars. Directly aside the ringed complex is a tall crane with a long boom, which suspends the small travel capsule directly above the rings. The cage-like framework structure around the spherical capsule is also shaped like a dodecahedron. A retractable bridge extends to the side of the capsule leading to a wide circular hatch. When the capsule's hatch door is closed, the edge seams disappear, sealing in the occupant inside. When powered up, the Machine's rings spin up to high speed, generating a bright wormhole effect at the center of their orbits. The travel capsule is then dropped into the center of the rings, entering the wormhole. As the capsule returns to Earth, it continues the fall through the rings, landing in a catch net. While the occupant of the capsule observes an hours-long journey through a series of wormholes to a distant location, it appears to the outside observer as though the travel capsule simply dropped straight through the rings to land in the net, with no extra time elapsing.

    • Ellie is never shown exiting or re-entering the Machine capsule in the film; she merely appears floating over the beach until she touches the sand.

Since construction of the novel's Machine takes so long, and requires new technologies and materials to be developed, world industries are revolutionized during this time, including the formation of several Earth-orbit space stations which contain thousands of individuals each. In contrast, the construction timeframe is much narrower in the film and there is no mention of the benefits of using alien technology in other applications.

Things that are consistent between the novel and film Machine designs-

  • The walls of the Machine are made of solid, opaque materials. However, when activated, the walls fade and the environment outside can be easily viewed.
  • The capsules are both based on dodecahedrons.
  • Both Machines incorporate three concentric, round objects that counter-spin perpendicular to each other; one stacked inside the other.
  • In the climax of both the film and novel, the traveler(s) return to Earth, awed by their journeys and are anxious to share what they have seen. However, no one outside of the Machine's effect sees anything significant happen. In the novel, the Machine's sphere shells spin up to speed, and then automatically slow down after a few moments; in the film, the travel capsule simply falls through the bright effect, and lands in the netting as if nothing had happened.
  • Though the traveler(s) bring electronic recording devices with [them], all are immediately erased by the effects of wormhole travel, making them useless as evidence of any voyage or their time on the beach. (However, while the recording device in the film shows nothing but static, the length of the blank recording is noted to be consistent with the length of the trip perceived by Ellie.)
  • No attempt is made to use the Machine again after its 'failure to perform as anticipated.' In the novel it states that the machine can only be used once.

Effects

The special effects of Contact were produced by both Sony Pictures Imageworks as well as Peter Jackson's Weta Digital. Typical of Zemeckis' work, the effects work was intensive, in what was a first for Foster. She later said, when asked about working in front of a bluescreen, "It was a blue room. Blue walls, blue roof. It was just blue, blue, blue. And I was rotated on a lazy Susan with the camera moving on a computerized arm. It was really tough." The elaborate effects were well-received upon Contact's release, garnering nominations for several awards, including a Saturn Award and Annie Award, and winning the 1998 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. The film also received a nomination in the Academy Awards for Best Sound. Among the film's more notable effects scenes:

  • The movie opens with a scale view, lasting approximately three minutes, of the entire Universe. Inspired by the documentary film Powers of Ten it begins by tracking away from the Earth and through the solar system, through the Oort Cloud, then through the nebulae and stars in the galaxy, away from the Milky Way, through the Large Magellanic Cloud, through Andromeda, and through billions of other galaxies, finally ending up by coming out of the eye of young Ellie. The effect is accompanied by slight anachronisms in the audio, which are meant to emphasize the observer's distance from Earth by juxtaposing the tracking shot with radio transmissions that travel at the speed of light and were produced years or decades before the present. At the time, it was the longest continuous computer-generated effect for a live-action film, a distinction now held by the opening sequence from The Day After Tomorrow.

  • News footage of then-President Bill Clinton was used and digitally altered to make it appear as if he is speaking about alien contact. This was not the original plan for the film; Zemeckis had actually asked Sidney Poitier to play the President. Soon after Poitier turned the role down, Zemeckis saw a NASA announcement in August 1996 featuring then-President Bill Clinton. "Clinton gave his Mars rock speech," the director later explained, "and I swear to God it was like it was scripted for this movie. When he said the line 'We will continue to listen closely to what it has to say,' I almost died. I stood there with my mouth hanging open." Zemeckis incorporated the Clinton speech into the film, and the altered footage caused a controversy both from the White House and from news organizations, over the ethics of fictionalizing such footage.

  • Jena Malone, who played Young Ellie, has dark brown eyes, while Jodie Foster has blue eyes. Rather than have Malone wear blue contact lenses, computerized colorization was used to make her brown eyes blue.

  • In the scene where young Ellie fetches her dad's medicine, she runs around a corner, up a flight of stairs, around another 90° corner, and down a hallway towards a bathroom medicine cabinet with a mirror on its door. In an unusually smooth transition, the film switches from point-of-view of the camera to a view of the reflection on the bathroom mirror in mid-hallway.

  • In the scene before Ellie descends to the beach, six different emotional performances (happy, sad, afraid, etc.) of Foster and one of Malone are composited over each other.

  • In the scene on the beach with Ellie and her "father," the water appears to only recede from the sand; there are no waves approaching the beach.

References

External links

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Last updated on Tuesday September 30, 2008 at 15:25:14 PDT (GMT -0700)
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