*Contact* (or: *Close Encounters of the Hegelian Kind*)
an esthetic and philosophic review
by Brad Aisa
There is a scene about half way through the movie *Contact* in which the identity of many of the atheists in the audience becomes manifest: they erupt into cheers and applause (or at least did on the night I saw the movie, being myself amongst the loudest of the cheering applauders). The eruption comes in response to a swaggering and bold line uttered by Ellie Arroway, the astronomer played by Jodie Foster in the movie.
Ellie is a scientist, and is an atheist for the right reason: the lack of evidence for any alleged supreme being. But while Ellie does not believe in God, she is nevertheless still a Believer after a fashion, only her belief is that other sentient beings exist, and that evidence of their existence might be found by monitoring the radio signals impinging on Earth from the furthest reaches of the Universe. So monitor she does, at first in Puerto Rico (until her director cuts off her funding), then later, at an American installation (funded by a wealthy reclusive zillionaire.)
For the first two thirds of the movie, the theme seems straightforward enough: reason vs. faith. Ellie is the stalwart defender of reason; her nemesis, apart from modern Western civilization in general, is an anti-technology cleric/writer played by Matthew McConaughey. (He wanted to be a priest, but failed Celibacy 101, as he soon proceeds to demonstrate with Arroway...). The two soon part, to be later reunited under completely new circumstances: Ellie has discovered a transmission of intelligent extraterrestrial origin, and McConaughey is now an advisor to the President.
Who is the President? Here we get to the first of the film's several serious esthetic flaws. Robert Zemeckis, the film's director, also directed Forrest Gump, which employed digital image editing to implant Gump into historical scenes involving real presidents and public figures. Zemeckis uses this device in *Contact* to cast.... Bill Clinton as the President. To this jarring device (you could literally feel the audience squirm) is added the now commonplace practice of featuring bevies of real life figures, such as Bernard Shaw and Larry King of CNN. This invalid technique is intended to achieve a sense of realism, but achieves the opposite. What actually happens, is that the introduction of real life journalistic and "documentary" elements -- as opposed to an artistic fictional rendition of the elements -- serves, by destroying the "fourth wall", to spotlight the fictional nature of the film, and shatter the illusion of the narrative.
The choice of "casting" Clinton also detracted from several scenes in the movie, in which, dramatically, the president would be expected to be shown, but which we assume was not possible, due to the limited screen time and contexts that could be devoted to this device. The technology used here is so good, I thought during the film, that Bill Clinton had actually participated in the production, playing himself in his scenes. It was only later that I came to realize, from reading a commentary on the film in Entertainment Weekly (July 18, 1997), that the scenes with the President were merely assembled from public footage, not via his cooperation. (This itself is highly improper, since it expropriates the President's visage.)
The message received by interstellar fax contains the blueprint for building a giant machine, that seems designed to transport its single occupant ... to??? ... how??? The interstellar fax apparently didn't come with the sender's address. Nevertheless, over the objections of the cliche-paranoid National Security Advisor (played by James Woods), an international consortium is convened to build the machine, and a committee established to select the occupant.
Several plot twist and turns ensue, but through it all, up to the launch, we remain convinced that the theme ("message" might be more apt) is reason vs. faith, or better: reason vs. whacked out American-style New Age mysticism and fanaticism, as depicted both chillingly and hilariously, in a garish New Age campout around the radio telescope site, comprising every conceivable fringe or whacked out subgroup in America; a similar spectacle is enacted in Washington. Arroway drives through this, and we acutely feel her pain at witnessing the spectacle -- her most triumphant achievement has been reduced to the level of Elvis worshippers (apparently anticipating his resurrection), fundamentalist doomsday sects, and crazy alien worshippers.
(It shouldn't be giving away too much to let the reader guess who finally gets to make the voyage...) The voyage at last takes place, and the occupant returns. And it is not only the occupant of the craft who gets to take a voyage, by the way: the audience itself gets transported back almost 30 years, as well, made to endure the nearly identical sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey -- but I digress.
Sigh.
It is this sequence, and the scenes which ensue as a consequence, that leads one to realize that the movie *Contact* is a supreme fraud -- a kind of cheap, third rate philosophic Trojan Horse, in which a philosophically illiterate and particularly offensive "message" is delivered that purports to unify and transcend the prior thematic conflict of reason vs. faith.
"Reason and faith are just two aspects of the same thing." "Those who believe in God have as much justification as those who believe in science." "Belief in science is just a matter of faith." Ad nauseum.
It all happens so suddenly, the rational viewer will be a bit taken aback, but if he or she rewinds somewhat, the setup and intention becomes clear. What one sees, is a plot constructed with such artifice, such implausible (nay, impossible) premises, and designed with such specificity to lead to such an absurd conclusion, that it is *not* reason and logic and facts and evidence and every other hallmark of the scientific method and rational mode of existence, which the filmmakers are trying to express.
What we have here, is nothing short of Hegel as E.T.: friendly cosmic aliens who would eschew the label "God", but who nevertheless consider it important to send their only begotten visitor to return to earth and resolve and unite the antagonists of the ages.
Thesis
Faith is the proper means of accepting knowledge; a belief in God and an immortal soul is the proper world view for man.
Antithesis
Reason is the proper means of deriving knowledge; a scientific world view is the one proper to man.
Synthesis
Reason is faith; God and Science are one; a scientist and a religious prophet are equivalent. Act accordingly.
I have to confess, that it has been a long time since I was as offended at the movies, as in the scene in which, by very clear parallel to an earlier scene, we are expected to accept that the crazed religious mob, who are now worshipping Ellie as a kind of New Age Messiah, are to be *accepted* for doing so on nothing more than faith. This is obscene. Also offensive, is the staged ambiguity of the disposition of a crucial fact near the end of the story, and an epilogue, in which the newly reconstructed Ellie feeds the final Synthetic message to a cadre of happy little school kiddies.
I will give the movie credit for its virtues. First, Jodie Foster, always eminently watchable, is engaging and touching as the driven, but somewhat naive scientist Ellie. Ellie is at home with the machinery of science, and fellow scientists, but seems to lose her confidence and some of her certitude when she has to deal with less rational individuals.
The production design, directing, and cinematography are all excellent, making the movie, on its own terms, enjoyable to watch. And apart from some logical flaws that only a reviewer might fault, it does manage to present science and its accoutrements as exciting, and comprehensible. I especially liked the design and technology of the Machine. The loopy 2001-style journey, however, and ridiculous ensuing encounter left me cold. If the writers/producers had not been so intent on delivering their Hegelian Sermon From the Camera Mount, they might have presented some original, memorable, and even controversial encounter/discovery. (What would have been wrong with, "Religion? Nah -- we abandoned that three hundred and forty-thousand years ago -- tell everyone there is no God, and to get a life.") As presented, it is a hokey amalgam of Star Trek's Holodeck, and a sentimental attempt at closure of the movie's earlier childhood scenes with Ellie and her father.
I must give credit where due, though. Despite all my complaints and rantings, I still recommend that you see *Contact*, because it deals with *ideas*, and this is such a rare feat in a Hollywood movie, that one relishes the fact, even if one is intellectually ballyhooing some of the actual content. And *Contact* does not seem to be malicious or evil -- like many people, institutions and cultures today, it is just highly confused, and trying to find its way in a big, boisterous, sometimes puzzling world.
Copyright (c) 1997 by Brad Aisa. All rights reserved, apart from customary transmission and downloading from an authorized submission to Usenet.
-- Brad Aisa web archive: http://www.interlog.com/~baisa/ email (anti-spam encoded): baisa"AT SYMBOL"interlog.com
"The highest responsibility of philosophers is to serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge." -- Ayn Rand
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