Contact
Contact is a 1997 movie by director Robert Zemeckis ( Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) based on the book of the same name by noted astronomer Carl Sagan. Starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey, the film follows Ellie Arroway (Foster) a scientist working with the SETI programme researching the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Arroway and her team discover a signal that could only have come from an advanced alien civilization and what follows is an exploration of just how humanity would react to the idea of being able to make contact with other intelligent life (thus the name of the movie). Like the best science fiction, Contact concerns itself with real world ideas and in this case it is the conflict between science and faith, a feature of much of Sagan’s more interesting writing. While Sagan was himself a noted skeptic, the film doesn’t go into religious bashing and instead opts for a more open ended exploration of notions of faith, in Arroway’s loss of religious faith and searching the stars after the death of her father or the lack of faith in the opposition she faces from both the military and Christian fundamentalists.
