Contact (1997)

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Movie
German title Contact
Original title Contact
Contactfilmlogo.png
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1997
length 144 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Robert Zemeckis
script James V. Hart
Michael Goldenberg
production Steve Starkey
Robert Zemeckis
music Alan Silvestri
camera Don Burgess
cut Arthur Schmidt
occupation

Contact is a 1997 science fiction drama directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey . The 1985 script and novel Contact by Carl Sagan were written at the same time and influenced each other. The film opened in German cinemas on October 9, 1997.

content

Summary of the plot

Arecibo Telescope, Puerto Rico

"If we are the only ones in the universe, it is quite a waste of space." - This sentence from her father coined the radio amateur Ellie Arroway in her childhood. After the untimely death of her mother and the loss of her father, for whose death Ellie feels partly responsible, she turns to science . She tries to find rational explanations for everything, including her search for extraterrestrial intelligence : During her work at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico , she learns professionally with the brilliant blind astrophysicist Kent Clark and the assistant Fisher, and intimately with the writer “Father” Palmer Get to know Joss better. Due to the lack of presentable achievements and the high cost, her former mentor Dr. David Drumlin cut funding for the SETI project.

Very Large Array, New Mexico

With the support of the industrialist SR Hadden, she can continue her search in New Mexico with the coupled radio telescopes of the Very Large Array and receives an encrypted radio signal from the star Vega . The signal consists of a sequence of prime numbers and, as a harmonic, contains not only television images of the opening speech of the 1936 Summer Olympics , but also the construction plan for a machine that is believed to be able to transport a person to the sender. A commission, which also includes Palmer Joss, is to identify a suitable candidate for the transport. Dr. Arroway is rejected as a representative of the earth's population because the commission considers her as an agnostic to be unsuitable for representing a majority of religious people. Instead, her former adversary, Dr. Drumlin start the journey. During a test run, the machine is destroyed by a suicide bombing by religious fanatic Joseph, with Dr. Drumlin is killed.

NASA illustration of the Milky Way Galaxy

In a conversation with her sponsor SR Hadden, who has been watching Ellie's life path for a long time and knows all the details from her life, she learns that a second machine was being built on the Japanese island of Hokkaidō at the same time. With the help of this machine she travels in a capsule to the Vega system and on to the site of an indescribable cosmic event, where she meets a being in the form of her deceased father. In the following conversation, she is told that there are many other civilizations in the universe, some of which use the same transportation system. In the further course Ellie learns that this kind of contact initiation has been practiced by the strangers for billions of years. However, they do not know who installed the artificial wormhole system. So ultimately only one certainty remains: "In our search for everything that makes the void bearable, we only found one thing ... each other."

When she returned to Earth after many hours, however, only a fraction of a second had passed, and it is generally doubted that this journey actually took place, because the experiences described by Ellie could also be explained by perceptual illusions or hallucinations . Ellie herself cites the opening of a wormhole ( Einstein-Rosen Bridge ) as a possible scientific explanation . It is also being considered whether the billionaire Hadden, who has since died, might have cleverly orchestrated the whole process. An internal conversation between two government officials reveals, however, that the video camera that Ellie was carrying "strangely" made 18 hours of recordings, with the memory chip only documenting noise but no usable information. So Ellie cannot confirm her journey with any evidence . The destroyed armchair suspension in the transport capsule and the 18-hour recording time of the camera speak as evidence of Ellie's version that the journey through space and time actually took place.

Initial sequence

The film begins with a three - minute computer - generated journey from Earth through our solar system , the Milky Way , the Magellanic Clouds , the Sombrero Galaxy M104 and the universe to / out of the eye of young Ellie Arroway. During this simulated tracking shot , excerpts from well-known songs or quotations can be heard, which are intended to illustrate the distance of the radio waves from the earth. However, there is no realistic relationship between the image and sound information presented, as the audio sequences do not match the respective distance of the image material shown.

The excerpts to be heard are:

Motives of the film

Science and religion

A central motif of the film is the dispute between science ( ratio ) and religion ( belief ). While Ellie Arroway's worldview as a scientist is based on verifiable facts and not on belief, she too has to learn in the end that, despite the 18-hour video recording, her experience only becomes a part of reality for other people if she has faith becomes.

Occam's razor

Another motif of the film is the scientific principle of Occam 's razor : Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate (multiplicity is not assumed without necessity) or Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (there are no more things to be assumed than necessary). This means that of several theories for the same situation, the simplest theory is the most plausible , i.e. the one that gets by with the fewest additional assumptions and assumptions. Ellie Arroway argues with it in philosophical discussions with Palmer Joss. On the basis of Occam's razor, the existence of a higher being can be explained as improbable, because people's desire for higher powers is a simpler explanation for their belief. Towards the end of the film, Ellie's lack of evidence of her encounter with extraterrestrial beings leads a committee of inquiry to judge her story as improbable or unreliable; Even in this situation, Ellie remains true to her scientific principles and leaves her endorsement of Occam's razor untouched, even though her scientific reputation is at stake.

background

In the film, numerous public figures have brief guest roles in which they play themselves. Including 13 television reporters from the news channel CNN ( Larry King , Bernard Shaw , Leon Harris, Claire Shipman, Tabitha Soren, Natalie Allen, Robert D. Novak, Jill Dougherty, John Holliman, Bobbie Battista, Bryant Gumbel, Linden Soles, Geraldine A. Ferraro) , Host Geraldo Rivera , Tonight Show host Jay Leno , writer Ann Druyan , and White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers .

Archival material was used to portray United States President Bill Clinton ; historical speeches were combined as if the president were talking about extraterrestrial contact and were at the location. This led to a letter of protest from the White House criticizing the length and nature of this collage as "inappropriate". White House spokesmen acknowledged that while Amendment 1 to the United States Constitution allows the president to be portrayed in a parody or satire , portraying the president as having something in a commercial film is a different matter said that he never said that. The filmmakers replied that they had disclosed the script to the “White House”. In addition, director Robert Zemeckis expressed the opinion that the presentation of the President of the United States would be subject to the Public Domain ( "public domain").

Shortly after the complaint from the White House, the leadership of the news broadcaster CNN also criticized the massive presence of CNN employees in the film. In retrospect , CEO Tom Johnson was critical of the fact that 13 employees were given permission to appear in the film: “I don't think it's a good idea to have reporters appear in feature films. The CNN presence in the film creates the impression that we are being manipulated by Time Warner , and it blurs the line. "

The film ends with the dedication “For Carl”. This refers to the author of the book, Carl Sagan , who - like his wife Ann Druyan  - was involved in the production of the film, but died on December 20, 1996 before the film was completed. When asked if he personally believed in the existence of highly developed life in space, he replied, “The key word in this question is 'believe'. In my opinion one believes only on the basis of compelling evidence. "

Towards the end of the film, one of his key sentences is uttered again by Jodie Foster alias Ellie Arroway: "If we are the only ones (in the universe), that would be quite a waste of space." (Originally: So if it's just us ... seems like an awful waste of space. ) This sentence sums up the knowledge that the scientist Dr. Arroway has gained from the experience.

Trivia

The name of the somewhat mysterious industrialist SR Hadden is an allusion to the historical Assyrian king Asarhaddon, who is also mentioned in the Bible . In the last quarter of the film you can see briefly that the game Microsoft Space Cadet (a pinball game that has been published since Windows 95 Plus) has started on a PC workstation.

Reviews

“A film based on a draft and with the collaboration of the astronomer Carl Sagan, which offers a mixture of a conventional Hollywood story and serious preoccupation with the question of the meaning, origin and goal of life, which has been popular again this decade. In doing so, he approaches the border area between science and religion more consistently than one would have expected from a commercial studio product, and it deserves special attention, especially in the context of the external and destruction-oriented science fiction films of recent years. "

- Lexicon of international film

"The film adaptation of Carl Sagan's bestseller is excellently played, optically brilliant and wittily thought out from start to finish."

- Filmstarts.de

"[...] a largely realistic and exciting science fiction scenario."

- Rhein-Zeitung

“Zemeckis filmed Carl Sagan's novel pathetically and completely robbed it of its cosmological depth. Be sure to read the book, but please never watch the film! "

- Ralf Frisch, Protestant theologian

Awards

The film won several film awards, including the Golden Satellite Award , the International Monitor Award, and the World Animation Celebration in the Best Use of Animation as a Special FX in a Theatrical category and the Hugo Award for the best adaptation of a science fiction novel. Contact was also nominated for an Academy Award ( Best Sound ) and a Golden Globe ( Jodie Foster for Best Actress ). The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.

Differences from the novel

Ellie's family background differs from that described in the book and has also been shortened significantly: Her mother did not die in childbed , but dies of old age after the main events in the book. Furthermore, the mother brings her daughter the terrible news of the loss of her father. Furthermore, the character of John Staughton, who marries Ellie's mother after her father's death, completely falls out of the film and with it the fact that he is her real father, as Ellie's mother reveals in a letter after her death.

In the book, Ellie does not meet Palmer Joss at the Arecibo telescope, and the deepening of the relationship shown in the film is only hinted at towards the end of the novel.

Many global political issues are touched on in the film, if at all, then only briefly touched upon: The President of the United States in the novel is a Ms. Lasker, and the message from space turns out to be so extensive and complex that global cooperation is first of all ensure that every piece of the message is received. Likewise, the decryption of the message leads to a new rapprochement of states and the discovery of new branches of industry that are needed to build the machine. Their costs are quantified in the book as per year significantly higher than the total amount in the film, which is why the costs were passed on to the entire world.

In the novel, five people are sent to the aliens. The "machine" is less spectacular than in the film and remains immobile on the ground for outsiders, while the occupants experience how they fall into a wormhole . Furthermore, the journey in the novel takes longer because several systems are flown through as stations, and the length of stay at the individual stations is long enough to carry out at least rudimentary observations.

In the novel by Carl Sagan, Ellie finds a message at the end that is hidden in the binary representation of the irrational number Pi : a pattern of zeros and ones that represents a circle. She received the decisive hint for this from the aliens, who, by their own admission, do not themselves know who is responsible. Since the message must come from someone who was either involved in the creation of the universe, or who influenced its laws afterwards, a higher power is revealed here. So it is a kind of proof of God , at the same time proof that the conversation with the aliens took place.

In the end of the film, SR Hadden is suspected of creating a gigantic hoax, while in the book the scientists involved in the trip are accused of doing so. Also, Hadden does not die of cancer in the novel, but is shot alive with a capsule into the outer solar system in his quest for immortality, where he hopes to survive frozen time until he can be found and reanimated.

In the film (and in reality) the Very Large Array consists of 27 radio telescopes ; In the novel by Carl Sagan, however, the number of individual telescopes is given as 131 and the system is referred to as the "Argus Array".

literature

Michael Schramm: The entertaining God. Theology of Popular Films . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-76444-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Cameo crisis on 'Contact' . In: Variety , July 15, 1997
  2. ↑ Bonus material on the DVD
  3. ↑ Contact. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ filmstarts.de
  5. ↑ Article. ( Memento from November 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Rhein-Zeitung
  6. ↑ Ralf Frisch: What was man? A theological search for traces in the cosmos. Stuttgart 2018. p. 58f.
  7. ↑ IMDb.com: List of film awards for Contact
  8. ↑ World Animation Celebration: 1998 . IMDb. Archived from the original on January 20, 2005. Retrieved February 13, 2019.