Writers: James V. Hart, Michael Goldenberg, Based on Contact by Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan
DOP: Don Burgess
Cast: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, John Hurt
Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of extraterrestrial intelligence which had send plans for building a mysterious machine.
The film covers a lot of ground in two and half hours of its running time taking the intelligence of its audience for granted. I especially liked the fact that they dropped eminent domain there without explaining it. Matthew McConaughey's character is sort of a new age spiritual Czar for the White House and the conflict between science and faith is portrayed with his relationship with Jodie Foster's scientist character. From an aging standard point of view, even though it is not set on a future timeline, what it got very correct is the presence of private players in space science with a very Elon Musk like billionaire funding Ellie's SETI project when the Govt pulled the plug.
The film had got renewed interest on the wake of release of Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' and not just because of the Mathew McConaughey connection. The supposed scientific accuracy of Interstellar had various scientists citing Contact as the one which captured the working of a scientist in the most accurate manner even though the time dilation at the end doesn't make much sense from a scientific point of view. But what works for Contact is that it gets emotional part of the story right and is a good mix unlike Interstellar, whose emotional scenes managed to get laughs out of the audience. In that sense, it is a rich man's Interstellar. I ended in the same feel good state that I had with Ridley Scott's Martian. I do think it is quite an underrated film and it is the less well known Zemeckis films, Flight being the other one, that I liked much more than his famous ones like Forrest Gump and Back to the Future.
Rating: 4.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment