Contact
Short description
Contact is a science fiction drama centred on Ellie Arroway, a radio astronomer who has devoted her career to listening for signs of life beyond Earth. Working with a team of scientists scanning radio waves from space, she detects an artificial signal originating from the Vega star system. The discovery sets off a global effort to decode the message and determine how humanity should respond, while Ellie finds herself pulled between her scientific convictions, questions of faith raised by those close to her, and the political pressures surrounding the find.
Robert Zemeckis directed the film, his eleventh in a directorial career that by then included Forrest Gump three years earlier and would continue with Cast Away in 2000. Jodie Foster leads the cast as Ellie, with Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss, Tom Skerritt as David Drumlin, James Woods as Michael Kitz, John Hurt as S. R. Hadden and William Fichtner as Kent. James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg wrote the screenplay, and Zemeckis produced alongside Steve Starkey for Warner Bros. Pictures and South Side Amusement Company.
The production carried a budget of ninety million dollars and took in around one hundred seventy-one million dollars worldwide, a modest return relative to its cost. Ratings diverge: on IMDb it holds 5.6 out of 10 from a small number of votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.4 out of 10 from more than five thousand votes, and a critics' rating of 7.6 out of 10 from sixty-eight reviews places professional assessment above the broader audience picture. The film runs two and a half hours.
What's left behind the scenes
- In the scene where Jodie Foster's character enters her home, the text on her laptop screen reads "press any key" in English. She then presses a key, and text appears in Russian with spelling errors: "Soedinyayetsa so satellitom" (Connecting to the satellite), and "Utverzhdayetsa Bezopasnost" (Security is confirmed).
- The film is based on Carl Sagan's novel "Contact" (1985).
- Ellie worked at Arecibo – the place where a real message was sent to extraterrestrial civilizations.
- At the very beginning of the film, when the Earth is shown from space, a cacophony of sounds is heard – a 'voicing' of signals from radio stations going into space, among other musical fragments, there is a snippet from the song “The Power of Love” – the soundtrack to another film by Robert Zemeckis – “Back to the Future” (1985).
- Roland Joffé and George Miller were considered for the director's chair at various times. In 1993, Robert Zemeckis was invited, but he declined the offer at that time. He was invited again in 1996 and agreed, setting several conditions: independent casting and non-interference from the studio in the final edit.
- At the end of the film, against the backdrop of the starry sky, the inscription FOR CARL appears, referring to Carl Sagan, whose novel the film is based on: he died in December 1996, while filming was underway.
- "Contact" (1997) ranked second on NASA's list of the most scientifically accurate science fiction films.
- Kip Thorne consulted Carl Sagan (the author of the novel) on scientific matters. Specifically, as Thorne states in his book "Black Holes and Time Warps," Sagan originally planned to send the protagonist on a journey through a black hole, but Thorne recommended using a wormhole.
- In the film, numbers were encoded by the number of pulses (two pulses, three pulses, five pulses, seven pulses), while in Carl Sagan’s novel, a binary system was used for this purpose.
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