Contact
Schedule
Sun Apr 28 2024 at 02:00 pm
Location
Muenzinger Auditorium, Boulder, CO, United States, Colorado 80309 | Boulder, CO
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Part of our Robert Zemeckis Retrospective! Presented on 35mm film, with a special introduction by Associate Professor, Erin Espelie!"Contact" is a film that takes place at the intersection of science, politics and faith. Those are three subjects that don't always fit easily together. In the film, an alien intelligence transmits an image of three pages of encrypted symbols. It is clear where the corners of each page are. It is also clear that the three corners are intended to come together in some way to make a single image. Scientists are baffled in their attempts to bring the pages together. The solution, when we see it, provides an Eureka Moment. It is so simple, and yet so difficult to conceive of. It may be intended as a sort of intelligence test.
Watching the film again after 14 years, I was startled by how bold it is. Its heroine is a radio astronomer named Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster), who is an atheist. In the film she forms a cautious relationship with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a believer in God who writes about science. Key roles are played by science advisors to the President, who see aliens, God and messages from space all in cynical political terms. They justify their politics with the catch-all motive of "national defense."
The movie is based on a novel by Carl Sagan, who told us with such joy that there are "billions and billions of stars up there." As a child fascinated by the stars, Ellie asks her father (David Morse) if there are humans on other planets, and he tells her: "If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space." The quote is often attributed to Sagan. Despite her disbelief in an afterlife, Ellie has always yearned to meet her mother, who died in childbirth, and perhaps that was what drew her eyes to the sky as a small girl. Later, as an honored academic, she turns down a teaching post at Harvard to work on a SETI project in Puerto Rico.
The strength of "Contact" is in the way it engages in issues that are relevant today, and still only rarely discussed in the movies. Consider the opposition to stem cell research, which in a sense is "pure research." Consider the politicians who disparage separation of church and state. When Ellie was asked by Congress if she believed in God, the correct reply would have been, "that is none of your business." That would have been the correct reply of any American, no matter whether they believed in God or not.
— Roger Ebert
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Where is it happening?
Muenzinger Auditorium, Boulder, CO, United States, Colorado 80309Event Location & Nearby Stays:
