Profoundly affecting

Rating: 9/10 (12 April 2010)

Zemeckis' finest film has everything a mainstream move should have: brains, beauty, and a little bit of stardust.
The transcendentally brilliant Jodie Foster puts in a great performance as Ellie Arroway, a wide-eyed little girl in a woman's body. In Foster's Ellie, we see all the failed college relationships described in Carl Sagan's novel.
After the death of her father (David Morse), Ellie becomes a star-gazer, convinced there can be no God. It's a simple, convincing, and rather moving set up, always propelling the story, even when the big themes rear their head. In, say, Spielberg's hands, this emotional core might have become cloying. But director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriters James V Hart and Michael Goldenberg tell the story almost entirely from the point of view of a heroine who is essentially an innocent in a world of cynical agendas. So when Ellie takes her voyage, those downplayed final scenes feel true, not mawkish.
There are subtleties here which enrich the experience. Ellie is eventually blessed with her opportunity by the benign, paternal Hadden (John Hurt), who - unlike her own father - is able to cheat death. Also, why does Ellie not share Palmer's (Matthew McConaughey) fear of death? She purports to hold no fear of God; and yet, deep down, doesn't she truly wish to join her father, wherever he might be... in Heaven, perhaps? Like all good science fiction, Contact reinforces our faith.
Faith, that is, in each other.