Flawed but truthful and thought provoking

Rating: 9/10 (31 March 2005)

I rate this 9 out of 10. Matthew McConaughey is the minus 1. In time I may assess his performance differently. I like Parker as a character, but it could have been cast better.
There is so much to see and enjoy in this film. Ellie was traumatised by her father's death, he was a loving father, they were very close. An only child, she was deprived from an early age of close human CONTACT. Ellie's obsession with SETI is easily understood.
I love the juxtaposition of science and religion, oops, sorry, SPIRITUALITY in the film, as played out in the characters of Ellie and Joss (Foster and McConaughey). There is always some antagonism throughout the film between the two, sometimes between the principals, sometimes between ancillary characters, but there is sympathy too. Kent (Fichtner) is present when Ellie travels because of "a higher power" McConaughey). When she, the hardened empiricist, has a deeply spiritual experience, he is the only one to accept what she says at face value. But then again, Joss is the reason why she wasn't chosen first. Which leads me to ...
Drumlin (Skerrit) and the religious nutter (Busey) both die. Why, in terms of the morality play subtext, isn't definite, at least not to me, but a first guess would be: Drumlin is too glib, he tells the selection panel "exactly what they want to hear", he is too political. Busey is too narrow minded, he cannot see beyond what he has always known, he refuses to grow, to evolve beyond our current condition, a major theme of the film. Both, in their own distinct ways, are off track.
All through the film the contest between the scientific and the spiritual is played out. It is quite skillful in that it manages to pose questions without giving easy answers, we are left to ponder for ourselves.
And then, on top of everything else, John Hurt as Drummond is a delight :-) "The first rule of government spending: Why have one when you can have two at twice the price?" A bit hammy, perhaps, but very enjoyable.
On a final note, I'd like to say that I've only just watched this film for the third time, having seen it at the cinema the first time, eagerly anticipated. The first two times, I was extremely irritated by it, by McConaughey principally, but also by what I saw at the time to be the lame nature of the tension between science and spirituality. I'm a lot more sympathetic to the spiritual these days, and hence enjoyed Contact a lot more.
I'm not surprised that the story is from a Carl Sagan book, rather than being formulaic Hollywood fare.