They should have sent a poet.

Rating: 9/10 (30 March 2016)

If Jodie Foster's performance of the intelligent, resourceful Ellie Arroway was praised it is because of the excellent groundwork that a younger Jena Malone has laid for the character. In the past, her convictions are not as strong and grounded, and her rational, scientific worldview was still forming, so as she rebuffs the priest and tries to look at it from a logical perspective, she is secretly sending out radio signals at night and hoping her late father will pick up. This is of course a matter of faith, and it is heartbreaking because I think she knows that there is no talking to the dead, but wants to attempt so anyway. And then natural curiosity gives way to the continual mapping of the sky, and her drive has lead her to be in the unique position to discover this alien signal.
Contact taps into that deep-seated sense of wonder that many people feel when they look up at the stars in the sky. For Ellie it is not only a probability, but an eventuality that life has formed elsewhere in the vast, vast universe, and she believes that they too will have the same dreams she does, to reach out and communicate. Zemeckis has brought a universal sense of scale to the project in the same vein as Forrest Gump; with the wide flurry of media opinions and personalities exploding into discussion and speculation, and with the special effects, which do not overwhelm the narrative like in many science fiction stories, but complements it. If the effects are somewhat dated today, Zemeckis hides it well, both with a grandeur view from afar, and even closer up, as Ellie sits above the magnificent contraption, humming and whirring in anticipation.
The big elephant in the room is religion, which is also where the main problem of the film stems from. Re-watching it now the clues seem obvious from afar; the pointed references in the dialogue to god, the demonic glare of the religious fanatics towards Ellie, McConaughey's introduction. The script seems to feel that a necessity of this grand discovery is to hang up a straw-man and attack Ellie's worldview. And it seems that this attack comes from a predominantly white American perspective, even as the panel states that 95% of the world believes in some sort of 'supreme being'. "We don't know if they even believe in God" is one of the first lines uttered by a senator, and clearly outlines how determined this movie is towards stripping Ellie her worldview and placing ambiguity towards the question of aliens.
It's a forced, contrived aspect. Even as Carl Sagan believed that mystical interpretation were just a reflection of the universe's magnificence, his source novel needed no such coincidence to fall upon the climatic journey to Vega. The circumstances in which the aliens deliver this dream- like message to Ellie and then quickly whisk her back therefore becomes, unsubtly, like her own version of a religious experience with god - brief, unexplainable and without a shred of proof. It's such a painfully unnecessary tension to force onto her character, particularly after that final little clue with the static footage. This very detail betrays the intended message; that religion and science are just two different interpretations of the same miracles. But of course this is a world where a renowned Christian philosopher can stroll into top secret government meetings and be on international selection panels for perhaps the most important decision for the human race. The sentimental romance plot is not needed - in Contact's quest for understanding the universe beyond our tiny little planet, it has all the awe, humility and hope needed to captivate the next Ellie Arroway.