A Spiritually Enhancing Film

Rating: 9/10 (12 July 2015)

The year 1997 was the year that every movie was below sea level to the classic Hollywood blockbuster "Titanic". But one of the more captivating, spiritually enhanced film that came out in that time period was "Contact". Under the careful eyes of long-time director Robert Zemekis, "Contact" tells the exhilarating story of a brilliant astronomer (Jodie Foster) as she goes on a trivializing quest in search of other living things that go beyond out earthly bubble as she spreads the word that we are not alone in this universe. Dr. Ellie Arroway (Foster) is our protagonist is quite obsessed with finding this difficult question and will stop at nothing to fulfil the question many of us have asked, but never got the concrete answers to. Through all the details in this story, there are a plethora of deeper inner issues in Ellie's quest to search for extraterrestrial beings. in the end of her never ending quest into finding the unknown, we can look at her as an iconic rebel caused by global spectacle.
From a very early age, Ellie as fascinated with astronomy. We learn that her mother died when she was very young and her father (David Morse) died while he and a young Ellie were watching a meteor shower fall down upon them. This was her calling card as she had an epiphany that someday,she will contact these extraterrestrials in hope to finally convince humankind that there is more life than meets the eye. Being somewhat iconoclastic in nature, in one of the flashbacks, we discover that the young Ellie tries to reach her deceased father, not from seances or psychic telepathy, but through her transistor radio to see if she can contact him through there. Whereas religious people pray for their parents in heaven, Ellie depends on technological apparatuses to as a spiritual guide beyond the grave. Her sadness is conveyed in the same format as our prayers in church, but with technology as her escape from the cruelty of separation, we can conclude that her grief is correlative to those who pray religiously. By that we can learn a lot from Ellie's reaching out to her deceased father, by which putting our faith in God, we can refrain from our fixations of greed and vanity and to appreciate the things that God has done for us.
After Eliie's SETI project is about to be terminated after not finding any proof of alien life, Ellie hurried turns to higher profit moguls to desperately continue her search to contact with her late father. After being turned down by several corporations, Ellie finds reassurance from Hadden Industries, but was turned down once she started talking about her dreams. Although her presentation has lots of accurate details, she gets rejected because her research seems way over the top as science fiction. In other words her vision just doesn't fit the criteria of Haddens. It's like they've heard the same speech, but told differently a hundred times before. They just can't find something in Eliie's speech that has any bite to them. She eventually gets the funding once she get across towards those who were able to listen and to understand her who don't have the same intentions like she does. It raises the attention to the higher corporate echelons including the chief executive officer (John Hurt).
After Ellie travels through space get some evidence, she comes back home empty. When forced to ask some heavy-handed questions from the National Inquiry, she can only conclude that through factual technical information, similar to cultural belief, we can only conclude by saying that a claim in nothing more than a simple hypothesis. For the first time in her life she can open up and claim that her research was not experienced through science, but by the facets of faith.
Her heartfelt speech in the end can be a statement for a Christian missionary. The language through her speech shows an incredible force from the experience that Ellie went through. And sure her scientific beliefs are contrary to her long-tiring search to find the truth beyond our Earth, there is something that keeps her from going out to spread the truths about our universe. However one thing's for sure, we are all God's children and we all have tales to tell of God's generous, loving and caring personae.