12 years on....

Rating: 8/10 (19 September 2009)

There have been no comments on this film since the 20th Century... Perhaps it's time for one more. Contact is a fantastic film, one of hope, light, dreams, and serious sociopolitical commentary. I find that after we have shed ourselves of the previous administration and its relentless pollution of the State with the Church, xenophobia, hoarding, and fiscal elitism, one underlying lesson in the film never rests: Fundamentalism of any kind is dangerous to progress of all kinds. The tantalizing science fiction story (please read the book) can't fail to bring both hope and frustration to the viewer. Some of us hope that such prescient and nurturing civilizations exist to perhaps one day enlighten our own. We seethe when backward forces within resist such notions for their own narrow beliefs and benefits. Contact delivers this dichotomy of chaos and control in a perfect way, leaving us at the end much like we were at the beginning, unable to truly affect change except in ourselves and our own beliefs. You walk away from the film either elevated, or perhaps cheated due to lack of aliens and explosions. I wonder if the best audiences are those who hunger for command and control, guns n' ammo, fear and familiarity. Those viewers might just gain a kernel of hope somewhere in their psyche by watching Contact. The rest of us can appreciate that Sagan, somewhere out there in his Ship of the Mind, embraced and found comfort in the enormity of our universe and how tiny we actually are. I did, though, especially enjoy the irony of the Hadden character, a raping and pillaging capitalist of the highest order, finding deliverance at the end of his life (not taking it with him, so to speak), by allowing the journey to occur after all.
Wonderful film. Wanna go for a ride?