Contact Review
by C.T.Nadovich (chris AT jtan DOT com)July 28th, 1997
Note, the following contains spoilers and strong opinion about the movie "Contact". You may want to see the film and form your own opinions first.
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Well, I never liked Carl Sagan's stuff.
I always thought he cream and sugared the science too much in an effort to make it go down layman's throats. To me, that ruins the flavor of the science itself and distorts its message. I've always preferred my science black --- expresso black --- but there are things you can add to science to make an interesting, more accessable combination without overloading it with sweetness and light. A shot of bourbon, for instance, as I've been known to enjoy in the works of Gould, Thomas, Dawkins, etc...
"Contact" is a mocha latte with rum. Worse than that, it uses the best columbian coffee, finest Puerto Rican rum, fresh cream, and a whole can of Hersey's chocolate syrup.
I say this so often about films: "It coulda' been so good!". "Contact" merits this same summary more so than any film in recent memory. All the best ingredients were there: profound scientific and philosophical questions, world class actors, breathtaking scientific venues for settings, big budget high tech special effects, a good variation on the first-contact plot...
But NO! They had to go and screw it up. Oh, how I felt I had been cheated! Worse yet, they had Jodie Foster do the wimp out --- yes, the same Jodie Foster that had gone toe-to-toe with Hannibal Lechter without blinking. Why did they cast her? Why couldn't they cast Jane Fonda? That would have bothered me FAR less.
Or maybe I missed the point. Maybe her failure to stick to her scientific and philosophic guns in the climactic scene of the film was intended to get the audience to rally to her aid, to shout: "Aristotle! Aristotle! Quick! Set 'em up with Aristotle. Then BANG! Hume! Hume! Give 'em a left with Hume! and then a right cross with Kant! Kick 'em in the groin with Goedel!".
Or maybe we are assumed to already know the truth, survive the attack by science-as-religion mumbo jumbo, and maturely accept the fact that the good guy, vastly outnumbered, just didn't win in this story, being wiser for the experience.
But no. By Occam's Razor it was more likely that the film wanted to show how Science and Religion can be a big happy mutually supporting mocha latte family.
It was awful. The film made the point that Jodie Foster's character was somehow embarrased and weakened by her atheism and scientific rationalism. That she was an athesist because her parents died young and she was angry at God. It wasn't possible that (gasp) she didn't believe in God because there wasn't one! It reminded me of the stereotypical view of homosexuality as a bad moral choice.
It gets worse.
After the climactic scene, the emphasized idea is that science is sort of a revealed, mystical religion of its own. Only individual scientists understand scientific fact. Scientific proof is ultimately based on mystical revelation. Science is no different than revealed faith in God.
In a brief, passing conversation after the climax thre was a ray of hope. We learn that there actually was a shred of objective empirical evedence for the mystical revelation that the atheist and rationalist scientist is forced to accept. It could have been a Cinderella ending. Alas, the film dropped this point there. No one went seeking the foot that matched this glass slipper, so this objective evedence is portrayed more like Santa's cane in "A Miracle on 34'th Street" --- we all believe that Santa is real, and that's all that really matters, but hey, isn't it neat that some bit of objective evedence fits in with our beliefs --- not that we need any facts to justify our beliefs.
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Chris Nadovich +1 215 257 8708 (voice) http://www.jtan.com/chris +1 215 257 8154 (fax) 73 de KD3BJ SK ..
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Chris Nadovich +1 215 257 8708 (voice) http://www.jtan.com/chris +1 215 257 8154 (fax) 73 de KD3BJ SK ..
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