2 hrs & 29 min, color, 1997
What if word got out all over
the globe that proof of intelligent life off the earth had been found, and
found in the form of a mathematical communication from a faraway planet or star
system to radio astronomers on earth? I
am sure we all have speculated about this sort of thing, even at any early
age. A cousin of mine and I as children
would from time to time go outside at night and “study astronomy”. Actually what we did was sit, look into the
star spangled sky, speculate about the possibilities of life elsewhere, make up
stories about travel into space and try to imagine what space travel would
really be like. We looked and dreamed
and wondered how life elsewhere would get in touch with the planet Earth or we
with them. But what would really be the
upshot of such a breakthrough? What
impact would the news have upon human society at large?
Stanley Kubrick in his “Space
Odyssey” epic, basing his work on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, advanced
the supposition that the powers that be would withhold the discovery from the
public, fearing that the news would cause “shock and social
disorientation”. Those are exact words
from the script, the rationalization for keeping it under wraps. Hence, the veil of secrecy that prevents even
the astronauts, on their way to find the source of the communication, from
knowing the purpose of their mission.
Could such a development in fact be hidden from the civilian
population? Carl Sagan thought otherwise
when he created his best selling, award-winning novel “Contact” published in 1985, adapted into this
fascinating science fiction film in 1997.
(Sadly he never quite lived long enough to see it, dying one year before
its release.)
The interception of the
radioed transmission apparently beamed from a star causes tremendous
international excitement and pleasure on the part of some and fear and
condemnation on the part of others. A
huge carnival atmosphere is generated, one that embraces all levels of
officialdom and all nations and societies.
The central character in the story is a young American woman named Ellie
Arroway, played with inexhaustible energy and style and near perfection by the
incomparable Jodie Foster. At the
beginning Ellie is a nine year old child curious about the stars and planets
and the power of radio transmission, so much so that she is already a ham radio
operator, her equipment provided by her widower father, who encourages her
hobby. Before long her father dies quite
suddenly. But under his inspiration she
plows on undeterred and fully dedicated to the subject of science, excelling
scholastically right on through public school, graduating with top grades from
Harvard and obtaining a doctorate in her field of outer space radio
exploration. She is also quite a
scrapper, pushing hard everywhere she can to raise money for her local station
and proving herself to be confrontational enough to make as many enemies as
friends.
Then in the middle of a New
Mexico desert late one summer night, while examining the night sky above her,
comes that powerful radio squawk that wakes up her and the studio assistants
not far away. She begins barking out
orders to them over remote control, which they follow with excitement almost as
strong as hers, and within a matter of hours they have traced the origin of the
signal, a prominent constellation that she has for years studied, about
twenty-six light years away from Earth.
Before long NASA and the intelligence sectors and the Executive branch
of government descend upon her desert domain, and all the big brains of science
are hard at work deciphering the complicated mathematical formula that the
alien communicators have laid out. It
turns out that it is a design for a space vehicle to be constructed on Earth
for travel to that apparently friendly civilization that is extending the
intergalactic invitation.
All Jodie Foster fans will
surely want to see this, if they have not already. (The film is now eighteen years old.) The cast is quite huge, but its size in no
way dwarfs her; she maintains her solo star power all the way through. The script – by James V. Hart and Michael
Golden, under the direction of Robert Zemeckis – sounds out abundant material
close to the heart, the minutiae of the science in no way conflicting with
it. Ellie even has a love interest. Matthew McConaughey is a Christian
philosopher named Palmer Joss who is widely known as an authority on what ails
the soul of his country, consulted by Presidents and heads of state. Joss develops a deep adoration of, as well as
a passionate attraction to, Ellie.
Anyone at all familiar with
Carl Sagan’s work knows that he was fascinated by the seeming struggle between
science and religious belief, between the disciplines of scientific inquiry
based upon what is strictly verifiable and the tenets of faith that require a
leap into the abstract and the unknowable.
This tension is made ever so vivid in the portraiture of Ellie. She is an obstinate atheist at first, most of
the way through the story in fact, until she is exposed to something immense
and stupefying when she ventures beyond the boundaries of her disciplines and
her expectations. I prefer not to relate
any more details of the narrative, which thrives to a great extent on
imagination and surprise.
Like Sagan, fictional Ellie
devotes her life to the quest for intelligent life elsewhere, and she is brave
enough to want to risk that very life in the exploration her discovery demands
of her. Sagan was strangely influenced
by his parents. His mother was a devout,
worshipful believer while his father was a practicing skeptic. Thereby he absorbed a very deep spirituality
of his own but learned to be skeptical and cautious about ultimate
reality. He once said, “Science is not
only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of
spirituality.” Elsewhere he speaks of
how “the scale of the universe opened up to me.
It was a kind of religious experience.
There was a kind of magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has
never left me.” No one could accuse him
of having missed the forest during his intricate work among the trees.
The man’s contributions are
extensive, both in written form (the author of over twenty books) and in the
laboratory. His Masters dissertation
published in 1960 was entitled “Physical Studies of Plants and Satellites”. For nine years he was associate director of
the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell University. And that is just the tip of the iceberg! Read about him on Google. Boning up on all this has inspired me to
reserve from Netflix the entire TV series “Cosmos”, which he created, presided
over and appeared in during the early 1980s.
It remains one of the most successful in TV history; for some reason it
passed me by when it aired (or I passed it by), so it is my intent to catch up
on all its wealth of commentary in the coming weeks.
Three times during the
“Contact” footage a priceless observation is made, from the lips of three
separate individuals. The universe, we
are reminded, contains billions of galaxies; we and our planet are just a pin prick
within one of them. So if our life on
Earth is all the intelligent life there is anywhere, that “seems like an awful
waste of space”. Sagan was half
scientist and half dreamer. He probed
the microorganisms, while he was busy pointing us to the heavens. What a piece of work he was – and is!
To
read other entries in my blog, please consult its website: enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me
consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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