Sacrificing Belief: A Consideration of Robert Zemeckis’ Contact
We look to the stars and see signs and wonders. Often we write our own stories onto the canvas of the constellations. We hope for greatness and heroic acts. Many times we come to the movies with the same starry-eyed hope. Yet, every time these moments of cosmic hope visit us, we return back to our earthbound lives – whether that involves turning away from the illuminated heavens or leaving a theater as the credits roll. Our lives are built in the mundane, not in the cosmic. We face daily sacrifices of varying sizes, yet all the while those stars remain beyond us. What are we to make of them?
No film tackles this subject matter better than the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film Contact. For a film that spends so much of its time focused on the cosmic (rightly so considering it was adapted from the Carl Sagan novel of the same name), its most important scene takes place in one of the least cosmic settings imaginable – a courtroom. Actually, it is more precise to say that it is a Senate chamber, but it functions as a courtroom scene within the narrative. It is here that Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) makes a sacrifice of otherworldly proportions.
Contact sets up its cosmic vs. everyday narrative beautifully with its transcendent opening scenes. We see Earth suspended in space as various pop songs and famous audio recordings play over the images. We are then whisked through the expanse of the universe until the audio recordings completely cut out. We are left in the silence and wonder of the unknown reaches of the galaxies. In one of the great transitions in movie history, the nebulae and celestial bodies dissolve into the eye of a little girl – Dr. Arroway in her youth (played by Jena Malone).
We meet her as she is communicating with distant lands. At this stage of her life, that means she is using her HAM radio to reach out to whomever is listening. She makes contact with someone in Pensacola, Florida. Her father, Ted (David Morse), supports her fascination as she marks out the points of contact on a map. At 1,116 miles from their home in Wisconsin, this is the farthest she’s reached yet. Later, she asks her father if she could ever get a radio strong enough to reach her deceased mother. It is a request that flies in the face of his advice to make “small moves”, and he simply responds that he doesn’t know. Later, her father dies as well. In the face of an existential crisis when others around her are turning to trite sayings that do not meet the moment, young Ellie turns to practicality. She blames herself for not having the foresight to keep another pill bottle in the downstairs bathroom so she could have gotten to him in time. The unbearable trauma of her young life drives her to devote her life to science, and the film jumps ahead into its main plot. Dr. Arroway is now one of the top scientists at SETI, tasked with attempting to make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Dr. Arroway lives with the core belief that science is the avenue through which life’s questions are answered. Not only that, but she firmly believes that science can answer some questions that haven’t even been asked yet. This is why she works for SETI, seeking to reach out to any intelligent life that might be among the stars. This is her hope – that she will be the one to make the breakthrough. It will be her name in the peer-reviewed journals. This will be her life’s achievement. And maybe, just maybe, she’ll achieve enough to be able to reach out to her parents one last time.
The Bible’s Old and New Testaments display many stark contrasts, but one of the more intriguing is the way in which people relate to God. In the Old Testament, the relationship is somewhat removed. Only the High Priest is allowed into the Holy of Holies, where the presence of God dwells. The masses must make that connection through the offering of sacrifices – a death that will cover their sins. God is present, but He is removed from them.
In the New Testament, that relationship is upended – yet the notion of sacrifice remains. Christian tradition teaches that the coming of Christ signifies God taking the form of a human and bringing His presence to us. Christ is even given the name Immanuel or “God with us.” After Christ’s death – the greatest sacrifice of all – and his resurrection, Scripture teaches that God gives His Holy Spirit so that every person can now come before the presence of God. There is no removal any more. Now, the sacrifice is different. As Romans 12:1 urges, we are now to present ourselves a “living sacrifice.”
The very idea of a “living sacrifice” is a confusing one. Sacrifices always include a death. How can one die and continue living? There are many theological implications there, and other writers have attempted to tackle those. I bring the conversation up, however, because I think Contact gives us a powerful picture of just such a sacrifice.
Science fiction has often been a genre that deals in hope. We see a future displayed on screen and the hope for technological and artistic advancement is kindled. Even in science fiction stories that take us to dark, post-apocalyptic places, we hope for the characters to bring about a new day. In such stories, hope may dwindle until it is barely recognizable, but it is not lost.
In Contact, we see the hope for where movies can take us.
The film’s opening scene is married with a later scene that is a clear callback to Douglas Trumbull’s unparalleled work on 2001: A Space Odyssey. That Stanley Kubrick cinema classic hovers over this film and is the visual parent to Contact. Hope may not be the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of Kubrick’s films, but I think 2001 attempts to carve out a hopeful path in its cold and somewhat detached story. It is the hope for humanity to reach a new plane of existence.
As the film nears its end, Dr. Arroway is finally in the position of which she has always dreamed – she will be the one to go on a mission to make contact with extraterrestrial life. The launch procedure commences and her pod is sent through multiple wormholes. She is taken on a visual journey that she cannot comprehend. To moviegoers, it is instantly recognizable as a mirror to the Star Gate sequence of 2001.
These are the type of sequences that only the movies can give us. Movies are separate from other forms of art in that they create experiences through multiple different artistic expressions. The images in Contact are astounding, yes, but so too is the sound or – at key moments – lack of sound. The editing creates a particular sequence of images and events that give the movie its power. All of these expressions take us to the far reaches of the universe, to places we will never actually go.
The acting in any film is a key component to that film’s success, and this is no different in Contact. Jodie Foster bears most of the responsibility in this film, but the supporting cast is incredible in hindsight: Angela Bassett, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, and Rob Lowe, among others. When you consider the sheer convergence of talent and ideas that must happen for a movie to come together, you realize that making one is a hopeful act in itself.
Foster’s acting is powerful throughout the film, but it becomes particularly poignant once her galactic trip begins. Dr. Arroway is mesmerized by what she has seen, and it changes her life forever. It is an experience of the highest order, one that will have massive impacts for those back home…or so she thinks.
In reality, all that anyone back home saw was that her pod began its launch procedure and then fell through the portal into the water below the launch scaffolding. Video monitors in her headpiece recorded only static. She thought she had been gone for 18 hours of time on Earth. She is told that her trip lasted merely seconds.
Her hope in what her experience might mean begins to dwindle, but it is not lost. That’s because she cannot deny what she has seen with her own eyes, heard with her own ears, and felt with her entire being. She cannot deny her experience. This brings us to the courtroom scene. The film has taken us to the far reaches of the galaxy, but here it reveals an even greater hope for the places that a film can take us. Here the film gets us to consider the meaning of our beliefs and the very fabric of our lives. In some ways, those are destinations that seem just as unattainable as a nebula many lightyears away.
Another film that has clear connections to Contact is Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi drama Arrival. Even in their one-word titles, you can sense an affinity. Then, there is the clear similarity of their heroines – supremely talented women devoted to breaking ground through scientific discovery. Both films artfully engage with the politics around their storylines and they showcase how radical factions and bureaucratic corruption can distort and obfuscate. They both also showcase the impact of sexism and the setbacks their main characters face because of it.
Along with its clear connections to great films in the sci-fi genre, I also find strong connections between Contact and more overtly religious pictures. Take, for instance, Martin Scorsese’s Silence or Terrence Malick’s latest film, A Hidden Life. Those are two films with a deep focus on the sacrifices of their main characters in a similar way to that of Dr. Arroway in Contact. Though Dr. Arroway does not go through some of the tortuous rigors those characters do in a physical sense, we watch her rise and fall with each success and each setback. Her journey in the film is labyrinthine. All of this brings us to the altar on which Dr. Arroway’s greatest sacrifice will be offered.
Can science answer all the questions we pose it, or does it have limitations? Can religion? Can faith?
Contact wants us to wrestle with these notions. In our modern world, science and faith are often put at odds. Here, it may seem on the surface that the film puts them at odds as well. But I would posit that the film only puts the more radical factions of each group at odds. Where it attempts to find common ground is in the idea that neither science nor religion can provide us with all the answers. It is in that tenuous space that we must either find hope or despair.
There will be some who say that either science or religion can provide all the answers. But can science really give us an answer as to why the universe exists? Can religion or faith really tell us beyond a reasonable doubt what will happen when we die? The more fundamental members of both groups would give their reasons to answer “yes”, but I think the more honest approach is to say that neither group can give us firm answers to those questions. What is great about Contact is that it provides space to wrestle with all of this. It engages in key ways with both science and religion to find if there are any areas where the two can engage in meaningful conversation with each other.
Even if neither science nor faith can provide us with all of life’s answers, can they at least work together to guide us in our questioning? As we follow Dr. Arroway into the cosmos and back to earth, I believe we do finally arrive at an answer.
They can.
Dr. Arroway is seated – alone. Behind her sits a throng of watchers. In front of her and slightly above her sits the body of senators, lawyers, and advisors composed to question her. In any courtroom, the goal is the same – to attempt to arrive at the truth and, thus, to find justice.
All of Dr. Arroway’s questioners are skeptical, particularly Michael Kitz (James Woods) who recently resigned as national security advisor to the president. Mr. Kitz believes that Dr. Arroway has experienced some kind of hallucination. Can he really be blamed given what was seen on national television? The pod dropped straight through to the water. It was a matter of seconds. How could Dr. Arroway have traveled through wormholes and learned about the movements of advanced interstellar beings?
The film paints Mr. Kitz as the villain and, even if we acknowledge that he has reason for skepticism, he certainly does not handle it in the best way imaginable. He questions Dr. Arroway with particular rage until she reaches a breaking point.
Foster’s acting in this scene is so moving. The emotion breaks upon her face like a storm. This woman who has lived with exacting practicality her entire life has now gone through an experience that cannot be explained or proven. Everything – everything – she has learned to this point in her life has taught her to experiment and test until an answer presents itself. That is not possible here.
It is here that J.A. Preston, in an uncredited role as a senator included in the hearing, gives one of my favorite line readings. He asks her point blank if she expects all of them to simply take her testimony on faith.
That is an incredible question, given the context. Her mission was one with worldwide and century-spanning significance. Everyone on the planet would be impacted by what she found. To the outside observer, it seems impossible that she could have found anything, given the video footage of the pod simply dropping into the water and the static recorded on her video feed. But how can she set aside what she experienced? How can she set aside what she saw, what she heard, and what she felt?
In a moment as moving to me as nearly any other in cinema history, Dr. Arroway says that she simply can’t. No, as a scientist, she must acknowledge that there is no proof for what she is saying. There is a chance that it didn’t happen. But she cannot deny that it did happen. She cannot take back what she has said.
This is her witness, and she will stand by it.
In this moment, this lifelong woman of science is giving up her belief that everything can be tested and proven. She acknowledges that her experience cannot be proven.
Yet she believes it anyways.
She is sacrificing the life she has lived – the person she has been to that point. She is sacrificing her Certainty, with a capital “C”. She is convinced of what she has experienced and what she believes, but she no longer feels confined by the need to prove it beyond a doubt. That doubt lingers on the edges of the room and it may do more than linger in the minds of her questioners, but she will believe nonetheless. Then, an amazing thing happens…
…she continues living.
She leaves the Senate chamber with Palmer Joss (McConaughey), the man with whom she has had a complicated relationship. Their interplay is the film’s main source of conversation between science and faith. He gives a comment to reporters as they leave that ties this theme up perfectly. He says that, though they come to the discussion from different places, they both are seeking the same thing – truth. Because of that, he is inclined to believe her.
Mary Magdalene is alone.
She has arrived in the early morning hours to the place of her grief. She has already cried tears to the point of exhaustion, but she cannot help it as more stream down. Through her tearful eyelashes, she looks up. What she sees changes her forever.
In John chapter 20, the world of the faithful has been shaken. Jesus Christ – their rabbi, their teacher – has been crucified. Disciples mourn and try to find a path through the darkness. Mary Magdalene is one of these disciples. On this morning, she has made her way to Christ’s tomb and finds that the stone has been rolled away, leaving the tomb open. She runs to tell the other disciples and bring them back to the scene. When they find the tomb empty, the men return home. Yet Mary stays, and she is met by Christ himself.
This woman who has followed Christ her whole life and has just seen him brutally killed now stands face to face with her teacher once more. What a joyous moment! And yet, Christ’s response to her might just be the most surprising element of the interaction.
“Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to me…’” (John 20:17)
What else is she to do when she has seen the One in whom she believes raised back to life? What is so wrong about clinging to her teacher?
Instead, he calls her to a different journey – an outward one. He asks her to go and tell others about Him. Everything about her life has been transformed by Christ and His teachings, yet now she is being asked to let go of him and go out into the world with a different purpose.
And here we find the cohesive narrative of the Bible beginning to merge. God has always loved His creation. He has always been seeking its redemption. From the beginning of time, His plan was to be in close relation to it. Christ is the culmination of that plan. He is the connecting point between the Old and the New. After His resurrection, the barrier has been torn down and now believers are empowered to go into all the world and share the Gospel. They are empowered to present themselves as living sacrifices.
Does Dr. Arroway believe in God? Earlier in the film, she is not able to provide an answer to that question. I don’t think the film answers the question in any final way, but rather chooses to leave that up to the viewer to decide. I often prefer open-ended narratives such as this, since it gives the viewer the opportunity to engage with the story rather than simply be a bystander. What we do know is that Dr. Arroway continues to devote her life to science. Her experience does not cause her to do away with the life she has lived prior to the mission.
However, it does bring her to a place of sacrifice. Having sacrificed her belief in science finding all the answers, she is free to engage with science in a new way. She recommits herself to the work but from a new perspective. Her love for science is unchanged, but her posture toward it is less rigid.
In this way, I think the film is a picture of that kind of “living sacrifice” that is referred to in Romans. Our lives – our very belief systems – become a sacrifice, yet we keep on living. In other parts of the Bible, this is referred to as “dying to self.”
Dr. Arroway does not cling to her belief in scientific certainty, as painful as that process of sacrificing must be. She realizes that her experience cannot be avoided or pushed aside. Instead, she moves forward. She uses that experience to inform her passion for scientific discovery. She cannot wholly go back from the person she has been, but she can allow her experience to inform her life in a new way.
Now when Dr. Arroway looks to the stars, they do not seem so distant. There is a personal connection that was not there before. Though answers may not present themselves, the questions are not off-limits. There is freedom in that.
She invites us to look up, too.