Contact by Carl Sagan is great. After a couple of years of listening-my-ears-off on Audible, I’m starting to round off the completion of reading and watching all of his works. Contact was one of the best. It’s unique because it’s a work of fiction, but it’s also rooted in foundations from his previous works and ideas. Having read his other stuff you can see the compounding of ideas and knowledge in his writings over his career as an Astronomer and writer. Carl Sagan has always illuminated my passion to learn about the cosmos, he’s a profound speaker and writer while inspiring he always simultaneously makes me yearn for a brain more suitable for mathematics.
The film adaptation of Contact, directed by Robert Zemeckis, is also great. It’s a Hollywood-blockbuster-style film that in my opinion never quite reached the audiences it deserved. It’s a strange and obscure metric to use, but I just don’t hear people mention or talk about this film, and therefore in my own little bubble of a mind it’s highly underrated and certainly deserves more attention and acclaim.
In the simplest of reviews, I absolutely love this book and film and recommend it as a watch.
One, for its imagination: The idea of getting in touch with life beyond our world is fascinating. It would (or should) change our perspective as a species in so many ways, and hopefully for the better. It takes the angles of so many different perspectives about what might happen if humans were actually to have contact with intelligent life in the universe. How might it stir people in politics, science, religion, and the opinion of culture?
Two, for its brave approach to philosophy and the ideas of god. Elle throughout the book and film has to stand up for her belief in science. A belief that is still today feel like a fringe idea. A dangerous thought against the mass mainstream accepted thoughts. She’s tested against, priests, pastors, and the general public who see her denial of god’s existence as cynical and maybe even radical. She’s judged as being morally misguided and unfit to be a representative of the human race to an interstellar species.
Her relationship with Palmer Joss, the religious pastor, is also an interesting way to show the conflicting beliefs, but also a symbol that religion and science can evolve together. That the ideas of science can still find purpose and meaning. What we know through science can change our beliefs, but it shouldn’t change our sense of wonder and awe. Just because we are still searching for answers, it doesn’t mean that life is meaningless. I particularly love the line repeated throughout the film about how if we are alone in the universe, and it’s just a bunch of rocks, gas, and dust… “it seems like an awful waste of space.”
I praise the book for its beautifully crafted language and the film for its cinematic quality. Its ability to condense the story while preserving its power and meaning is very well done. With any book-to-film project, you lose a little substance. Particularly the direct insights into Elle’s head which are deeply revealing and human at times.
It’s interesting to watch and compare the book version to the film. What had to be removed and compressed for time. How they had to add in that Elle and Palmer sleep together in the beginning of the book for an extra dose of fake Hollywood romance.
I watched Contact partly as a passive and enjoyable activity, but also as a study of filmmaking and screenplay adaptation. I also have an insatiable desire for Carl Sagan’s ideas and understanding of the truth about our universe. For small creatures such as we, it really is a monumental and magnificent work of art.
Highly recommend it: Watch the film. Enjoy the read.
Lastly, to get in a little practice storyboarding, here are a handful of quick thumbnails from Contact.
