“I’m telling you, it was a little cursed, the movie.” – Jodie Foster

July 6, 2022 10:28 AM

‘No Aliens, No Spaceships, No Invasion of Earth’ is an oral history of the making Robert Zemeckis’ 1997 film Contact. Come for the description of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan having the idea, stay for the many different ways people attempt to describe how hot Matthew McConaughey was, bail out emotionally at the end when David Morse talks about meeting a father and daughter after the film had been released.
posted by Kattullus (59 comments total)

For others who were as confused as I was, Contact started as a screenplay, was then published as a book, and then actually made into a movie. (That's why there's not mention of the book at all in the early parts of this history. Having read the book years before the movie came out, I just assumed it was a book first, and it seemed weird to not see anything referencing that)
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 11:11 AM on July 6, 2022 [13 favorites]

I distinctly remember seeing this movie and some dude in the row in front of me saying "That was stupid!" as the movie ended.

I think the ending did leave viewers a bit unsatisfied, for a movie.
posted by Fleebnork at 11:16 AM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

I really enjoyed the book! And the movie was good, with some scenes that really deliver, plus a few that, revisited, don't work well.

The opening sequence, with the pullback into silence, was awe-inspiring in the theater.

It's funny that in recent years, the book's (and movie's) voices of caution have been echoed in the mainstream so many times: an unknown power from space is asking you to build something and then turn it on? No. Thanks.

The last several years have also demonstrated that an international project of unknown utility commandeering a significant percentage of the world's scientific, engineering, and economic resources is less plausible than contact by extraterrestrials.
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:27 AM on July 6, 2022 [8 favorites]

The oral history specifically mentions that Druyan and Sagan wrote the book after the movie they wrote and were trying to sell spent some time in development hell, thinking it was the only way they'd ever tell the story. It's not quite the same story, as in they didn't just novelize their manuscript.

Anyway, this is absolutely a desert island movie for me, I've seen it many times, some of it is super clunky and I love it all the more for its awkwardness. But like most of the participants in the oral history, I also wish I could see the George Miller version.

I had not remembered until this that it came out the same time as Men In Black, and one year after Independence Day.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:28 AM on July 6, 2022 [12 favorites]

I think the ending did leave viewers a bit unsatisfied, for a movie.

The article doesn't mention the book ending at all, which was left out of the film.

I really liked the book's ending but I can see that it would have totally flipped the meaning of the movie upside down and probably would have taken another 20 minutes of screen time.

(spoiler / book's ending if you're curious)

The aliens tell Ellie that yeah, they didn't make any of this but the ones that did left messages out there and you should go looking. Once Ellie gets back to Earth she eventually finds a message buried way way out in the digits of Pi. Which kind of means some higher entity not only created the universe but did it in a way to manipulate things like the mathematical constants around us. Thus, God.

posted by JoeZydeco at 12:09 PM on July 6, 2022 [11 favorites]

This is great:

Druyan: She was named Eleanor for Eleanor Roosevelt, whom we both adored. “Arroway” because that was Voltaire’s real name but spelled in a different way. Also because of the idea of an arrow way — she was going to travel like an arrow through the cosmos.
posted by doctornemo at 12:21 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also this:

Foster: We had one shot with thousands of extras — almost like Comic-Con, where they’re all dressed up, but they’re out in the middle of the desert like Burning Man. That day they went to change the film — because it was 35-mm. film — and they exposed it all. So they had to go back and reshoot everything. The poor guy who exposed all the film by accident, the assistant cameraman, was fired. It was sad.

Then, in one scene, I had to talk to somebody and then turn around and go into a jet. But the door was shorter than me, and every single time I did it, I banged my head. So I have this massive goose egg on my head. I also had a big scene where I’m running up a hill, and I got stung by a bee on my neck during one take. I’m in terrible pain, and I had this big thing on my neck. I see them in the film: the big red splotch on my neck, the giant goose egg. I’m telling you, it was a little cursed, the movie.

Zemeckis: I don’t think we had any difficulty.
posted by doctornemo at 12:22 PM on July 6, 2022 [21 favorites]

Around this time, Contact development moved ahead under Australian Mad Max director George Miller, who envisioned a “stranger” film that never made it to the screen.

I'm not saying we live in the worst timeline, but we definitely don't live in the best.
posted by AlSweigart at 12:56 PM on July 6, 2022 [19 favorites]

I distinctly remember seeing this movie and some dude in the row in front of me saying "That was stupid!" as the movie ended.

I can see that but man the older I get the more I love how it ends. I wish we could have an entire movie where she's just talking to the alien on that beach. There's more? What are they like? Which one is the closest to Earth? But of course that wouldn't be the point. It's supposed to be a momentary near-death-chat-with-God or the theme goes kerplooey.

Sometimes, just to psych myself up, I'll watch the sequence where she first hears the signal and her team scrambles to record and source it.
posted by greenland at 12:58 PM on July 6, 2022 [11 favorites]

To me, this is the best of the web ever. I thought I was the only person in the universe who loves this film. I love this movie. Everything is right about it. I am only half through the article, so can't comment on that yet, but it is a film on the level with Tarkovsky films and Last Year In Marienbad and The Leopard. And Heat, which is also underrated. And obviously La Jetée, which I feel it probably owes a lot.
posted by mumimor at 1:11 PM on July 6, 2022 [19 favorites]

Contact is my favourite movie about alien life ever - and it didn't even need the last section for me. If we encounter an alien civilization, I think it will come as simple radio signals and that will be as exciting as a spaceship landing.
posted by jb at 1:16 PM on July 6, 2022 [9 favorites]

I'm not saying we live in the worst timeline, but we definitely don't live in the best.

I am starting to question your commitment to (Leibniz's) Sparkle Motion
posted by elkevelvet at 1:18 PM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

When this is on TV, I watch it just for the part where John Hurt says "wanna go for a ride?" That's the best part.
posted by schoolgirl report at 1:29 PM on July 6, 2022 [9 favorites]

Great article! And I totally love the movie! Thanks for the post
posted by sundrop at 1:30 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I say "They should have sent a poet" so often, and it never - ever - gets anything but blank stares. I won't stop because it cracks me up, but it's really had me wondering how a movie could have been that big and had so little cultural impact, at least in my own circle. Then again, I only saw it once in the theaters and remember very little about it - I haven't read TFA yet (sorry; I know) but some of the plot points you guys are mentioning in the thread are already things I don't recall. So I guess I need to rewatch it.
posted by Mchelly at 1:50 PM on July 6, 2022 [15 favorites]

I've watched the movie many times, but I've watched the mirror shot a hundred times.
posted by How the runs scored at 1:53 PM on July 6, 2022 [20 favorites]

I was in 7th grade when this movie came out which is probably the perfect age for a sensitive, prickly, bookworm to dream about going to space. I think this movie does have a huge cultural impact on a certain cohort of young gen-x/early millennial space nerds. Of course my daughter is named Eleanor...
posted by muddgirl at 2:26 PM on July 6, 2022 [11 favorites]

Mchelly, I quote this movie all the time and feel like I get about a 50% hit rate, but then I hang out with a lot of space nerds. "I'm gonna need a really great dress" is another of my favorites.

There's so many millions of reasons this wouldn't get made today, but I have a lot of gratitude that it got made when we had these particular top-of-industry director and actor who didn't do sexed-up movies, so it was okay that Ellie only incidentally had a bit of offscreen Bad Idea Sex (and wasn't written so socially nonfunctional that this was unrealistic or felt non-consenting) with someone with whom there was no meaningful power dynamic and probably the whole point of that scene was just to get McConaughey's shirt off.

The rest of the movie just lets Foster be incandescently beautiful, half the time in "no makeup" makeup and functional clothing, and it is not important and nobody else gives a shit and it's not why anybody either loves or hates Ellie or does/doesn't do her any favors. Everybody else in the movie responds to her intellect and drive, and Palmer Joss is the only one who very respectfully wants to get in her pants.

And that "For Carl" kills me every single time. I always watch all the way to that card.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:58 PM on July 6, 2022 [17 favorites]

I haven’t watched it in a long time and I remember really liking it.

Most of my recent contex for Contact Is Katya loving the movie so much on UNHhhh including making a Contact dress.
posted by Uncle at 4:11 PM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

I love love love this movie. Love the book too. I remember when I was young my mom was dating a guy who was playing around with CGI and he recreated the spinning machine in some 90s consumer graphics program and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. It's a movie I can watch over and over and not get bored. Like Forrest Gump. Or Back to the Future. Huh, maybe I just like Zemeckis movies...
posted by downtohisturtles at 4:40 PM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

This is one of my favorite movies, should have posted this when I read it a few days ago! Was floored by Francis Ford Coppola suing Ann Druyan and the process server showing up right after she got home from Carl’s funeral.
posted by skycrashesdown at 4:53 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

If you visit my house and would like to use your compter's radio to talk to the universe, the wifi is "arroway" and the password is "eleanor ann."
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 5:19 PM on July 6, 2022 [16 favorites]

There's a lot to like in this movie. Eleanor is such a relatable nerd. I love the way she meets McConaughey at a party for the first time in years and instantly jumps into an argument about the existence of God. I've definitely met that guy (usually it's a guy). I might have even been that guy a few times...

I love the opening sequence but I couldn't watch it a second time without thinking "...so, it takes about 30 years for radio waves to get to Jupiter, and about 80 years for them to leave the galaxy..."

That part when the message resolves into a swastika is wonderfully creepy. And the explanation for it makes perfect sense.

I love that the panel of experts choosing who will represent all of humanity to an alien race narrowed it down to two astronomers.

I was disappointed that Eleanor didn't immediately shoot down the idea that a signal from Vega detected several places around the world could have been faked by a satellite.

I had a friend who would trade this misquote with me: "If every planet in the universe had life like us on it..." "...it'd be an awful waste of space!"
posted by straight at 5:32 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

JoeZydeco, that is absolutely not what I got out of the book ending. Though that interpretation does make it make a little more sense how the diametrically opposite moral of the movie happened. (In the book, the big reveal or whole point is that there is a distinction between even sufficiently advanced science and religion - that with science there is always some evidence and testable hypotheses, even if it is really really hard to find. The movie was just “science and religion are the same why can’t we all just get along”, and while the second half of that sentiment isn’t bad, the first half is wrong.)

Going to have to reassess my assumptions of how that difference ended up happening knowing that a screenplay pre-dated the book, though.
posted by eviemath at 6:27 PM on July 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

The should have sent a poet line always gets me, as does:

You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares.

There was a period where that, and

And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

used to war in my head as the things I'd heard, but couldn't remember just exactly where I'd seen them. Every once in a while, I'd come across them again, and breathe a little sigh, and "oh, yeah, that's where it's from..." would run through my head.

I love Contact. It's cheesy and over earnest. It's very big studio Hollywood in clunky ways. So much is telegraphed, but the story still works, and it's also such a perfect picture of a key moment in the nation. It's a very real slice of America at a time before this mess we're in now, but you can literally see all of the arrows pointing from that moment to where we are, and how we got here. It's painful, seeing how much hope there was that things might develop differently, then having to wake up from the dream of the movie to, well, all of this.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:31 PM on July 6, 2022 [9 favorites]

(I vaguely recall thinking there were scientifically/mathematically inaccurate details in the movie, too, in a way that it had previously been my impression would have been counter to Sagan’s wishes. But it’s been so long since I’ve seen it that I don’t remember any specific examples.)
posted by eviemath at 6:35 PM on July 6, 2022

VFX Artists React to the remarkable mirror effect shot in "Contact".
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:42 PM on July 6, 2022 [11 favorites]

The film ending of Contact led me down the path of studying the history & anthropology of science. On a good day I can imagine 500 years in the future when our descendants look back and laugh at how ignorant we were about medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, or sociology. To me, practicing science is an act of faith, it's belief in this unseen future. And practicing science is a responsibility too (now this is my liberal arts education talking), a responsibility to work toward the existence of that future.

Anyway yes Contact is a flawed movie and I'm sure Sagan would have been unhappy with it but this is just one part of what it means to me.
posted by muddgirl at 7:02 PM on July 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

I love love love this movie, I prefer the book with it's amazing ending, but that's a rare enough thing that you get a smart Sci-Fi movie about smart people that'll cherish this movie forever.

And this movie has so many cool shots! Like this one where she drives around the array and enters the building. The soundstage is in LA the array was in New Mexico. And they went all-in with compositing to make it appear as a single take. A lazyer cinematographer would have just used a cut somewhere.

If you haven't read 'The Demon Haunted World' from Carl Sagan, give it a shot, it's a good read, and sometimes way to prescient about our current times.

Also, fuck Coppola, I'm never watching The Godfather again, what a jerk.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:19 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Fun facts about the opening scene:
- The camera, if it was real, would be traveling faster than the speed of light
- Ellie’s eye starts out as CG, then blends into Jenna Malone’s real eye
- Just before that transition, if you look closely, you can see an image of the machine reflected in her eye

I love that so much of the movie is Ellie struggling for grant funding, struggling to be taken seriously, then struggling to maintain control of her work. Careers in science can be a fight for survival, and that ugly side of things isn’t depicted much in movies.

Since it hasn’t been mentioned, I’d like to express my love for the score, which in my opinion ranks among Alan Silvestri’s best.

If you visit my house and would like to use your compter's radio to talk to the universe, the wifi is "arroway" and the password is "eleanor ann."

For many years my passwords were “W9GFO” (Ellie’s ham radio handle).
posted by dephlogisticated at 7:34 PM on July 6, 2022 [8 favorites]

Sometimes, just to psych myself up, I'll watch the sequence where she first hears the signal and her team scrambles to record and source it.

The best part of Stargate is Daniel doing translation and being a super-nerd. I absolutely love those kinds of sequences.

I haven't watched this movie in ages -- I know what's on my schedule for the weekend!
posted by curious nu at 7:48 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have two dumb stories about watching this movie.

First, I watched it in theatres with a bunch of friends in high school, and I remember liking it a lot for the most part. But the mirror scene that everyone adores now on a technical and possibly also emotional level? We all CRACKED UP as soon as the slow-motion bit starts. It's just so over-the-top cheesy and melodramatic. We also immediately felt bad about it afterwards because no one else in the theatre was laughing and they were all clearly very invested in little Ellie getting her dad's medication.

Second, many many years later, some friends and I took a road trip through the States and one of our stops (mostly because of me) was the Very Large Array featured at the beginning of the movie. It's a slightly bizarre feeling to drive into the desert and hear all the radio stations disappear one by one until there's nothing but static across the spectrum. It's a very cool place with a cute little gift shop, though to be honest there's not actually a lot to do out there so probably not something I'd recommend to most people unless you love science and space stuff. (But if you do, pop over to "neighboring" Pie Town, New Mexico just to say you've been to Pie Town. And, uh, have some pie. It's good!)

The two of us that had actually seen the movie convinced the third, the only woman in our group, to sit on the hood of our rental car with my laptop and headphones to mimic Ellie listening for radio stations on her (way cooler than our 2000s Impala) convertible so I could take goofy photos. She had no idea what the hell either of us were talking about.
posted by chrominance at 7:51 PM on July 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

I'm not normally a big fan of the "reaction" genre of YouTube videos, but I am a fan of astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smethurst, and her video reacting to her first-ever viewing of Contact was pretty entertaining. She has her complaints, but spoiler, she likes it. (One of her minor gripes is that they used a wormhole, which she complains is over-done, which I find funny because she doesn't realize that this movie is the reason wormholes became over-done afterwards.)
posted by biogeo at 7:53 PM on July 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

I watched Contact again, recently in Covid time. The scene on the beach was sublime, I looked forward to it, after all the theologcal thrashing. What a gift from the Sagans, and everyone who took it up, and finally made the film. It took a lot of patience, and skill, and talent. I rarely watch films twice.
posted by Oyéah at 7:59 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I also thought it was a book then a movie - this is one of the most interestingly informative 'oral history of [film]' pieces, I think.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:01 PM on July 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also, I LOVE the line in the signal detection scene, "Make me a liar."
posted by rmd1023 at 8:03 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

One more VFX fun fact: the sparkle in the sand, seen first in her father's hand and later in her own, is in the shape of a crescent. This pattern appears several times in the movie. It matches the stars she saw briefly during her wormhole trip, and the shape of the spilled popcorn on the floor when her father dies.
posted by dephlogisticated at 8:36 PM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is a top 5 favorite movie for me. My old online handle (and previous Mefi username) is Elly Vortex or EAV - short for Eleanor Arroway Vortex. I'm really glad that people remember and still love this movie.
posted by Gray Duck at 8:57 PM on July 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Zemeckis: "There’s these eccentrics with tons of money who are always running around. They can do stuff. Their money buys them a lot of power and influence. I think I was thinking more of Howard Hughes"
from the article. "wanna take a ride"

Hadden was interesting as there were no real space mogols and Hughes fits both aerospace and eccentricity. I mean the scene where she walks in and that satellite gears in her room was disconcerting. but I always love this line.
"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"
Hadden explains it's controlled by the Americans built by the Japanese subcontractors who were recently acquired subsidiaries...what does that mean, he got the whole ball of wax because in "reality", they're only about two firms in the world that could construct anything like that so I guess it's an Allusionary glimpse into the real power structure. funny, I've owned this movie in three different mediums and watched it in four and still wouldn't cast Tom Skerrit.
posted by clavdivs at 9:04 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

Then there's "Contact, the Musical". Review: Contact: Carl Sagan Deserves Better Than This Crappy Musical.
I have a friend who was in it and cringes whenever it's mentioned.
posted by ShooBoo at 9:15 PM on July 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

25 years gone and I don't think the US will ever again be capable of producing a movie like this. Today I'd look to South Korea for anything like that kind of storytelling punch and cinematic achievement.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 12:27 AM on July 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I was really really into Contact when it came out. I saw it two or three times in the theater. I remember raving about it to some couple at a bar one night (who thankfully had seen it and agreed with me). It's a really smart, well-made movie, but more than a little bloated. Matthew McConaughey's sexy priest character is kind of silly, and it's a little indulgent and overlong; it could've been tightened by a good twenty minutes or so.

But it's a beautifully made film, and as much as we love to hate on sequels, I think there are plenty of great directions you could go in for a part two (well, there were. Not like a sequel would happen now). Though that may be me simply wanting more out of the ending, which I totally get--it's all about ambiguity--but it's hard to deny it's at least a little anticlimactic.
posted by zardoz at 1:01 AM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I remember being very deep into an LSD experience at a largely-LSD party in the late 90s when someone put this on the TV in the living room, and I feel like they did so at nearly the end of the movie for effect, and a friend said "okay, wait, watch this part" and - though I have still never seen the movie since, or in its entirety ever - I just recall Jodie Foster going through an existential experience, being given some universal message to deliver to humanity and, sometime later, being grilled before a congressional panel and asked to explain some discrepancy in the missing time on the recording devices or something.

But, my acid-raddled brain just kept saying (maybe even out loud?) "shut up with your goddamn investigation! she has a message from the universe!" and feeling so defeated on her behalf that they were so fixated on the minutiae of the few seconds of missing tape.

That said, while I strongly lean towards Occam's Razor, it hits a bit different when it's delivered by James Woods, both in today's knowledge of James Shitty-Ass Woods and yesteryear's acid trip, and like ... okay, my undying love for Sagan & Druyan.
posted by revmitcz at 2:09 AM on July 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

MetaFilter: I still wouldn't cast Tom Skerritt.

I saw it I think twice in first release and really liked it, but I am not sure I have seen it since. It’s a little too... Zemeckish for my tastes now: for every arresting sequence like the pull-out from cacophony into silence* and the mirror shot, there are things like the Forrest Gumpesque repurposing of a Clinton press conference, and I recall it as an early adopter of the tedious practice of getting Jay Leno and Larry King and the like to play themselves commenting on the events of the movie for some quasiverisimilitude.

It’s also kind of weird to see it as the waning days of Zemeckis’ dominance of the box office. Like Cameron and his subaquatic documentaries, Zemeckis seems to have become hung up on motion capture animation deep in the uncanny valley, and the only live-action things of his I have seen in 20 years are the unremarkable Flight and The Walk.

Still, despite its shortfalls, it was pleasant to have a thoughtful piece of science fiction in a stretch of Independence Day - Armageddon - Men in Black movies.

*Yes, we know the radio signals are not a perfect or even good match for the distances depicted. That is not the point of the shot.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:57 AM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Though that interpretation does make it make a little more sense how the diametrically opposite moral of the movie happened.

I don't agree with this, kinda.

For me, the book is fundamentally *about* the stuff with aliens, and the contact is the message from space, and the rest of the details are still important but are supporting details, not the main event.

The movie is fundamentally *about* Arroway's connections with the people around her, not limited to just Joss, and the alien stuff is the background event that motivates this. The contact in the movie is mostly about Joss, but also things like William Fichtner's blind man being there to hear her because of their connection and contact.

The only thing that makes the emptiness bearable is each other. That's what the movie is about. See also the two Solarises, where the Soderbergh one is so much more about the emotional reality of confronting such a thing than Tarkovsky's.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:33 AM on July 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

My love for Sagan and Druyan is as boundless as the Cosmos.

As time has gone one, the love for Ann Druyan has grown and grown and grown. Learning she was friends with Nora Ephron is the least surprising, most delightful tidbit in a great article.
posted by DigDoug at 6:53 AM on July 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

One of my favorite movies, hands down. The film came out when I was 11, roughly the same age as Young Ellie in the film, and it made a huge impression on me. I was another kid who really looked up to Eleanor Arroway. She was smart, had integrity, was tenacious, and she was not especially charismatic. She came across as a little socially awkward and not interested in making men feel better about themselves. A lot of female characters in sci-fi, action, and fantasy were (and are) Superfluous Female Protagonists. Eleanor felt different, it was actually her story and she was driving the action.

Because of her, I wanted to be an astronomer, and was proud of myself when I acquired enough glow-in-the-dark stars to recreate most of the major constellations on my bedroom ceiling. Then I discovered astronomy mostly involved lots of mathematics (my worst subject), and not so much roaming through Puerto Rico and banging a 28-year-old Matthew McConaughey, or looking super cool while pensively staring at the stars in the desert. But it's still a great film and I still consider Eleanor a role model.
posted by castlebravo at 8:51 AM on July 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

y'all are having a Very Important Conversation but I just wanted to add that I lol'd at Sasha Sagan commenting on Matthew McConaughey: "Proximity to him I think expedited my puberty." 🤣
posted by secretseasons at 10:51 AM on July 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

Metafilter: cheesy and over earnest
posted by theora55 at 12:53 PM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I thought the movie had a strong feminist subtext and, thanks, Carl.

We should recommend it more in what movie should I watch ask.mes.
posted by theora55 at 12:54 PM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Oh, hey. I forgot that GCU Sweet and Full of Grace and I saw this movie together...25 years ago. Sorry for being a butthead about wanting to make fun of the silly parts instead of enjoying the good parts. It's a better movie than I gave it credit for at the time.
posted by straight at 1:41 PM on July 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Naw, the silly parts are pretty silly and the movie has a high corniness factor.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:13 PM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Sasha Sagan:

My dad’s philosophy throughout his life was “We don’t have enough evidence.” With the question of extraterrestrials and so many other deep, profound questions to which we have all been wondering for a millennia — the ability to hold a place for the answer rather than putting something there because it satisfies us in the short term, that is so much of what I learned from my dad.

I really enjoyed reading the article, so much that I started looking for more. Among other things, I ordered her book, For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World

Thanks!
posted by kingless at 2:19 PM on July 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Part of my deep love for this movie is that Matthew McConaughey plays a romantic hero who's a theologian. A really hot theologian, I mean, as we all obviously are in real life. (Please do not investigate this claim.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:17 PM on July 7, 2022 [12 favorites]

If it makes you feel any better, Eyebrows, I have a huge intellectual crush on you, despite our significantly different perspectives on theology, or perhaps because of them. I am as atheistic as they come, but you are the go-to example in my mind that religion, as a human practice, isn't all wrong.
posted by notoriety public at 6:16 PM on July 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

This movie epitomizes for me how something can be perfect for its time and hold up very poorly. As a kid, I saw almost no representation of atheists in media, and they tended to be the villains when depicted at all. So seeing a huge movie with an explicitly atheist star in struggle against believers was almost overwhelming. The ambiguity of the ending resonated, especially, because she knew, knew deep down that she was right, and no one believed her.

Rewatching recently in Blu-Ray on an excellent TV brought me back to earth, so to speak. The effects are not as bad as some movies of that era when displayed in Retrospectravision (tm), but Arroway's opponents come off as paper bag caricatures of Christians. There are still lots of moments of fun and beauty, but it doesn't hold together.

Still, that movie really affected my life. We made two really cool visits to Arecibo before it collapsed (echoes of the movie) and the feeling of searching, maybe finding, has stayed with me. Interesting article.
posted by wnissen at 3:03 PM on July 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

As the transport starts to show the strange luminescence under her feet, Ellie says, "I can't describe it. I can't even explain it." Getting those two verbs in the wrong order is such a lovely, geeky mistake.
posted by Tarn at 1:37 AM on July 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

When I taught high school science, during the astronomy unit I showed this to all my classes. One of my most treasures compliments was that several students said I was just like Ellie. (In retrospect I can't remember if I showed them the whole movie, sex scene and all? Those were different times I guess.)
posted by Illusory contour at 11:53 AM on July 10, 2022 [2 favorites]

I thought the film held up really well. I just re-watched it recently, I thought it was better put together than Arrival.
posted by Oyéah at 8:47 PM on July 10, 2022 [1 favorite]