Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The intro to "Contact" is one of my favorite scenes of all time; when the film was in theaters I made a point to catch four or five late-night showings so that I could enjoy it on the big-screen. Watching it on YouTube isn't quite as affecting, but the sheer sense of scale is undiminished.



The sequence's stupefying rush of planets, galaxies and galactic clusters leaves me with an agreeable sense of vertigo. I want to keep gazing into the void even if doing so invites the void to gaze back. Indeed, provoking a rapport with the emptiness may prove to be part of our duty as a species.
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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of my favourite movies of all time.

7:29 AM
Tony F. said...

One of the cheesiest films of all time! The plucky, fiesty scientist who fights for funding from the skeptical, furrow-browed government, the "suthern boyah" who preaches the word of God and asks, "Are we happier?", and of course the eccentric, Ghandi-looking entrepreneur who might as well wear a sign that says, "Deus ex Machina."

And then she travels through time and space, through wormholes, galaxies, clusters, nebulae to land on a beach in the South Pacific where she comes face to face with...

...her dad!

Now, let's get on with talking about a REAL contact movie that we can all agree upon... Mars Attacks.

8:37 AM
Anonymous said...

I wouldn't say it was the best or the cheesiest, but it did give Sagan's vision justice.

7:01 PM
Anonymous said...

Re the opening clip, I like the idea of going back through time via radio/TV broadcasts as one journeys farther and farther out and away from Earth. It's also apt, because the thesis (or "gimmick" if you will) is that it is just such broadcasts that trigger the ETI data flood that leads to the building of the Stargate and Ellie Arroway's fantastic voyage.

(Yeah, meeting up with her sim Dad after all that may seem a bit hokey but her sim Dad does have one wonderful line that sent chills up my spine and still sticks in my mind:

"It's been done this way for billions of years.")

10:16 PM
Mac said...

"Contact's" basic narrative structure is indeed hokey. And not without its share of annoying inconsistencies. I suppose I'm actually a little surprised how much I like the movie -- although had I written the script the meeting with dad never would have been filmed.

10:22 PM
Chris said...

I'll never forget the chill that ran up my spine when the radio signals from earth fall silent.

12:55 AM
Mac said...

Chris--

Exactly. That's what did it for me too.

1:16 AM
Anonymous said...

The signals fell silent because we discovered telepathy

11:40 AM
Anonymous said...

There's a cool Pink Floyd version to this as well, different footage, same concept, worth checking out.From 'The Division Bell' album.

1:17 AM

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