When Ellie Arroway Makes First Contact in Contact (1997)

Title: Contact
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Language: English
Rating: PG

In Contact, Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), who for years has been involved in a search for extraterrestrial life, gets to make face-to-face contact with an alien.

It's a disorienting sequence of events, with ambiguity as to what happens (and how it happens). It's also the most visually beautiful part of the movie. Arroway, committed to recording what she is seeing as she glimpses new parts of the galaxy, is almost robbed of speech by how magnificent everything is. With tears in her eyes, she talks about how officials should have sent a poet to be the ambassador of humanity. Maybe a poet could have found words, though I think a poet would have been overwhelmed too. I especially liked Foster's performance in this sequence; it was moving.

The moment of first contact itself is part of this resplendence. It's a gentle connection, full of beauty and wonder and humility. The being she encounters assumes the form of her father, who passed away when she was a child, and this image becomes a metaphor of how this alien species views humans. The aliens are more advanced and mentor-like (though not close to all-knowing); the humans are fledglings, not yet prepared to become part of the web of species that have established communication with each other.

I smile thinking about how a movie involving an extraterrestrial experience makes you appreciate humanity more, as brutish and arrogant as we can be. (What's likely the first sign of us that aliens pick up is a broadcast of Hitler's speech at the 1936 Olympics.) The movie celebrates the potential of humanity, and not just our potential for destruction.

I liked the portrayal of science: the enthusiasm, obsessiveness, long hard slogs, and careful thought and preparations. Also the fight for grant money, and the stress of dealing with politics and with other people sliding in to take attention and credit from you. (As in The Silence of the Lambs, Jodie Foster plays a woman in a field dominated by men and fed up with the politics and power plays.)

Contact also discusses faith, the awe and humility in faith. The main proponent of faith and religious belief in the movie is Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey). McConaughey's performance is mostly about looking calm and wise, and Palmer's function is mostly to remind Ellie that there are different kinds of "unknown" and "unseen," and that science alone can't provide guidance about developing a meaningful life. (He also isn't "anti-science.") Humility and a sense of wonder are (or should be) a part of faith and a part of scientific discovery; we are questing beings – humble, thoughtful, and courageous at our best.

Week in Seven Words #382

meditative
In the late evening, a man does Tai Chi by the river. His fluid, practiced movements make him a graceful silhouette against the last blaze of sunlight on the water.

meteorology
We're at a long rectangular table. It seems to be under the influence of different weather phenomena. At the far end, three people are rumbling with thunderous anger. In a chair near them, a woman suddenly smiles and speaks in a reassuring voice, like sunlight breaking through clouds. Among the children, there's balmy, breezy weather; they're relaxed, laughing and chatting.

noting
His explorations take him through a room full of alcohol, oysters, and chatter. (What are people eating and wearing? How is the restaurant organized, indoors and outdoors?) We watch volleyball players next. "What do you notice about them?" he asks. I mention that they're all men, roughly 25-40 years old. Maybe they're co-workers or in an amateur league. But there's something else I haven't mentioned. "Look at how they're all smiling," he says. He's noticed their happiness.

portraits
In quiet corners of the elevated park, people are curled up on benches - sometimes in pairs or in small groups of friends, other times reading alone or murmuring into their phones. One woman meditates in lamplight. The park snakes past apartment buildings on the level of their upper floors. The window shades are not entirely effective. There are still glimpses of life at home: a pair of feet in a foot bath, the flicker of a TV, an empty, neatly made bed, an empty bathtub in dim blue light.

serenely
Clouds coast on a baby blue sky. The horizon has softened to a shade of peach. Fishermen set up a boom box that plays soft percussive music.

telescope
It's amazing that this is really Jupiter I'm seeing - the pinprick of light resolving into an image of the distant planet. Almost as if I could touch it.

theme
The dance she comes up with is a sequence of summer images: bees, sprinklers, back strokes, ocean waves, and sunshine.

Good Short Fiction: The Sentinel (Arthur C. Clarke)

Title: The Sentinel
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Where I read it: Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen (edited by Stephanie Harrison)

Synopsis
One member of an exploratory expedition on the moon spots a strange and glittering object in the mountains overlooking the Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). It's probably nothing - just a rock. But he can't help thinking that it's something else entirely.

Some reasons to read it

• Clarke conveys the epic possibility of outer space. He invites us to consider the scope of the universe and the life it possibly harbors. Even the moon, which is close and superficially familiar to us, becomes a mysterious place with a rich unknown past.
  

  We had crossed a hundred miles of it in a week, skirting the foothills of the mountains along the shore of what was once the ancient sea, some thousand million years before. When life was beginning on Earth, it was already dying here. The waters were retreating down the flanks of those stupendous cliffs, retreating into the empty heart of the Moon.

  
  
• He mixes some light humor and prosaic details (making sausages for breakfast aboard the exploratory tractor) with passages of unearthly discovery.
  
  
• The lyrical lunar names (Mare Crisium, Oceanus Procellarum), which are a part of the poetry of space exploration.
  
  
• Suspense builds throughout the story: what is that glittering object spotted among the cliffs and mountains? How did it get there, and what is its purpose?
  
  
• The ideas and events in The Sentinel were part of the inspiration for the novel and movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey (however The Sentinel is very different in scope and content - regardless of what you think about 2001, this story is worth reading).
  

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Other stories from this collection include these three, these four, and these three.

Many moons and wonders

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

But these photos show us things that can't be seen with the unaided eye. Like Titan and Rhea, two moons of Saturn:





Click on the photo to see more amazing images from space. If unlike Whitman you'd like to know what each one is there's an explanation on every page.

Earth feels precious and improbable to me, after I look at these.