Contact

Contact is a great movie as far as science fiction is concerned. It is, however, a bad idea to take the movie any more seriously than that. I'll begin with what I like, then show how all of these things are weakness as much as strengths.

• To begin with, the film features a list of highly competent actors. Unless you're a movie buff (I am not) Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey are the only names you're likely to recognize. However, you will surely recognize the faces of Geoffrey Blake, William Fichtner, Tom Skerritt, and Angela Bassett. It surprises me that Jodie Foster gives the least convincing performance was.


• The film exhibits a refreshing sense of wonder that I remember from my youth, and which seems to have disappeared from modern society. It also exposes one to how a lot of science is actually done. People work in teams. Scientists are inspired by experiences from their youths. They have to beg for money and space from the government, research labs, and corporations. Years pass in research with no visible result, and one despairs of success. Scientists have personalities and character, but are (for the most part) not excessively weird. And, yes, there are petty squabbles, political fights, and territorial claims.


• The film has superb special effects. The opening sequence and Ellie's vision are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen in a movie. They were great in the theater, and something is lost on the small screen, but something remains, as well. It goes a long way to contribute to the sense of wonder.


• The film addresses the tension between faith and religion in ways that are not common in the media, or even among many scientists. It attempts to respect both, and in some instances undercuts science's claims that the only things one can believe are those that are experienced, repeatable, and verifiable.


• Any film that brings up Occam's razor twice can't be all bad.

Now to the problems. I'll go in reverse order.

• Occam's razor is applied in a highly selective, questionable manner. I don't want to get into the details., but I can use Occam's razor just as well to suggest that God must exist. (As an argument, I find it no less convincing than the way the film uses it, which is to say poorly.)


• It's true that the film attempts to address the tension between faith and religion. However, it does so superficially, shallowly, and in a mean-spirited towards religious people — like, well, me.
  
  Contact presents true religion as a New-Agey, personal quest for meaning that has no bearing on how we conduct our personal lives. Rob Lowe portrays Richard Rank of the Conservative Coalition, a not-so-subtle slap at Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. Now, I don't entirely approve of Mr. Reed's style of wedding politics to faith, either, but that merely provides another reason to dislike the film: its implicit suggestion that such people represent traditional Christianity. Even more extreme is a suicide bomber whose religious attitudes are not entirely clear.
  
  The only "sane" religious person in the film is a man who abandoned seminary because he couldn't handle "the celibacy thing." I was tempted to holler at him, "Loser!" The man lacked all semblance of self-restraint, to the point where he is sleeping with the protagonist within hours of meeting her. I'm not particularly opposed to married priests, and I know several men who left seminary because they felt they couldn't handle it. However, celibacy was one of the few things in seminary I could handle. It was certainly less difficult than loving one's neighbor. That goes to show how little the world understands of loving one's neighbor.
  
  In the end, religion remained, in the words of the protagonist, a mass delusion suffered by 95% of the world's population, something that scientists dismiss. Not a single scientist in the film considers seriously the prospect of God's existence. One of them uses it to advance his candidacy as a spaceman, but he doesn't appear to believe it. The film suggests that scientists have more important things to consider than religion. It may be valid as long as it remains a source meaning for the unwashed masses, but it has no relevance otherwise.
  
  Contrast this with my experience. My doctoral committee consisted of four professors of mathematics. I had religious conversations with two members of my PhD committee, both initiated by the professors. One is an evangelical with missionary zeal who once questioned the basic ideas of evolutionary theory in class. The other is a European-style Catholic who thinks a lot about the poor and those who work at the bottom of society's employment food chain. With both of them, I had very helpful and thought-provoking conversations on religion. Both are recognized as leaders in the field of computer algebra. I am aware that another of the great mathematicians in computer algebra also has religious beliefs, albeit of the New Age veriety. Many such scientists and PhDs exist, but good luck finding them in a film full of scientists!


• I like the special effects. Can't fault them intelligently, so I won't.


• Some of the material presented as science is bunk. I nearly fell out of my seat laughing after Jodie Foster's character exclaimed breathlessly during a Vegan (?) transmission , "They're base ten numbers!" as if this had some profound meaning.
  
  Hornswoggle. "Base ten" doesn't indicate what kind of numbers you have; it indicates how you write the numbers you have. It's a notation, not a number. "Twenty-six", for example, is the same number whether I write it as 26 (base ten), 11010 (base two), or 1A (base sixteen). It's such an appalling error that I have little confidence that anything in the story is reliable science.
  
  You may propose that, since this is a science fiction movie, such errors are forgivable. I reply by pointing out that the primary author was the late Carl Sagan, God rest his soul, a real scientist who did many things to popularize science in the public imagination. I have a somewhat negative opinion of Sagan, in part because one of my college classmates adored the man to the point of idolatry, but also because I associate him with militant skepticism (perhaps unfairly).
  
  After watching the film again, I decided to see if there was any mention of errors at Wikipedia, and lo! while the movie version makes no mention of such an error, it appears from the writeup on the novel that Sagan made a similar blunder there.
  
  At this point I had to chuckle. I am neither immune to mathematical errors, and I have a PhD in the field. Sagan probably had an effect on my childhood fascination with outer space, so I shouldn't get too worked up. Let's not talk about some of the errors I've found in my dissertation, for example. (All minor and fixable.)



• As regards the attractive actors... ho-hum. Popular culture's enthusiasm for shallow sex perplexes me. The older I get, the more I dislike the use of attractive actors for "good guys" and unattractive, old, or Southern-accented actors for "bad guys", or at least "ignorant guys". The worst example is perhaps Star Trek: Insurrection, a film that was laughably hypocritical about such things.

To clarify, I do like and recommend the film as science fiction to anyone who would like to nurture a sense of wonder in their children. A sense of wonder is a beautiful, inspiring, and eminently human thing. Aristotle identifies it as the beginning of philosophy, and my own Catholicism breathes a sense of wonder at the mysteries of faith: Creation, the Fall, Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Eucharist, Sanctity, etc. Our gadget-cursed society seems to be losing this sense; movies like this are therefore welcome.