'Contact' hits the world beyond with movie magic<\/p>\n
By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Contact, which has been lauded as the year's
\n\"thinking man's sci-fi\", may have taken some time to arrive at
\nour multiplexes, but it's really worth the wait.<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, its glorious opening sequence, an eye-
\npopping triumph of special effects. You're on this tour of the
\nuniverse, and suddenly you sense being pulled back into the
\ndepths of space, right past all the planets. All TV and radio
\nsignals -- the bedrock of human civilization -- die out as you
\ntravel further away from our own solar system, and the journey
\ngrows ever more enchanting as it zips through a maze of stars and
\ngalaxies.<\/p>\n
All of a sudden, you enter total blackness, which finally
\nwinds up in the pupil of 9-year-old Ellie Arroway (Jena Malone),
\nwho is tinkering with her short-wave radio, trying to communicate
\nwith her dead mother in the great galactic beyond. Her father's
\ndeath soon after strengthens her quest for the meaning of life.
\nJust as this introduction presages the fiercely determined
\nastronomer she will become, the sumptuous opening sequence is a
\nhint of the many cinematic wonders Contact holds in store.<\/p>\n
Later, we see a grown-up Ellie (Jodie Foster), whose encounter
\nwith eccentric industrialist S.R. Hadden (John Hurt) gives her
\nthe private funding she needs to continue her search for
\nextraterrestrial life. Her dedication pays off when she picks up
\nand decodes a message from the star Vega, which contains
\ninstructions to construct some sort of transportation device
\nwhich would bring man into its first direct contact with aliens.
\nIn no time, Ellie finds herself catapulted into the center of a
\nmedia-feeding frenzy.<\/p>\n
No less than director Robert Zemeckis has tuned in to
\nHollywood's perennial question \"Is Anybody Out There?\". This
\ntime, his philosophical baggage consists of the 1985 bestseller
\nby late celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan. Being a proud, self-
\nstyled populist, Zemeckis set out to turn the story into two and
\na half hours of pure movie magic.<\/p>\n
He delivers, splicing everything from Stanley Kubrick's 2001:
\nA Space Odyssey and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the
\nThird Kind, to heavy duty elements of suspense, drama, romance
\nand politics that remain, for the most part, intriguing to the
\nlast reel.<\/p>\n
After all, here's a man whose gift for fantasy has made him
\none of the industry's most engaging storytellers. Not only was he
\nthe brain behind Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,
\nbut he also proved in that feel-good, hysterical baby-boomer
\nfudge called Forrest Gump how to succeed less on a character than
\non a concept, providing one knows which buttons to push.<\/p>\n
But to those put off by Gump's self-reverential aura, Contact
\nmay also seem a little bloated for its own good. At junctures,
\nZemeckis' vanity tends to get the better of him as he lines up
\nmedia bigwigs around Ellie. Here's a man so obsessed with TV
\nmedia as the watermark for credibility that it's hard to tell
\nwhether his fetish for it is in fact a parody (after all, he
\nstarted out as a Mad-style satirist) or a statement of faith.<\/p>\n
Forcing Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey, the media's current
\npin-up boy) into Ellie's life also begs the same question -- is
\nit satire or plain overkill? This sleazy, splendidly coiffed New-
\nAge theologist, just about as improbable a character as it comes,
\nis an example of the miscasting that can abruptly stunt any
\nactor's career, let alone a rising star.<\/p>\n
Screenwriters Michael Goldenberg and James V. Hart fashioned a
\nstrong, engrossing character in Ellie, but their inspiration died
\nthere. James Woods is a skeptical National Security Adviser who
\nis all bureaucratic paranoia, Tom Skerritt plays Ellie's
\nobligatory kill-joy boss, and Angela Bassett turns in another
\ndeadpan performance as a presidential adviser. Commanding
\nperformances in their own right, they are ultimately burdened by
\nthe mainstream demand for clear-cut caricatures.<\/p>\n
By any stretch of the imagination, however, the movie is a
\npiece de resistance, and not even Zemeckis' desire for prestige
\nand legitimacy can change that. Contact is both epic and
\nintimate, confident but sensitive, richly metaphorical but
\nstrangely close-to-the-ground. It not only manages to imprison us
\nin a vision, but also salvage all the elements that have long
\nleft our cinema: passion, intelligence and idealism.<\/p>\n
Nothing that Foster has done in her illustrious, Oscar-winning
\ncareer approaches the honest conviction of Ellie, and she really
\ngives the movie its soul. But she is not the only reason why
\nContact is so -- in the words of Carl Sagan himself --
\n\"impactful\". Don Burgess' cinematography proves the right canvas
\nfor Zemeckis' visual imagination: it's all a marvel of elegance
\nand virtuosity of the highest order. Special effects are not only
\neffectively realized, but give all key events a sense of rousing
\nmomentum (kudos should go to Sony Pictures Imageworks).<\/p>\n
In the movie's most alluring moments -- including the
\nbreathtaking sequence when Ellie sits aboard the space capsule of
\nher wildest dreams, an astronomer-turned-astronaut awaiting the
\ncountdown of her life -- it's hard to ignore our own primal sense
\nof cosmic wonderment, willing us to be buoyed and transported
\nalong.<\/p>\n
That is until we hit the finale, which offers a breezy,
\nambiguous, Hollywood kind of resolution that may disappoint those
\nsearching for hard, critical answers. As it turns out, Ellie is
\nunwilling to shed her scientific skin by admitting the existence
\nof God (although her meeting with the Vegan suggests otherwise).
\nInstead, to appease all the men and women of faith out there, she
\nacknowledges, in an embarrassingly glib way, that there is indeed
\na higher being that science cannot even begin to rationalize.<\/p>\n
Zemeckis may not have answered all the questions he
\npostulates, yet there's no denying that he's presented an
\nenthralling ride over rugged cerebral terrain, and taken chances
\nwhere others fear to tread. Whatever our beliefs are, Contact is
\nlikely to appeal to both our intellect and emotion, because, in
\none way or another, we have asked ourselves the same set of
\nquestions: Why are we here? What are we doing here? Who are we?<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/contact-hits-the-world-beyond-with-movie-magic-1447893297",
"image": ""
},
"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
}