There are two different types of science fiction movies: one that is filled with explosions and fantasy adventure and the other is a more collaborative and cerebral sci-fi drama in which many questions are asked and some questions are answered. You know what, science is a very tricky and complicated subject to tackle because not everything can be answered or solved. In the beginning which a bunch of garbled audio and music is overlapping, it is hinted at the opening of the film that there could be potentially something out there beyond the infinite universe as the camera zooms out into the universe.
This underrated sci-fi movie intertwines the subjects of science and religion to debate whether or not if it is conscientious to send an astronaut or scientist into another dimension who does not believe in God. And, we'll get to that in a minute. But, there are not many cerebral science fiction films nowadays and Robert Zemeckis, even though he has already cemented his name into the movies of science fiction with Back to the Future, he has made a challenging and thought-provoking film that is both emotionally captivating and suspenseful.
Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), a persistent scientist, works for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program in an observatory in Puerto Rico. She has been fascinated by science and exploration ever since she was a child. Because of her fascination, Ellie hopes to listen to a potential radio emission that can be proven that alien life does exist in the universe. She meets a religious scholar named Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) who has a romantic fling and hopes to get an interview with her boss, Presidential Science Advisor, Dr. David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt). Drumlin pulls the funding from SETI because their endeavor is a waste of time. Ellie gains funding from secretive billionaire and engineer S.R. Hadden (John Hurt).
Four years later, Drumlin and the government is threatening close down SETI and take over Ellie's project but Ellie hears a loud, thumping signal repeating a sequence of prime numbers. Their announcement causes Drumlin, his team and the National Security Council led by National Security Advisor Michael Kitz (James Woods) to take over control of the facility. Later, Ellie and her team learns that the signal contains more than 60,000 pages of indecipherable data. Ellie and the scientists try to tirelessly figure out what it is and what it means.
Hadden, while he is reclusive in his mobile jet, secretly meets Ellie as he rarely has guests on his aircraft to discuss her life and a small contribution: he solved the data and found the primer. He explains that they are arranged in three dimensions and reveals schematics for a complex machine holding a single occupant. An international panel is assembled to discuss who gets to go but after Palmer Joss, who is now an Advisor for the President, asks whether or not Ellie believes in God, she answers in a way that is bit ambiguous but reveals that she is an Atheist. Ellie's hopes are down because the panel selects Drumlin because they think he is they symbol of humanity. However, a tragedy occurs during the test of the machine and all hope and unanswered questions may be lost...or are they?
SPOILER ALERT!
I want to start on the character of Ellie Arroway. As the movie opens, Ellie is a child who is trying to reach a signal as far as possible using a radio. She successfully reaches as far as Florida. She gets along with her father real well who is played by David Morse as he also supports her and her love for science and astronomy. When her father dies, a priest tells young Ellie that it is merely God's will to take away somebody that anybody care about. But when this tragedy occurs, she trumps people's religious beliefs to science because whenever she is alone (witnessed as young and older Ellie is wrapping around herself next to her legs), the only other compatible "member" left in her world is science as she is now wrapped around logic to avoid religious beliefs as we witness in the movie as she in an atheist.
Her counterpart, Palmer Joss, who loves Ellie, believes in God but during one hearing when they ask most candidates who are going on the test certain questions but when he brings up the subject about the belief in God, Ellie pauses and hesitates to answer. She believes it is irrelevant. It is risky but also rewarding to have two people who are romantically involved with each other challenge each other with the debate between science and religion. There is a scene with is a bit needless but they challenge each other regarding proof. Ellie challenges Palmer if God exists and Palmer challenges Ellie regarding her love for her father, even though he has died. Now, religion is viewed in this movie from two sides: there is Palmer who believes in it as good and there's another religious fanatic who is a terrorist who claims that he uses religion for the good of mankind which he destroys the first Machine by bombing it.
This is a more character-driven film than a science fiction film, for example, in the clip above, S.R. Hadden who has been financing her project was "a hell of an engineer." In this story, Hadden, in the scene, could be symbolized as an angel who was taking care of Ellie or a devil who was manipulating Ellie because she is so persistent of getting to the bottom of the solution. The answer lies within the final hearing towards the end of the movie. It is very clear how Hadden is viewed but also, it is a little less clear whether or not Ellie traveled into space or another dimension from the point of view of other political people.
It is not a flawless science fiction film. Zemeckis focuses more on the narrative drive on both the emotional drama and the science than the special effects. Even though most of the special effects are good, some of it is dated like the moment when Zemeckis does the same trick like he did in Forrest Gump when he inserted Bill Clinton in a panel. The journey is actually much more interesting than the destination because its destination is a bit questionable and has one flaw that I was skeptical about as to how the aliens connected with Ellie. Jodie Foster is what sells this movie as I believed in her as a scientist who is capable and determined to find extra terrestrials in the universe. Matthew McConaughey's character got interesting in the second half but I did not like how they used him in the first 30 minutes as just a sly character who has a one-night stand with Foster's character. However, it is a dazzling and cerebral film that is not as challenging as Interstellar, 2001 or Close Encounters of the Third Kind but the journey is both entertaining and complex to go on for a ride.
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