Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1214 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-09-25
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Digital Sound, Dolby, PAL, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 144 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The opening and closing moments of Robert (Forrest Gump) Zemeckis's Contact astonish viewers with the sort of breathtaking conceptual imagery one hardly ever sees in movies these day--each is an expression of the heroine's lifelong quest (both spiritual and scientific) to explore the meaning of human existence through contact with extraterrestrial life. The movie begins by soaring far out into space, then returns dizzyingly to earth until all the stars in the heavens condense into the sparkle in one little girl's eye. It ends with that same girl as an adult (Jodie Foster)--her search having taken her to places beyond her imagination--turning her gaze inward and seeing the universe in a handful of sand. Contact traces the journey between those two visual epiphanies. Based on Carl Sagan's novel, Contact is exceptionally thoughtful and provocative for a big-budget Hollywood science fiction picture, with elements that recall everything from 2001 to The Right Stuff. Foster's solid performance (and some really incredible alien hardware) keep viewers interested, even when the story skips and meanders, or when the halo around the golden locks of rising-star-of-a-different-kind Matthew McConaughey (as the pure-Hollywood-hokum love interest)reaches Milky Way-level wattage. Ambitious, ambiguous, pretentious, unpredictable--Contact is all of these things and more. Much of it remains open to speculation and interpretation but whatever conclusions one eventually draws, Contactdeserves recognition as a rare piece of big-budget studio film making on a personal scale. --Jim Emerson

Video Description
DVD Special Features

Interactive Menus
Production Notes
Scene Access
Trailers
Language in Dolby Digital 5.1: English
Subtitles: English/Arabic/English for the hearing impaired

Synopsis
Devoted astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway undertakes an emotional and spiritual journey after receiving the message she's waited for all her life--a mysterious signal beamed in from alien beings, who pass along instructions for building and piloting a craft that will presumably survive the passage from Earth to their home. While struggling to fund her mission, Arroway also struggles with her feelings about the nature of things, particularly after meeting a charismatic New Age believer who questions her disbelief in God. A deliberately-paced, meditative adaptation of the eponymous novel by Ann Druyan and "pop" astronomer Carl Sagan, who died during production. Academy Award Nomination: Best Sound.

Customer Reviews

Good film marred by juvenile argument
I had fond memories of seeing this film years ago when it first came out, but I guess I have matured a lot in the intervening time. My most recent viewing left me with a slightly bad taste in my mouth.
Taken as a whole, the film isn't too bad. It might be slow going in parts, but it progresses at an acceptable pace, and is especially interesting from the point of the machines construction. The special effects are pretty good given that it is 10 years old now, and I thought the alien contact scene was fairly well done. It alluded to advanced beings, yet the brief dialogue and nature of the meeting left a lot of possibilities open.
My main problem with this film is how it structured the conflict between religion and science. While the main protagonists play their parts to a fairly high standard; for seemingly intelligent people, their arguments were juvenile to say the least. A first year university student would be able to spot and name the fallacies which make an appearance as 'legitimate' argument in the scenes between Palmer Joss and Ellie Arroway. This has the effect of lowering the intelligence of the film.
So while I enjoyed the film, I feel the poor thought and weak argument given to the central theme pulled the film down as a whole, although even this area of weakness couldn't take away from the final 10-20 minutes.

Profound
It's pleasing to see so many people with such great affection for this film. It has, after all, everything a mainstream move should have: brains, beauty, and a little bit of stardust.

The transcendentally brilliant Jodie Foster puts in a great performance as Ellie Arroway, a wide-eyed little girl in a woman's body. After the death of her father (David Morse), Ellie becomes a star-gazer, convinced there can be no God. It's a simple, convincing, and rather moving set up, always propelling the story, even when the big themes rear their head. In, say, Spielberg's hands, this emotional core might have become cloying. But director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriters James V Hart and Michael Goldenberg tell the story almost entirely from the point of view of a heroine who is essentially an innocent in a world of cynical agendas. So when Ellie takes her voyage, those downplayed final scenes feel true, not mawkish.

There are subtleties here which enrich the experience. Ellie is eventually blessed with her opportunity by the benign, paternal Hadden (John Hurt), who - unlike her own father - is able to cheat death. Also, why does Ellie not share Palmer's (Matthew McConaughey) fear of death? She purports to hold no fear of God; and yet, deep down, doesn't she truly wish to join her father, wherever he might be... in Heaven, perhaps? Like all good science fiction, Contact reinforces our belief in a power beyond science, rather than denying it.

Something Very Different and Unique
Contact is something completely different. It's belongs to the the ever diminishing group of sci-fi with brains. Because of this. It's very understandable that it gets negative feedback from the friends of no-brainer sci-fi. Actually i find it quite funny how many people have criticized the ending of Contact, saying that they were disappointed when they didn't see how the aliens looked like. I think that was one of the least important things in this movie. Still, i would've been disappointed if there had been some green alien with tentacles or one of those little grey Roswell aliens. Instead, they made an excellent choice and didn't show us the aliens at all. Really good and brave decision. In my opinion, if you were disappointed when you didn't see aliens, you didn't really understand this movie.

The religion vs. science setting is really interesting and realistic. It's fits extremely well to modern day life and i have never seen it done better in any film. The best thing about it is that the film doesn't take sides. It just portrays both of them and leaves the decision to the viewer.