They should have sent a poet | Far Flungers

Lasting almost four minutes, this spectacular sequence works almost as a short-movie that resumes, within it, the essence of the film's narrative, which uses an remarkable journey through Science and Universe as a way to illustrate the internal, emotional and psychological trajectory of the complex lead character who combines, in her last name, the significant nouns "arrow" and "way".

Inspired by the superb book by the astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan (who, after dying during the shooting, ended up being intensively honored throughout the movie by the recurring appearance of the letter "C"), Contact is a science fiction that gives similar importance to both terms of the genre: if its fictional narrative is intriguing and well developed, its science never surrenders to the implausible, offering theoretical basis even to its most absurd suppositions and creations. Centered around the careful exploration of the ideas and consequences of its intriguing premise, it shows its courage by never running away from the discussions naturally inspired by its central themes, such as the contra-position/complementation of Science and Religion - and, thus, it presents with no cynicism or criticism the human tendency of, when confronting the unknown, seeking comfort in the supernatural: or does someone doubt that, as seen here, the confirmed contact with an alien species would really lead thousands of scared people to temples and churches all around the world? However, at the same time, the wonderful screenplay by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg balances these great discussions with others of a more intimate nature that flirt with philosophical and existentialistic questions that are common to all of us - among them, of course, death (by asking her father what's the reach of her radio, the little Ellie questions if the machine would be able to get to her mother, who's already dead, establishing the first piece of the thematic rhyme that will be completed when, at the end of her journey made possible by technology, the hero will be reunited with her dead father).

Using scientific concepts like "wormholes" and Einstein-Rosen bridges with the expected ease of characters who spent their lives in the middle of these complexes hypothetical formulations, Contact attracts the audience to its narrative not only because of its didacticism, but, mainly, by constructing a multifaceted and fascinating protagonist, establishing her main motivations through the most important relationship of her life: the one she kept with her father. Played calmly and sweetly by David Morse, Ted Arroway enbodies the condition of a widowed father with apparent tranquility, fulfilling with evident love the fundamental role of expanding the mind of his young daughter (Malone) by having conversations about their shared passion for astronomy. This mind expansion, by the way, is represented in an almost literal way by the map the girl uses to register the most distant places she has ever reached with her radio - an object that, a little later, provides a new and elegant rhyme with the map in which, already a grown up, she will keep the register of the points where (notice the contrast) she couldn't find any kind of intelligent life.

Without offering to his daughter artificial comforts about her mother's death ("Not even the biggest antenna would reach her" is his answer to the question previously mentioned), Ted appears as a rational man who sees the great questions of the universe in a reasonable and pragmatic way, arguing, for example, that the lack of intelligent life outside Earth would be an "awful waste of space" - and his objectivity obviously exerts great influence in the way Ellie, already grown up (and played by Jodie Foster), will face the obstacles ahead. Therefore, it is comprehensible that his early death creates a unavoidable emotional emptiness in his daughter, who isolates herself emotionally at the same time that she uses her father figure as a role model to her romantic adventures, which results in a clear internal conflict (her interest in Matthew McConaughey's character is awaken when he repeats, without knowing, a line originally said by Ted, but it is also his curiosity about Ellie's father that makes the girl step away).