Contact (1997): A Collection of Uplifting Movie Scenes
Comics and reflections based on my favorite scenes from a movie that helped me during a challenging time.
The movie Contact (1997) uplifted my spirits when I was experiencing the most discomfort in my life after a nose surgery and back injury. It helped me go beyond my body into the vastness of beauty that's in and around us. It reminded me that I am precious and to be patient during challenging times. To rest in faith, stay strong, and listen for the truth with my whole being rather than just my head.
To watch the movie clips in this post, it’s best to rent or buy Contact on YouTube. This way, when you click the Watch Scene links below, you’ll arrive at the film scenes in a high quality, certified version of the movie. This approach supports my dream of creating the “Kindle of movies” so you can easily save your favorite scenes in movies you own, like you can easily save your favorite passages in Kindle books. If you already own a license to Contact on a different platform like Prime Video or Apple TV, you can connect it to YouTube with Movies Anywhere.
Enjoy!
Tiny, Precious Earth
Radio signals emanate from earth, including the transmission of the song Funkytown by Lipps Inc, a press conference clip of Richard Nixon proclaiming he's not a crook, a portion of Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech, along with other recordings that capture the "interesting mix" of humanity — all our "beautiful dreams" and "horrible nightmares" that the alien species refers to later in the movie during the beach scene.
This opening scene in Contact provides initial context for Ellie's realization at the end of the movie: that we are tiny and seemingly insignificant but extremely rare and precious. By zooming out from the earth into the entirety of the cosmos, we can experience that in a practical way — no spiritual awakening or alien encounter necessary.
I was curious about which space elements were included in the opening scene scene so asked the Reddit community. This is the best answer I received:
“I'm not an astronomer but I think this is pretty close: Earth, moon, Mars, asteroid belt, Io, Jupiter, Saturn, Kuiper Belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri, Eagle Nebula (Pillars of Creation), Milky Way, Large Magellanic Cloud, and Centaurus A galaxy. After that I think it's just a random collection of galaxies and clusters as it zooms out.” - @pinchhitter4number1 in r/cosmology
After reading this and rewatching the scene, I learned that the two bluish stars at 0:02:04 are part of Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our sun. And at 0:02:32 are the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, made famous when NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of them in 1995. However, the thick columns of dust and gas are so far away that the light collected was emitted 6,500 years ago.
Are You There?
After her dad dies, Ellie tries to contact him with the radio transmitter that he trained her to use. She finely tunes the signal dial, hoping to catch the heavenly wavelength he is on.
"Dad, are you there?" she asks. "Come back."
More than anything, this scene made me grateful for my dad. While I was experiencing complications from my surgery, he took care of me. He reassured me that everything was okay, brought me breakfast in bed, ran errands for me, and let me take over his house with pillows and blankets. It was a great bonding experience and a silver lining to all the pain.
This scene also made me realize that my family members who have passed are always within contact through prayer. I see Ellie's transmission as her prayer and her decision to transmit as her faith in something that science hasn’t quite figured out yet.
I'm now encouraged to ask my deceased grandmas and grandpas to comfort me during my meditation time later today. I want to feel their love and presence. And I know I can because, before writing this paragraph, I thought of them while holding the essence of this scene in my heart and felt their love. I did not know two of them in the flesh but love transcends the physical. This is no mind trick. It is a direct experience from love.
Later in the movie, we see that Ellie has lost much of this faith as an adult, but it's regained after her "contact" experience. She is not contacted by aliens in a physical way, rather in an esoteric way that defies science. Love is the lynchpin of this timeless, unprovable experience.
It's My Life
When Ellie learns that Drumlin has pulled the plug on her SETI effort in Puerto Rico, she confronts him about it. He says she's "too promising a scientist to be wasting her gifts on this nonsense." But it's her life, and the reward of remaining patient toward the sky could result in the greatest discovery in human history.
Staying true to what you love is challenging to begin with, and made more challenging by the Drumlins of the world. These can even be colleagues, friends, and family members who project their own fear and dissuade you from pursuing what you love.
To them, superficial status is a better bet because it's easy to understand. Plus, if you follow them, they don't have to feel bad about abandoning their own dreams. If they can perpetuate the cycle of fear-based decision making among others, they don't have to exert the incredible energy that's needed to rediscover what they love. That would put a wrench in their cozy little life!
To them, you're either this or that. There's no in-between. But this-or-that wears on you slowly over time. You get depressed, stressed, bored, and diseased. You become stuck in the system. You die with regret.
Not Ellie. Not me. Not you. This scene inspires us to pursue what we love at all costs. To not get scared by the status quo, and to remember that the greatest achievements require the scariest sacrifice: leaving what feels safe. Ellie could have a safe career studying the stars, but she wants to listen for what might be living around them instead.
She understands that she may not make significant progress in her lifetime, but that she can make some progress. Great discoveries and achievements must start somewhere. Also, compared to listening to planets surrounding 400 billion stars in search of extraterrestrial life, I'm sure doing what you love is much more practical. So go ahead and do it. And remember: "Small moves."
Nutty Idea
After spending 13 months trying to get money to rent telescope time at the government-run satellite station in New Mexico with no success, Ellie presents her final case to investors at Hadden Industries. Their response to her proposal is that it sounds "less like science and more like science fiction."
Ellie counters with historical accomplishments that once seemed "nutty" and also like science fiction, such as getting people to fly around like birds in something called an airplane, breaking the sound barrier, sending people to the moon, creating atomic energy, and embarking on a mission to Mars.
The nuttiest ideas are the ideas that yield the most interesting accomplishments and creations. But people often avoid them because there are too many unknowns. Not knowing is scary. But the ironic thing is that this is life: not knowing what will happen. Ellie embraces this, as does S.R. Hadden, the famous tech industrialist looking through the boardroom cameras who greenlights her funding.
This scene inspires me to persevere in creating something original as an independent creator and freelance content marketer. As an independent creator, I am always experimenting with new ways to differentiate Scene Lift and make it more than just a text-driven movie blog. And, as a freelance content marketer, I am starting to present the idea of business comics to existing clients and prospects. A company creating a comic instead of an article sounds "nutty" at first — until the comic is widely shared, outperforms articles, and inspires other companies to create their own comics.
Which nutty idea do you have?
Going It Alone
Four years after receiving SETI funding from S.R. Hadden, Drumlin wants to shut down Ellie's research once again. Her colleague Kent tells her that the government doesn't want the "high priestess of the desert" leasing their telescopes and that stories of her "staring at static on TV and listening to washing machines" have made her a joke to the science community. In three months, the government will make them vacate the research facility.
At this point, even Kent has lost faith, the person she can trust the most who had the idea of leasing the telescopes in New Mexico in the first place.
"Could you face reality, please? Just this once, Ellie. We lost. It's over."
After saying this, it gets quiet in the room. It's as if we can hear the silence with the same intensity as Kent who is blind. He listens for a response, perhaps not wanting to believe what he has said, perhaps waiting for Ellie to touch his shoulder and say, "This is our life. We have to keep going."
Instead, she swallows the fact that her most respected colleague has lost hope and replies:
"I'm not stopping. If I have to go it alone, I'll go it alone. I've done it before."
This scene is about perseverance reaching its critical point. It's like a final test. When everyone turns their back on you — even your friends — will you turn your back on what you love? Does your mission inspire you enough to go it alone? If so, this is a sign you're on the right path, pursuing the right mission, doing something that is meaningful.
What Matters
Ellie is manually monitoring the sounds of the sky with headphones on a clear, cool night, laying on the hood of her old Mustang convertible. Meanwhile, her colleagues in the office are watching a Larry King interview with Palmer Joss, Ellie's acquaintance and a theologian who thinks people are disconnected with what matters because of science and technology.
While aspects of this may be true, we see that it's unwise to make such a generalization. We can see that Ellie is content under the night sky, surrounded by powerful telescopes and plugged into the sounds of radio frequencies being sent to her headphones from a computer. She is as connected as anyone can be to what matters. And this connection leads to a great discovery: alien transmissions from the sun called Vega.
Connecting to what matters looks different for everyone, so the best we can do is follow what feels true. Science and technology have little to do with it. They are merely things that surround us and are not responsible for the degree to which we are connected to what matters. In some cases, they are a blocker to connection; in other cases, they enable connection.
It's an interesting move by the movie's director, Robert Zemeckis, showing Palmer Joss asking Larry King: "Is it any wonder that we lost our sense of direction?" — and then immediately cutting to Ellie, the character with the clearest sense of direction in the movie who happens to be a scientist using advanced technology.
I think the takeaways from this scene are: 1) find what's meaningful to you, 2) don't let people tell you how to connect to what's meaningful, and 3) technology is neither good or bad but used in good or bad ways.
Proving Love
During the reception to celebrate the alien discovery, Ellie explains to Joss the scientific principle of Occam's Razor that states: all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. Then she asks him:
"What's more likely? An all-powerful mysterious God created the universe and decided not to give any proof of his existence, or that he simply doesn't exist at all and we created him so we wouldn't have to feel so small and alone?"
This scientific principle doesn't cause Joss to question his faith in God, and Ellie doesn’t understand how he can delude himself into believing in God without proof. But he has proof. Not scientific proof. Rather, a proof that is felt. A proof he relates to love...
"Did you love your father?" he asks.
"Yes," Ellie says. "Very much."
"Prove it," he says.
Which leaves Ellie speechless. Though she loved her father, there is no way to scientifically prove it. What is she going to do? Hook herself up to a neurotransmitter machine, think of her father, and see whether the "love hormone" oxytocin is activated? This stunt would ruin the sanctity of the truth that she loved him.
You don't need to prove love, just like you don't need to prove God. Probably because they are so closely connected, if not the same thing. It's a scientific dilemma that makes life mysterious and awesome, which is ultimately realized by Ellie toward the end of the movie.
There have been a few times in my life when I felt a love so powerful, often spontaneously and out of nowhere, that I was reminded about the presence of God. I could not scientifically prove it but could feel it. I wrote about those experiences here. I could have been deluded of course.
Searching for Something
While walking by a pond near the Washington Monument in DC, Joss asks Ellie why she is willing to risk her life on a mission to contact the aliens. Ellie brushes off the risk as part of being a scientist and explorer, but Joss digs deeper. He asks why she as a human is willing to die for this exploration.
"For as long as I can remember I've been searching for something, some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we? If this is a chance to find out just a little part of that answer, I think it's worth a human life."
Ellie claims she doesn't believe in God, but Ellie's "search for something" is similar to Joss's search for God. And her willingness to give her life to this search is similar to Joss's faith in God.
In either case, the search for why we're here can be confusing, and it's in this confusion where they find undisputed, common ground for the first time in the movie.
Exploring this unworldly stuff is not easy, but it's important since the power beyond the physical world is a truth that helps us realize that we are forever safe and that everything is perfect. Some call this love, some call this God, and some simply call it something. How we define it can get confusing, but how it touches our hearts is the same all around.
Wanna Take a Ride?
This is one of my favorite scenes in the movie so I dedicated an individual post to it. In the post, I write about how the scene probably inspired a scene in the movie Tenet (2018) made by Christopher Nolan decades later.
OK to Go
Ellie is about to take the ride of her life, but people within the control tower get nervous when the alien ship approaches the abort limits and communication with Ellie is lost. At this point, the control tower commander pulls out the red Abort switch. He doesn’t want anyone else to die on his watch.
As the ship rattles, a wormhole forms beneath her, and the breath is sucked out of her from the intense g-force, she continues to whisper..
“OK to go. I’m OK to go.”
Discomfort and fear don’t let her lose sight of what matters: getting closer to discovering the “something” she’s been looking for.
After this test of endurance, Ellie is released into the wormhole.
When I watched this scene for the first time, I was experiencing intense discomfort from the nose surgery and back injury. I often found it hard to breathe since my nose was plugged with splints. I would also get dizzy spells. And when I tried to get more comfortable, pain would shoot down my back into my leg. It felt like I was hovering above a wormhole of my own. Everything was distorted. But this scene inspired me to let go of the fear that was making the situation worse.
In reality, everything was OK. I was just stuck in my own fear that I would pass out, that this discomfort would last forever, and that my nose would not heal properly. Thanks to this scene, I was able to replace the fear with being OK to go. Regardless of what happened, everything would be OK. The only thing I had to do was let go and let my life ship lead the way.
I Had No Idea
When Ellie’s spaceship finishes traveling through the wormhole, she experiences a “celestial event” that triggers the same awe Joss described near the beginning of the movie (00:18:02) when sharing his spiritual awakening experience with her. Similar to how Joss’s “intellect couldn’t touch” what he experienced, Ellie has no scientific words to explain what she is experiencing. All she can do is silently proclaim how beautiful it is.
Her experience continues as she floats down to the alien planet like a sleeping baby inside a mother’s womb. This is what Joss might call her rebirth — what Jesus Christ referred to when he said…
“Unless one is born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Now she sees it, and her life will never be the same again. She is still a scientist, but also a person of faith in what cannot be explained in scientific terms. This is beauty. This is poetry. This is God. She can now connect with the 95% of people in the world who believe in God — a great blessing for a scientist.
I don’t know too much about Carl Sagan, the astronomer who wrote the original script for this movie with his wife, but it seems like he is suggesting here that science can fall short of describing what is true. Sometimes a special experience can uncover more truth than science. Or it can provide meaning to what science explains. Either way, opening oneself to what’s explainable as well as unexplainable seems like the way to go.
I Had an Experience
During a special executive inquiry, Ellie admits that she has no physical evidence to back up her story about what happened inside the spaceship and that she may have hallucinated the experience. However, she is unable to withdraw her testimony when pressed by ex-national security advisor, Michael Kitz.
“I had an experience. I can’t prove it. I can’t even explain it. But everything I know as a human being, everything I am, tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe that tells us undeniably how tiny and insignificant, and how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves.”
An experience like this is a powerful force, and it’s nearly impossible for people who have not experienced something similar to truly believe someone who has. This is because the mysteries of life can’t be understood with the mind. To truly believe requires a special experience of your own. This is why people take acid, do kundalini yoga, and go to India. They want to remember the truth that they are precious and everything is perfect.
What I love about Ellie’s character is that she is in no rush to discover the mystery — what she calls extraterrestrial life rather than God. She is persistent but does not force it. She is okay with not discovering anything in this lifetime. She loves what she does and that is enough. The grace of the experience is a bonus.
On a general level, this can be compared to someone praying, meditating, reading spiritual texts, or loving themselves and others on a regular basis. They are not forcing some otherworldly experience to happen. However, they are opening themselves enough to allow it to happen.
What’s tricky about these experiences is that they have no form. But the person who receives them receives them in a real way. This is the basis of most spiritual texts. People called prophets receive special messages from an unknown source who they refer to as God. These messages can’t be scientifically explained but they feel real to the prophet. They are the same type of message that Ellie shares at the executive inquiry.
Based on my experience with “experiences,” if you share your experience with someone and they believe you — or do their best to believe you — they are the people worth keeping around. It’s best to say farewell to everyone else. Your life is changed forever.
If you enjoyed the series and like the idea of saving your favorite movie scenes on the streaming platform where you buy movies, check out my blog post, The Opportunity to Create the Kindle of Movies. You can also subscribe to receive future uplifting movie scenes in your inbox.
This is seriously cool idea. Excited to watch it all unfold!