Contact

As much as I like my house, sometimes its really nice to get away for a while. Appleton was a good time for me and I am glad that I went. Dan and I get together every so often to do lots of talking and drink some beer.

While I was there I saw the movie Contact. Yes, it did come out months ago, but it was still new for me and it was playing at the local budget theater. No, I have not read the book and I probably won't unless someone lends me a copy. Plus my viewpoint has now been skewed by the movie. Although I have a feeling tht the love story subplot was more of a Hollywood invention than something Carl had written. Maybe I am wrong. All that I knew about the movie before I saw it was the review in my trusty New Yorker, which I threw out a few weeks back. I seem to remember some nasty comments about Jodi Foster making her trademark grimaces and some comparisons to Apollo 13 in terms of action sequences.

Contact is my kind of movie for a variety of reasons. Astronomy was one of many hobbies that I had when I was growing up, so in some ways I could relate to the Jodi Foster character. I never had a ham radio when I was growing up, but I did have a three inch refractor telescope. There were many nights where I would be standing outside and just looking up into the sky. Right ascension and declination are terms that I learned long ago. I had books of star charts and lunar maps. I knew when meteor showers and lunar eclipses were going to happen. To this day I still like to look up at the sky and wonder. On an even cheesier note part of me takes pride in being born in the same year that man walked on the moon.

In my mind I don't see the movie as being primarily a science fiction film. There aren't any scary aliens or fleets of spaceships with guns. Its more a movie that tries to prod the audience into thinking, which is rare for a mainstream film. The movie dances around the question of which is more credible, science or religion. Or is there really no distinction between the two. Scientific theories have to be taken on faith and religion is based on faith.

Dan thought that the movie backed away from giving a solid answer, but Hollywood is not where I want to find any spiritual answers. The movie just poses the question whether modern society has lost touch with the universe and our place in it. I like to think that we have lost touch with reality in many ways. Trivial things such as sports and celebrities have become important. Maybe I am wrong.

I think that I have mentioned once before that I like to ponder these questions of existence. These really are important to me without sounding too much like a freak. No, I am not Einstein. No, I am not Stephen Hawking. No, I am not Joseph Campbell. However, what these men have said about the world and how people view the world has always interested me. Maybe I see myself as a Palmer Ross, the spiritual character in the film. Contact did not sway my opinion one way or the other, but it made me feel good for a brief time. I liked knowing that some other people do like to see the world from a big perspective. There are people that go beyond themselves.