![](http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images//topicimages/c/co/contact_(film).gif)
drama film
adapted from the Carl Sagan
novel of the same name
and directed by Robert Zemeckis
. Both Sagan and wife Ann Druyan
wrote the story outline for the film adaptation of Contact.
Jodie Foster
portrays the film's protagonist
, Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI
scientist who finds strong evidence of extraterrestrial life
and is chosen to make first contact
. The film also stars Matthew McConaughey
, James Woods
, Tom Skerritt
, William Fichtner
, John Hurt
, Angela Bassett
and David Morse
.
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan began working on the film in 1979.
[Young Ellie on a ham radio following her father's death] CQ... CQ... this is W9GFO, come back? Dad, this is Ellie, come back?
Mathematics is the only true universal language.
[On why the message does not foreshadow an alien attack] We pose no threat to them. It would be like us going out of our way to destroy a few microbes on an ant hill in Africa.
So what's more likely? That 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 that we created Him, so that we wouldn't have to feel so small and alone?
Some celestial event. No - no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful... I had no idea.
I... had an experience. I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that 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, that we are not, that none of us are alone.
Ok to go... Ok to go
You could call me a man of the cloth, without the cloth.
Ironically the thing that people are most hungry for, meaning, is the one thing that science hasn't been able to give them.
I'm not against technology, doctor. I'm against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth.