On Dec 3, 10:44 am, High Priest <highpriest7...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dkht_rJs38Y4
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DR14lfb3QnM0&feature=3Drelated
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_%28film%29#Plot_summary
The film opens with a montage shot of Earth in space, with a loud
background noise made up of radio and television signals from recent
years. As the camera pans out at impossible speed the transmissions
become older, until the camera loses sight of Earth, the Solar system,
and the Milky Way in a vast, silent universe.
The main protagonist, Ellie Arroway, is introduced as a child,
fascinated by amateur radio. After Ellie asks her father whether
humans can talk to other planets, and whether there are other
civilizations, the scene changes to Arroway in her late 20s, a
brilliant scientist and researcher working on the SETI program. While
working at Arecibo, she meets Palmer Joss, a theology student
researching a book on science's impact on the Third World. Despite her
commitment to the SETI project, Arroway is ridiculed by her former
teacher, Dr. David Drumlin, who shuts down the project.
Ellie spends the next thirteen months trying to find a new source of
funding for her research and succeeds in obtaining a large grant from
the reclusive billionaire industrialist S. R. Hadden (John Hurt).
Leasing time from the Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New
Mexico, Ellie and her colleagues spend the next four years combing the
skies until she detects a powerful signal of exterterrestrial origin
coming from the star Vega composed of prime numbers, something which
could not have happened randomly in nature.
Arroway sees the Hitler footage from Vega.Government and military
officials descend on Ellie's project, intent on taking control of it
and displeased with the open announcement of the discovery. During
arguments, one of Ellie's team members finds a complex interlaced data
structure woven into the sequence of prime numbers. They discover that
a sideband of additional data is interlaced with a television image,
with video footage of Adolf Hitler making his opening speech at the
1936 Olympics in Berlin; apparently an extraterrestrial intelligence
had received this early human broadcast and transmitted it back to
earth.
The team also discovers that what was thought to be background noise
amongst the frames of the Hitler footage is actually tens of thousands
of pages of data written in an alien language. For some time the team
is stumped by the language, but S.R. Hadden supplies Ellie with a way
to decipher the language in three dimensions which reveals blueprints
for some sort of mechanical device. Later, Ellie travels to a White
House Cabinet meeting to discuss theories on what the machine does,
and whether or not it should be built. Ellie believes the machine is a
communication or trans****t device which might take a person to Vega,
while several officials worry that the machine is an alien weapon or
Trojan Horse. Ellie finds sup****t from Palmer Joss, who has become the
personal religious adviser to President Clinton, who decides to
authorize the building of the machine.
Construction begins at Cape Canaveral on "The Machine," sup****ted
financially by an international lobby. A committee of scientists,
philosophers, theologians, and politicians is formed to select a
candidate for the journey. Dr. Drumlin and Dr. Arroway become the main
American contestants for the "machine seat." During questioning, Ellie
is forced by Palmer to reveal her atheism, and as a result, Drumlin is
eventually chosen to make the journey. However, during the day of the
Machine's first test, a religious fanatic infiltrates the site and
commits a suicide bombing, killing dozens including Drumlin and
completely destroying The Machine.
Later, S.R. Hadden again surprises Ellie by revealing to her the
existence of a second Machine, secretly ordered and built by his
cor****ation in Hokkaid=F4, Japan, and tells her that the International
Machine Consortium still wants her to go on the journey.
The Machine in operation.Ellie travels to Hokkaid=F4, where Palmer meets
her and reveals that his acts at the committee hearing were influenced
not entirely by his beliefs but also by his personal fear of losing
her. Ellie enters the Machine and it is activated, creating a massive
energy vortex in the core of the machine through which Ellie's
trans****t pod p*****. Inside, Ellie travels at immense speed through a
series of wormholes, eventually losing consciousness. She awakens on a
beach that resembles childhood drawings she had made of the beach at
Pensacola. An entity approaches her which slowly takes the form of her
deceased father. Ellie realizes the experience is not real, and that
the aliens have created the environment after downloading her thoughts
and memories. She talks briefly with the alien, who explains there are
many more civilizations in space. Ellie wants to take proof back with
her to earth, but is told this is the way it has been for billions of
years. When the alien senses Ellie's desperation, he comforts her,
adding that in the immensity of space, "the only thing we've found
that makes the loneliness bearable, is each other."
Ellie wakes up inside the trans****t pod and is told that the pod had
simply dropped through the Machine without going anywhere. Opinion
divides over whether she had actually made the journey or hallucinated
it, and an enormous political firestorm erupts. Later, at a
congressional hearing led by Michael Kitz, Arroway admits that she has
no evidence but asserts that the journey really took place. The
congressional panel appears unmoved, and Ellie leaves the hearing with
Palmer. Later, in private, Kitz and the White House chief of staff
discuss the interesting fact that Arroway's video headset, which she
had worn during her journey, contained blank static, but had recorded
approximately 18 hours of static, the exact time Arroway claimed she
was gone. Though the information is suppressed, Kitz is pressured by
the chief of staff and agrees to continue to fund Ellie's SETI work.
Ellie returns to the radio-telescope array back in New Mexico, and is
seen sitting in the desert during sunset.
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