There are exceptions. Gravity is arguably all about prayer.
There's no arguing that Contact is
all about faith. The film is about science in relation to religion, reason, and
faith; and by extension, science and the church. This is all the more
interesting as the film is based on a novel by the late scientist/atheist Carl Sagan. Sagan obviously had a different perspective on religion than Richard Dawkins.
We never see a church in the film,
but we hear the story of one very unfortunate church experience. And we see at
least three different -- very different -- clergymen.
The film tells the story of a woman (Eleanor
Arroway, played by Jodie Foster) who, from childhood, dreamed of the skies. She
never knew her mother, and she asked her father if her mother was somewhere "out
there." He couldn't give her an answer. She asked if he thought there was
life out in space, and he answered, "If not, it's a real waste of
space" (a phrase that is repeated throughout the film).
Eleanor grows up studying astronomy
and physics and joins SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence),
where she listens to radio signals from space for clues of "little green
men." When a message from space is
received, along with blueprints for what seems to be some kind of space
transportation, Ellie's childhood dreams seem to be coming true.
Ellie's faith seems to be placed in
science, and that's where she seeks truth and meaning. She seems mildly hostile
toward religion, and as an adult, she tells a very sad story about the roots of
that antagonism. She went to Sunday School a few times as a child, and she says
she asked annoying questions like, "Where did Mrs. Cain come from?" Eventually,
someone at the church called Ellie's father and asked him to keep her home;
it's a very different attitude than Jesus' "Let the little children come to
me." The church was practicing what seems more like stumbling block and
mill stone behavior to me.
We do see a flashback of young Ellie
with a clergyman in a clerical collar who tries to comfort her after her father
dies. Since she was in the house with her father when he died, she frets that
if she had gotten medicine to him more quickly, he might have lived. The clergyman
says, "I know it's hard to understand things, but we have to accept it as
God's will." Have those words ever brought comfort to anyone?
That priest or pastor is much better
than the crazy-eyed Prophet Joseph. When the building project begins, based on
the alien plans, the site is surrounded by fans, fanatics, and protesters. Many
of the fans and protesters seem religiously motivated. We see one protester, Prophet Joseph, who
looks almost as crazy as Gary Busey. That's because he's played by Gary's son Jake.
As Ellie is being driven to the
project, Prophet Joseph screams, "These scientists have had their chance;
are these the people you want talking to your God for you?" Turns out
Joseph, like some clergy, is not a fan of scientists or science. He believes
that anyone who contemplates truth to be found in the Big Bang and Evolution is
obviously on the devil's payroll.
And it turns out that Prophet Joseph
is plotting a terrorist act to bring down the whole project and take many lives
with a suicide bombing. Outside of ISIS, and in the vast majority of mainline
churches, such a thing is not considered cool.
But the third clergyman in the film
is cut from a different cloth. Rather, he says he's a "man of the cloth,
without the cloth." Matthew McConaughey plays Palmer Joss, who at various
times in the film is called "Pastor" and "Father," though
it's unclear if he's gone through any ordination process with any denomination.
He went through seminary, but since
he sleeps with Ellie the first day they meet, I'm pretty sure he never took
vows of celibacy. He tells about a mystical experience that convinced him of
the existence of God. Ellie responds asking him if he's ever heard of Occam's Razor, and he says he hasn't (which is kind of sad in itself). She explains
that the simplest explanation with the fewest assumptions is likely to be the
correct one. Therefore, Occam's Razor argues against the existence of God. If
Palmer had been a little more knowledge about Occam, he could maybe point out
that Occam was a theologian.
Palmer works in third world churches
protecting people from exploitation. If
we heard him explain anything in depth, we might find he believed in liberation
theology, but Palmer only talks about God and faith in the most general of
terms and doesn't talk about Scripture or Jesus at all.
Palmer seems to think that the
pursuit of truth and the possession of faith are the important things, and that
whether these things are pursued through science or theology is irrelevant. I
appreciate the idea of "all truth is God's truth," but Palmer's truth
seems to be of the most amorphous sort.
I did appreciate Palmer's response
to Ellie's denial of God based on lack of evidence. He asks her whether she
loved her father. She says she did. He responds, "Prove it!" And
Palmer shows her something about faith by trusting her.
But I'm still afraid that the one church
we hear about and all three clergymen average out to a One Steeple rating.
(Don't mistake that for a rating of the film, which I quite admire.)