Contact

"Take a journey to the heart of the universe."

1997 2h 30m EN

🙌

7.5

BANGER

🍅

69%

FRESH

👌

METACRITIC

⭐

7.5

IMDB

★7.5TMDB · 5,214🍅69%Rotten Tomatoes●62Metacritic★7.5IMDB · 309,188

DramaScience FictionMystery

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

A radio astronomer receives the first extraterrestrial radio signal ever picked up on Earth. As the world powers scramble to decipher the message and decide upon a course of action, she must make some difficult decisions between her beliefs, the truth, and reality.

“Take a journey to the heart of the universe.”

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Where to watch · US

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Cast

Jodie Foster
Ellie Arroway
Matthew McConaughey
Palmer Joss
James Woods
Michael Kitz
John Hurt
S. R. Hadden
Tom Skerritt
David Drumlin
William Fichtner
Kent
David Morse
Ted Arroway
Angela Bassett
Rachel Constantine

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers: Michael Goldenberg, James V. Hart, Darryl Henley
Languages: English, Russian, Spanish
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

RUNTIME

Did you know

Clocks in at 150 minutes — on the longer side of feature-length cinema.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Mid-budget at $90M — the now-extinct middle tier of Hollywood.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

29 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 3 languages: English, Russian, Spanish.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

CAST

Did you know

394+ people credited in cast and crew — a small city's worth of labour.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, shot by Don Burgess. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Alan Silvestri. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Arthur Schmidt shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Robert Zemeckis directs. Don Burgess behind the camera. Alan Silvestri scores. Arthur Schmidt cuts. Profitable at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English, Russian, Spanish.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Clocks in at 150 minutes — on the longer side of feature-length cinema.
2Mid-budget at $90M — the now-extinct middle tier of Hollywood.
329 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
4Dialogue crosses 3 languages: English, Russian, Spanish.
5394+ people credited in cast and crew — a small city's worth of labour.
6Directed by Robert Zemeckis, shot by Don Burgess. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
7Original score by Alan Silvestri. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
8Editor Arthur Schmidt shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
9Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey and James Woods carry the top of the cast.
10Marketing tagline: "Take a journey to the heart of the universe.".
11IMDB entry: tt0118884 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
12Classified under 20 themes, including "based on novel or book", "nasa", "extraterrestrial technology", "new mexico".

The technical file

Cinematography: Don Burgess
Original score: Alan Silvestri
Editing: Arthur Schmidt
Production design: Ed Verreaux
Costume design: Joanna Johnston
Makeup / hair: Hallie D'Amore
VFX supervisor: Ken Ralston
Sound: Gary Rizzo
Stunt coordinator: Bud Davis
Runtime: 150 min · 2h 30m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $90,000,000
Box office: $171,120,329
Return: 190% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG
IMDB: Contact (1997)
Rotten Tomatoes: 69% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 62/100
IMDB rating: 7.5/10 · 309,188 votes
MPAA: PG

Awards

Nominated for 1 Oscar. 15 wins & 32 nominations total

Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Robert Zemeckis

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

talisencrw2016-05-02
★ 9/10
I would readily admit this is one of my favourite science fiction films from the 90's. It's intelligent, well-acted and directed, and the special effects it has HELPS the story rather than IMPEDES it. Though she hasn't done much lately, either in the director's chair or acting, Jodie Foster is one of my favourite contemporary American actresses, and it's intriguing how her great talent's been utilized of late (ie., 'Elysium', and I'm still very mad at Spike Lee for having Christopher Plummer call her a 'cunt' in 'Inside Man'). Personally, I must admit that I myself have worried what other worlds' inhabitants would think of our civilization from the messages it might get from Earth. Though I thankfully haven't lost any sleep over it (I have 'Thumper' in the apartment above me to thank for that), as Led Zeppelin would say in the classic 'Stairway to Heaven', '...and it makes me wonder'. As what happens in most of these movies, it's rather anticlimactic once the different cultures meet. I'll say to my dying day that the most difficult thing to do in cinema is end a film. Here (unlike perfect sci-fi masterpieces, like '2001: A Space odyssey' or the more recent 'Children of Men') the decent but otherwise unspectacular ending makes me avoid a perfect rating here. But it's awfully close, worth both owning and rewatching, and provides fairly early evidence (which would come to bold fruition in 'Killer Joe') that Matthew McConaughey could actually act. It's also a tossup between this, 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' and 'Back to the Future' for my favourite Zemeckis moment.
JPV8522021-11-26
★ 8/10
Random viewing but decided to finally watch after its been in my to-do bin for a while now. It didn't strike an emotional cord that I thought it would but Jodie Foster was quite good as were a respectable supporting cast. Never quite bought into the relationship between Foster and McConaughey though in fairness, probably due to the lack of screen time together (felt like maybe 15 minutes in a 2.5 hour movie). Some of the effects were alright for its time including integrating Clinton footage with the cast and the sci-fi specific visuals were alright. In the end, never was bored and found it to be entertaining. 4.0/5
tmdb280390232022-08-27
★ 1/10
Early on in Contact a character is introduced who goes by the name “Kent Clark,” and for the remainder of the film I simply could not get over the fact that no one ever even mentions that he is named after Bizarro’s alter ego. My theory is that this is a figurative wink to the audience, letting us know beforehand what we otherwise discover at long last: that the events that are about to unfold are nothing but an elaborate prank on the audience and, possibly, the cast. This movie exists in a limbo somewhere in between Close Encounters of the Third Kind’s unabashed childlike wonder and Ad Astra’s adult ‘we’re alone in the Universe’ pragmatism – which is a polite way of saying that Contact is neither fish nor fowl; the moral of the story, in a nutshell, is that there might be intelligent extraterrestrial life, but then again, there might not be. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with some ambiguity, but let’s consider this: untold amounts of money, physical resources and manpower are spent in the movie (but not by the movie, which prefers to cut corners and follow the unconvincing route of CGI – technology which, by the way, has not aged well nor improved a lot ever since), while we spent two and half hours of our precious time, and it’s all only to learn that, maybe, aliens don’t exist except in overly complicated hoaxes and the minds of impressionable people. That’s a lot of work to do as well as a long way to go to arrive at a conclusion that for many, myself included, is of the foregone variety. And even if the extraterrestrials in the film were real, they’d still be rather disappointing – though I shouldn’t speak in plural, since we only see one in the form of Dr. Ellie Arroway’s (Jodie Foster) long deceased father. The good news is that Ellie’s dad is played by David Morse, and you could certainly do a lot worse than that (and that goes for the rest of the ensemble cast); the bad news is that Ellie’s close encounter takes places on a beach that is supposedly meant to mimic a drawing she made when she was nine years old. This is bad because the drawing, which looks like an actual preteen might have drawn it, is a veritable Monet compared with the computer-generated beach where Ellie has a very anticlimactic meeting with the alien, who tells her nothing she, or for that matter we, didn’t already know or believe – which in turn doesn’t mean that the place itself has to be equally underwhelming; why not a real beach? Or, perhaps even better, a set made to resemble a real beach? This would doubtless speak to either Ellie’s imagination or the aliens’ handicraft much more than what we end up getting.