The Accused

I thought the post on this 1988 film would be a good one to announce the publication of my new novel, The Bigger Picture. The link to Amazon is: (https://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Picture-Augustus-Cileone/dp/0997096284/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527711220&sr=1-1&keywords=cileonea

All of my earnings will be donated to the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. It is a mystery for movie lovers, like its prequel, Out of the Picture. The new story deals with the double sexual standard and sexual abuse of women, as does this groundbreaking motion picture which exposes the male mindset that can lead to rape. Just like prior movies discussed here, such as North Country and Norma Rae, that take place many years back, it is important to expose the sexual exploitation of women that has occurred even in recent times, and which has sparked the current #MeToo movement.

The title itself suggests an ambiguity, since those brought to trial for rape and the men who encourage the violent act should be considered “the accused.” However, in a male-dominated society that excuses men for giving into their baser sexual instincts, and puts the blame on women for arousing them, the rape victim is the one who is essentially put on trial, and becomes “the accused.”

The first shot in the film is of the place where the rape takes place. It is a bar called “The Mill,” and the name suggests being “put through the mill,” that is, afflicting someone with anguish and suffering, which is what Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster, winning her first Oscar for this role) is going through. The sign for The Mill consists of arrows sequentially lighting up, simulating forward motion, as if pointing to an entrance. The image, given the horrible acts going on inside, implies sexual penetration. At this point, we do not see the assault, but witness Sarah running out of the bar, clutching at her ripped clothing, and screaming. She gets a ride from a trucker to a hospital. And, as in North Country, there is a male, in this case Ken Joyce (Bernie Coulson), who has some sense of decency, and who anonymously calls in the rape from a pay phone.

At the hospital, Sarah’s processing experience is not a compassionate or emotionally supportive one. It is more like an interrogation, with questions about her  sexual history. While one woman questions her, another barks commands at Sarah to pose for pictures. It is obvious that she was attacked, since she has facial and body bruises. Although there is a woman from the local rape center to offer assistance, there is no set protocol to administer psychological help to deal with the trauma. Kathryn Murphy (Kelly McGillis), a deputy district attorney, arrives, and also is rather detached emotionally, at least initially. She notes that Sarah was legally drunk and smoked some marijuana. The rape center woman rightly says that those facts don’t matter, since Sarah is the victim. But, Kathryn has to deal with the ugly reality that a defense attorney will paint Sarah as a morally compromised woman who was intoxicated, dressed and danced seductively, and gave the men at the bar reason to believe they could satisfy their lust with her. Even if she told them no it’s as if the men can’t be held responsible for their actions once they become aroused.

Kathryn and Lieutenant Duncan (Terry David Mulligan) say that The Mill was still open and they ask Sarah to go with them to identify her attackers. Sarah agrees, although she appears reluctant since it is a very traumatizing request to go back to the place she was victimized just a few hours earlier. Sarah’s car is still in the parking lot, and the license plate reads “Sexy Sadie” (from the Beatles song), which seems on the surface to compromise Sarah, until we later learn that it refers to her dog’s name. This clarifying information indicates that surface appearance does not always tell the whole story about a person. Sarah identifies one man, Danny (Woody Brown), and another, Kurt (Kim Kondrashoff), who raped her. A third, a college student named Bob (Steve Antin), is not present.

Kathryn takes Sarah to her home. She is poor, living in a trailer, and she says that her live-in boyfriend Larry (Tim O’Brien) likes to get stoned and fall asleep. Kathryn realizes that someone, like Sarah, coming from a lower social class, has a strike against her, since the tendency of those more economically successful citizens is to blame those below them for being failures. Of course, this attitude is a generalization that does not take into account individual situations, and how difficult it is to break out of an environment that fosters a feeling of helplessness (as was discussed in Winter’s Bone and Frozen River). Sarah’s obsession with astrology suggests her tendency to believe that one can’t control his or her destiny.

Sarah confides to Kathryn that her father left the family right after Sarah was born, and the departure probably instilled a sense of guilt and unworthiness in Sarah as a child. She tells Kathryn that she hopes she doesn’t look too beaten up because Larry likes to touch her face. Instead of being concerned about herself, and expecting support from her boyfriend, she, along with most girls growing up, place an inordinate amount of stress on physical appearance, since they have been taught that sexual appeal is their most important characteristic. Her boyfriend Larry is clueless as to how to be emotionally supportive after the assault, asking Sarah if she wants to go out for a ride, and when she says no, he leaves. He just wants to escape and not deal with what for him is an uncomfortable situation. Sarah calls her mother, reaching out for some comfort, but not wanting to admit that she was raped. Her mom immediately undermines Sarah’s self-worth by asking if she called because Sarah lost her job. She then says Sarah probably called to ask for money, and must be in some sort of “trouble” that her mother assumes is always Sarah’s fault. Mom’s already had her most recent boyfriend leave her, so she is not a good model for Sarah on building worthwhile relationships. Sarah wants to visit her for a while, looking for a safe place to recover from her attack. But, her mother says she is leaving for Florida, showing how the people who should care for Sarah abandon her when she needs them the most.

After Sarah identifies Bob, the third rapist, at the college he attends, the police arrest him, and the trial begins. Kathryn is outnumbered by males as there are three men acting as the defense attorneys, and the judge is a man. In addition, Bob’s family is rich, so wealth adds leverage to sexism, and Sarah is the underdog in the case. At her job as a waitress Sarah becomes angry as she hears on the TV that the young men are released on bail, and the reporter says the defense lawyers are saying that there was no rape, the sex being consensual. This assertion is what lawyers make today concerning those accused of sexual misconduct. At a bar where the TV news is also shown, Bob gets up and takes a bow, acknowledging the success of the spin on the truth, as the numerous men around him shout their approval. The male cheers here echo the ones we later hear when the rape is described, and it points to the conspiracy of men who join together to allow sexual abuse to occur. There is one male not yelling his support. There is a shot of Ken, the one who called 911 after the rape, with a disgusted look on his face.

Kathryn visits Sarah and confronts her with the facts about the young woman’s drinking, and her sexy clothes and dancing at the bar. Sarah echoes the rape center woman and says that none of that has anything to do with the violence against her. Sarah, who seemed broken and weak-voiced at the hospital, is becoming enraged at the way she was and is being treated, and her anger empowers her to fight for herself. Kathryn asks if Sarah ever had multiple sexual partners at one time, if she ever had sexually transmitted diseases, or abortions, or whether she ever asked a sexual partner to hit her. She was also arrested once, and Sarah explains that she was helping a friend move, a cop stopped them because of a busted taillight, and he found drugs inside the friend’s stuff. Kathryn says that the defense will use that and ask all those personal questions to paint her as a lowlife to discredit Sarah’s account of the assault (which is what we saw in North Country). Kathryn wants to know if Sarah will endure this second kind of attack, a legal one, in court. Sarah says she wants the men put away.

Kathryn goes to The Mill and questions Sally Fraser (Ann Hearn), who is a waitress at the bar and a friend of Sarah. Sally says she believes Sarah’s story, but couldn’t see what was going on in the back room, where the rape took place, because it was blocked by several men. She says there was one man there who had a scorpion tattoo on his arm.

Kathryn attends a hockey game with her boss, District Attorney Paul Rudolph (Carmen Argenziano), who yells encouragement to the players as they engage in aggressive action. Kathryn cringes at the violence of the sport. The scene reflects the activity of the males at the bar, where primal male brutality is encouraged. The DA tells her to make a deal and charge the three men with a lesser offense because she can’t make the rape charge stick. He says they will only do six months, but at least it’s a win for his office, which is what he cares about, not true justice. Although she wanted second degree rape which would carry up to five years in prison, Kathryn has to bargain with the defense attorneys, and she takes a plea of “reckless endangerment,”

Again, Sarah hears what happened on the television, and she fumes because the reporter says that the plea bargain was made because she would have been a weak witness for the prosecution. Sarah barges in on Kathryn’s upper-class dinner party to yell at the prosecutor for selling her out, and not even telling her about the deal, thus depriving Sarah of a chance to tell her side of the story. The setting of the scene is a very effective one, since it stresses how those of an affluent social class go about their carefree existence while they distance themselves from the suffering of those who they have helped to marginalize.

Sarah returns home and cuts her hair. This action occurs in a number of films when a woman is going through a change in her life (Rosemary’s Baby, Legends of the Fall, and Elizabeth come to mind). In this case, Sarah’s look resembles a rooster (or maybe think Rod Stewart). It implies that she is losing the softness of the traditional female look and is bristling for a cock fight against the masculine gender. When her boyfriend, Larry, sees the new hairdo, he is at first taken aback, and then, still clueless as how to deal with Sarah’s plight, starts to kiss her, misinterpreting her new appearance as an invitation to have sex. In this way, he is just like the men at The Mill, and it ties him in with the sexually aggressive male mindset. She of course is not ready for any intimacy, and pushes him off. He is then unsympathetic, asking when is she “going to get over this. It’s boring,” as if being raped is something easy to put behind a woman. The use of the word “boring” shows how Larry, like the other men, is only interested in his own gratification. Sarah, becoming more empowered by her anger at the way she is being mistreated, kicks Larry out.

In a supermarket parking lot, one of the men who was at the bar, Cliff Albrect (Leo Rossi) recognizes Sarah’s license plate and taunts her as she approaches her car. He makes lewd gestures. He says to her “Do you want to play pinball,” which is a crude reference to the fact that Sarah was raped on a pinball machine at the bar. She tries to flee, but Cliff blocks the exit with his truck. Sarah lets loose her anger, ramming his truck with her car, reversing the violence that was done to her. Kathryn visits the hospital where Sarah is being treated for injuries sustained in her vehicular attack. Kathryn encounters Cliff, having been treated for a facial wound, and notices a scorpion tattoo on his arm, the one Sally described. Kathryn now knows that Cliff was at the bar at the time of the rape. She questions him and he says that there was no rape and Sarah was putting on a sex show. After she sees Sarah crying in her hospital bed, saying that she thought Kathryn was supposed to be on her side, Kathryn decides to reopen the case.

She decides to now go after the men at The Mill who encouraged the attack under a provision that states that “criminal solicitation” is a felony. If it is shown on the record that there was an actual rape, Kathryn knows that the three convicted of “reckless endangerment” will serve their full five year terms once the parole board knows the facts surrounding their criminal activity. The DA tells Kathryn he doesn’t want the office to expend time and money on the case, which will make his department look badly when she loses over some guys who were just “cheering and clapping.” Of course, he totally misses the point of how those men contributed to the assault, and the DA thus joins the male conspiracy that allows violence against women. Kathryn says she will sue the department, and knows about shady dealings there that she will expose if she isn’t allowed to try the case. The DA gives in, but says Kathryn is through after the trial, which shows how much Kathryn is now willing to sacrifice in order to fight, along with Sarah, for justice.

Sally identifies the men at the bar in a lineup. However, in an interview in Kathryn’s office, Sally says that Sarah on the night of the rape, after her fight with Larry over his cheating on her, was blowing off some steam. So, she said to Sally at The Mill that she thought Bob, the college student, was cute, and maybe she should take the guy home and have sex with him in front of Larry to get back at him. Sally says that Sarah was just joking, but Kathryn knows she can’t use Sally as a witness on behalf of Sarah, since her testimony will undermine Sarah’s contention that she was raped. This scene shows how difficult it was, given the prejudicial attitudes at the time toward female sexuality and social class status, to get a sexual assault conviction.

Kathryn returns to The Mill to get a feel for the place. She sees the pinball machine in the back room on which Sarah was raped. It has a drawing of a sexy female cheerleader smiling with her bottom stuffed in a basketball net. The title of the game is “Slam Dunk.” The phrase, given the illustration, contains implications of sexual violence toward women. It represents the wider male conspiracy, through commercialization, which sexually objectifies women. There is a video display that shows the names of high pinball scorers by date. On the day of the rape, she sees the name “Ken.” This part of the plot is a little shaky, since somehow Kathryn decides that she should get the yearbook for the year that Bob graduated, and she finds a “Ken” in there. She has Ken’s picture, and she finds him on the college campus. She has listened to the 911 recording of the young man who called in the rape, and she recognizes that it was Ken’s voice when she talks with him. Ken, at first, says he didn’t see anything, but then relents and, it is implied, admits the truth to Kathryn.

At the trial, Sarah verbally recounts the events of the night of the assault. She says that she danced with Danny, he kissed her, then attacked her on the pinball machine while she was held down by Bob and Kurt, and they then took turns raping her. She says that she closed her eyes at one point so as not to see what was happening to her. She said she finally was able to kick her last assailant and run out of the bar. The defense attorney asks her if she ever shouted “rape,” or yelled for the police to be contacted. Sarah said the only word she was able to say, was “No,” which the attorney implies was not a strong enough attempt to stop what was going on. The defense says that since she had her eyes closed, had been drinking and smoking pot, she could not identify the men accused of urging the others to commit rape.

Ken visits Bob in prison, and assures him that his testimony will not harm him. But, Bob knows how a guilty verdict on those on trial will extend his sentence. He urges Ken to just say he drank too much that night and couldn’t remember anything. Ken says he doesn’t want to lie, and is torn between his allegiance to other men and his revulsion toward the crime committed. He goes to the DA building and is accompanied by the DA to Kathyrn’s office where she is talking with Sarah. The DA says Ken is recanting his testimony. While the DA and Kathryn talk outside, Sarah accuses Ken of seeing her as a lowlife who deserves what she got. Sarah then sees that Ken feels ashamed, and she says that they were both scared of what happened.

Ken takes the stand and now is the first time in the film that we get a visual account of what happened at The Mill. Ken saw and heard it all. Sarah was flirtatious and danced seductively. She did allow Danny to kiss her, but when things started to get out of hand, she tried to stop him. Ken tells how the defendants exhorted the others to rape Sarah, urging Kurt to prove his manhood by stepping up sexually. The vileness of their words is obvious as they chant “1,2,3,4, poke that pussy ‘till its sore.” Cliff, the guy with the scorpion tattoo (the illustration is also on a pinball machine at The Mill, symbolizing his and the other men’s venomous nature?) is the chief cheerleader for the rapists.

The defense in its summation argues that there are no other witnesses except Ken to corroborate that the defendants encouraged the rape. He says that Ken felt overwhelming guilt for allowing the assault to take place (which under the law is not a crime), and felt the need to rid his guilt by getting others present at The Mill to pay for what happened. Kathryn urges the jury to consider the facts concerning the physical brutality that Sarah sustained and the genuineness of Ken’s testimony.

While waiting for the jury to decide, Sarah tells Kathryn that she worked up her astrological chart. Although Kathryn was previously resistant to hear about this topic, she now lets Sarah talk about it. Sarah says that the chart shows Kathryn to be a strong person, with legal ability, who could become president. Kathyrn asks Sarah what does her own chart show? Sarah says her strengths lie in the areas of feelings, faith, and intuition. Even though Sarah believes in destiny, she has moved away from a helpless viewpoint to an empowered one.

The verdict is guilty, and Sarah and Kathryn exit the courthouse triumphant. A postscript says that there is a rape reported every six minutes. In one out of four incidents, two or more assailants were involved, emphasizing how males join together to inflict their sexual violence. Although these statistics relate to 1988, the accounts reported by women currently show that sexual violence has continued. According to Ken’s testimony, when the character of Sally approached the back room, Cliff shouts to her, “You’re next.” It is like he is saying to all the women in the audience that if we allow this brotherhood of sexual abuse to continue, then all females are at risk.

The next film is Elizabeth.

The Silence of the Lambs

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

When Dr. Pilcher (Paul Lazar) at the Smithsonian starts to hit on FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), he asks her what does she do when she is not “detecting.” Her answer is, “I try to be a student, Dr. Pilcher.” In this multiple Oscar-winning 1991 film, (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Director), Clarice has two primary teachers - Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins (if you add a couple of letters, you get “lecturer”) and FBI Behavioral Science chief, Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn). One could be simplistic and say that Lecter is Clarice’s Darth Vader and Crawford is the Obi Wan Kenobi character. But, this movie is anything but simple, and both men use Clarice, as well as help her.

The opening shots take place in the FBI obstacle course outside Quantico, Virginia. The forest, with no easy path, can represent the many obstacles Clarice will encounter to live up to her name, as she tries to get “clear” of the frightening danger in her world, and possibly fly above it. Her last name is Starling, after all, and her hair is dark, like the color of that bird’s feathers. The starling is considered by some to be a pest, and Clarice must pester the circumstances surrounding her case to find the killer in this story. (We will get back to the “flying” motif later). A major impediment on Clarice’s educational road is sexism. As she runs or passes by males, there are individual and group looks (on the training course, at the Baltimore asylum, and in the West Virginia funeral home), of men who show a combination of lust and dismissal for her being among the predominantly male lawn enforcement community. Foster said that she wanted this role because she did not want to play another victim. Clarice uses her feminine side on Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald) at first to gain private access to Hannibal, but later ups her game by using legal threats to get him out of his way as he tries to punish her for not succumbing to his original sexual advances. Later she also takes charge at the funeral home full of male patrolmen, clearing the room so that the examination of the victim’s body can take place.

Crawford knows she is smart as she excelled in a course he taught at her college, and admired her courage to “grill” him on civil rights violations during the FBI’s Hoover years. But he deceives her, sending Clarice to try and get Hannibal to fill out a questionnaire as part of an information gathering survey of serial killers, when he hopes that Clarice will be able to seduce him into providing insights to help capture the at-loose murderer, Buffalo Bill. Crawford is actually using her youthful, inexperienced, status to activate Hannibal’s self-glorification by wanting to impress a new student. The fact that Clarice is physically attractive just adds to the draw. As Chilton says, Hannibal hasn’t seen a woman for several years, and Clarice is just the cannibalistic psychiatrist’s “taste,” which links the appetite for food with that of lust. Her strong response to Chilton is that she graduated from the University of Virginia, which is not a “charm school.”

When Clarice meets Hannibal for the first time, he is creepily standing in the middle of his cage, as if waiting for her, and ready to scrutinize her just as did the other males. But unlike the others, Hannibal is a sort of super anti-hero. He hardly ever blinks, as he takes in everything around him. His nostrils flare often and his powers of smell are equally elevated, knowing what lotion and perfume Clarice uses, even if not on that particular day. Later, he can even tell that she skinned her leg, and that the cut is no longer bleeding. He has theatrically exaggerated ways of speaking, slowing down sentences so as to carry weight, and of moving his hands, such as when he pulls documents out of the tray to his jail. All of this affectation sets him apart from others, probably showing that he sees himself as superior and separate from the mere mortals around him. He probably believes that he can carry out his crimes because gods don’t have to obey the rules of inferior creatures. Perhaps he devours his victims to show his dominance, and obliterates pretenders to greatness. Maybe in Hannibal’s mind, he raises his victims’ mediocrity by transforming them into epicurean delights.

He originally likes Clarice’s candor about sharing the vulgar comments of the inmate Miggs (Stuart Rudin), and is appreciative of her courteous nature. He makes references to Buffalo Bill, as if intuitively knowing that Crawford sent the impressionable Clarice (her temporary ID showing her novice status) to seduce him into volunteering his help concerning the hunted serial killer. It is interesting that in a small way Clarice turns the tables on Hannibal here because she appears to coldly consider why he didn’t take any trophies of his victims, but instead ate them. Hannibal doesn’t like being analyzed, and looks away, asking for the questionnaire. Of course the document does exactly that kind of “dissecting” as Hannibal calls it, and he becomes nasty, employing a Southern accent, calling Clarice a “rube” with “cheap shoes” who is “not more than one generation removed from poor white trash.” He says her ambition took her “all the way to the F - B - I.” His speech sounds sibilant many times, like a snake (Satan?) hissing. Hannibal's sucking sounds after talking about eating the census taker's liver makes him sound like a vampire, and a policeman later makes the blood sucker reference concerning him. Clarice challenges him by saying he sees a great deal, but seems unable to point his powers of observation at himself, because maybe he is “afraid” to do so. Possibly that is the only thing that can really frighten Hannibal, to really face his megalomania.

Hannibal is a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde character. He extols manners, and decides to help Clarice after Miggs throws his semen at her, shouting that “discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.” He says ‘thank you” to the asylum attendant Barney (Frankie Faison), someone who treats him humanely, as opposed to Chilton who degrades Hannibal as a beast when he says “how rare it is to capture” a psychopath alive. Hannibal loves classical music and is an accomplished artist who hangs his sketches of Florence in his cell. He has a witty, dark sense of humor, that is at its heart condescending, and which fits with his superior attitude. He says that the death of his patient, Raspail, was the best thing that could have happened to him since his therapy was going nowhere. He sarcastically refers to the Buffalo Bill’s overweight victim as “Miss West Virginia.” He calls the dissociative inmate, “Multiple Miggs.” But, he can, as shown above, be nasty verbally, and he asks crude sexual questions of Clarice concerning Crawford and later the sheep rancher. Of course he is also brutally violent, savaging a nurse while at the asylum and clubbing and eviscerating policemen in Tennessee.

Hannibal points Clarice to a storage facility. She figures out that the name on the unit he gives is an anagram a little too quickly to be believable, but it illustrates her intelligence and her need to uncover what is hidden to reach the solution to the crimes. She must jack up the door to the unit, crawl under it, and she injures her leg in the process, which shows her desire to surmount obstacles in her way, like on the training course. This scene is in keeping with the theme of having to penetrate barriers or dig beneath the surface to be successful. She must break into the storage facility, and get into the car there. Raspail’s head is in a jar, but it is covered, and she must unveil it. There is a mannequin in the car, missing its head, dressed like a woman, which implies male transvestism. She must go through many locked doors at the asylum, and eventually explore behind doors at Bill’s place to become victorious.

In West Virginia, Crawford, like a teacher, quizzes Clarice on what deductions she can draw from the case files. He again uses Clarice by trying to get the local sheriff out of the way by saying he doesn’t want to discuss this type of “sex” crime in front of Clarice. She later calls him on it, saying that what he models “matters” because it devalues her, and sets a precedent for the other policemen. She discovers that the victim has diamond-shaped sections of skin removed from her body, and that there is a bug cocoon in the girl’s throat. Again, we have something buried or obscured from sight that Clarice must discover. She finds out that the cocoon contains a Death’s Head moth. One is also found in Raspail’s decapitated head. When she discusses these findings with Hannibal, he again takes on the role of lecturer, talking about how the morphing of a chrysalis into a winged creature symbolizes Bill’s wish to change into something beautiful. Clarice realizes that Hannibal knows who Bill is because the psychiatrist understands Bill’s motivations. Bill has kidnapped a senator’s daughter, Catherine (Brooke Smith). Hannibal makes a bargain to be transferred to another facility away from Chilton where he can have some time outside his prison in exchange for helping Clarice in the process by capturing Bill. Clarice says they worked out the deal with the senator.

It is interesting to watch the scene between Clarice and Hannibal as they negotiate his possible transferal and help with the case. He wants it to be a “quid pro quo” bargain. He will deliver information if she will talk about herself. As she relates the early loss of her mother and the killing of her law enforcement father, whom she adored, Hannibal takes on his professional role as psychiatrist, listening to a patient’s story of how her childhood shaped her. But what is a psychiatrist but someone who hears a person’s confessions? Hannibal turns his head away from Clarice when she discloses her personal history, and he looks like a priest behind a confessional’s door (but in this case it is a prison wall). However, his is a voyeur’s perspective, as if he can’t feel human emotions due to his own insanity, and can only experience feelings vicariously.

We don’t get much background on Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), but Hannibal sheds some light on him, and again, he has shades of gray in his character, too. The fact that Bill wants to change into something beautiful from something representing death shows that Bill sees himself as ugly and deadly, and he, too, like Clarice, wants to “fly” above his circumstances, like the moth. In fact, when he does his naked dance with a piece of elaborately designed material draped around him, he then raises his arms above him, looking like a bird with wings, as he plays a song with the lyrics, “I’m flying over you.” But, as Hannibal says, Bill’s desire to escape his male brutality by becoming feminine is a delusion because he is not a true transvestite. As Clarice smartly points out (and Hannibal gives her a good grade for doing so) transvestites are not aggressive. Hannibal says Bill was probably rejected from gender reassignment institutions for personality reasons. He tells Clarice, “Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence. Our Billy wasn’t born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse.” Billy wants to transform because he “hates his own identity.” He thinks he can do so by being a woman, but, Hannibal says, “his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying.” When we see Bill in his subterranean lair (basements and underground passages are in gothic tales because they indicate hidden, subconscious drives and dangers), he has the word “love” tattooed on his hand, (the scientists said that somebody “loved” the moth, showing Bill’s ability to love which has been displaced toward an insect) and cares for his cute little poodle, which he calls “Precious.” Not quite what you would expect from someone who is pure evil. The senator kept using Catherine’s name to make her more of a person than an object in a televised plea to the kidnapper. We see Bill trying to make the girl into a thing when he says to Catherine, “It rubs the lotion on its skin,” but Bill appears upset about what he is doing to the girl. At one point Bill yells down into the well, where Catherine threatens to hurt his captive dog if not released, “You don’t know what pain is!” This outburst can obviously be seen as a threat, but maybe Bill is also talking about the “systematic abuse” that Hannibal says Bill may have endured.

The deal that Crawford and Clarice made with Hannibal was a fraud (is Clarice learning deception from her supposedly benign teacher, Crawford?) Chilton, who bugged the conversation between Hannibal and Clarice, reveals this fact to Hannibal and made his own deal with Senator Ruth Martin (Diane Baker). As he talks with Hannibal the camera zooms in on a pen that Chilton leaves on the bed in Hannibal’s cell. It is interesting that Chilton warned Clarice not to give Hannibal anything, including a pen, and here Chilton is negligent enough to break his own rule. Hannibal wants to deliver his information about Bill to the senator in person. He is flown to her home state of Tennessee. He is restrained, and a grotesque mask is placed over his face. Unlike the children on Halloween who pretend to be monsters on the outside, Hannibal’s mask reveals the monster underneath. He is placed in a cage in a courthouse.

Because Senator Martin is furious with the FBI for using her name in a deal without her knowledge, Clarice must lie about being part of Chilton’s security team to gain access to Hannibal. She again must uncover truth behind a smokescreen as she sees that Hannibal’s name for Bill is a fraud, an anagram referencing Fool’s Gold. She wants him to tell her Bill’s real name, but he wants to know why she ran away from the relatives where she was placed after her father died. Clarice tells him that she woke to screaming and she saw that the slaughter of the lambs was taking place. She wanted to free them, but they wouldn’t run away. She took one, but it was too heavy and she couldn’t get very far, and that lamb, too, was killed. Hannibal explains the title of the film when he says to Clarice, “You still wake up sometimes, don’t you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs … And you think if you save poor Catherine, you could make them stop, don’t you? You think if Catherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs.” The lambs symbolize the flocks of innocent people that Clarice wants to protect. Perhaps she followed her father into law enforcement to try to fight the forces that led to her dad’s violent death. After she is finished with her story, Hannibal looks like he has had a sexual climax from the sharing of the traumatic childhood experience. He closes his eyes and quietly thanks her, most likely for the emotional pleasure she has given him.

Hannibal becomes the teacher again as he lectures Clarice about Marcus Aurelius and “first principles” and “simplicity.” He says, “What does he do this man you seek?” in slow, dramatic, stress-laden speech. When she says he kills women he, like an instructor, corrects her. “No,” he says, “That is incidental.” After he tells her that Bill “covets,” he then asks how does he do this, and follows up like a teacher calling on a student by saying, “Make an effort to answer now.” He gives her the right response, just as many instructors must do when the student can’t come up with the correct answer. He tells her, “We begin by coveting what we see every day.” Chilton interrupts them (a variation on coitus interruptus?), and Hannibal touches one of her fingers with his as he hands her Bill’s case file. The image stresses the strange sexuality between these two. After all, she brought back his drawings to him, an act of kindness from the beauty to the beast, and when she says she came to see him on her own Hannibal maybe only half-jokingly says, “People will say we’re in love.”

After his encounter with Clarice in the courthouse, two policemen bring in Hannibal’s dinner. On the desk in the cage is a copy of Bon Appetit magazine, a comical item given Hannibal’s cannibalism, but also in keeping with his way of elevating inferior humans in the only way he sees that they can be, transforming them (Clarice and Bill wish for transformation) into a gourmet meal. But, there is also a drawing of Clarice holding a lamb, with the Christian crucifixion scene in the background. An entry on IMDb suggests Clarice and the lamb resemble Michelangelo’s Pieta, with Claice being Mary and the animal standing for Jesus. Hannibal ordered extra rare (appropriate for his tastes) lamb chops. Is he symbolically reenacting the sacrifice of Jesus who was known as the “lamb of god?” Or is he mocking Clarice’s attempts to protect the vulnerable in society by ordering the dead animal for his meal?

Hannibal with the help of the pen of the negligent Chilton, picks the locks on his handcuffs, and proceeds to murder the policemen. He hangs one of them, who he disemboweled, up on the side of the cage, with the officer’s arms spread out. Again, we have the appearance of a bird, or also an image of crucifixion. In any case, the scene suggest denial of rescue for the innocent or a chance an escape from violence. We have a recurrence of the covering up or hidden truth motif in that Hannibal pretends to be one of the policemen. He wears a different mask this time, the bloody face of one of the policemen that he has cut off and places over his own as a disguise. He removes this mask in the ambulance later and reveals his monstrous inner nature by killing the crew and a citizen for his clothes and money as he makes his escape.

Hannibal wrote on the case file that the scattered sites of where Bill’s victims were found seemed “desperately random.” Clarice tries to again uncover what the reality is behind the appearances. She discusses events with her friend, Ardelia (Kasi Lemmons), as they repeat Hannibal’s words to Clarice about coveting. The first victim was weighed down, and was the third body to be found. Clarice reasons that the purpose was to make her drift further away from her home, which means he saw her “every day,” as Hannibal put it. That means Bill lives where she did, in Belvedere, Ohio. (Interesting historical fact: the first victim’s name is Fredrica, and the real Buffalo Bill was married to a Louisa Frederici, which sound a great deal like the victim’s name. Does Bill murdering her in this story show how a serial killer would get a divorce?)

Clarice goes to Belvedere and unearths more information leading her to Bill. Keeping with the uncovering theme, she finds at Fredrica’s house a music box which has a hidden compartment with photos of a partially dressed Fredrica, revealing her sexual side. She sees that Fredrica was a seamstress. Clarice finds hidden (of course) behind a door, clothes material with diamond-shaped cutouts, similar to the pattern on the body in West Virginia. She now knows that Bill, in his weird way, is making a woman’s suit out of female skin to symbolize his changing gender. She calls Crawford about what she discovered, but he knows from checking at the Johns Hopkins gender reassignment department that Bill’s real name is Jame Gumb, and he had exotic insects delivered to a house in Chicago. The FBI goes to this house, but it too turns into an obstacle, a deceptive appearance, since nobody is there. Clarice goes to the home where Fredrica worked and that is where Bill actually lives. When she sees a moth flying, (appropriately by a Starling) Clarice knows she is in the killer’s presence. He escapes into the cellar and shuts off the lights. He wears night vision goggles which look scary, and reminds us of Hannibal’s frightening mask, mirroring the monster beneath. He is a denizen of the dark, scrutinizing Clarice, as did the other males in the story, but Clarice is up to the challenge. She swivels and shoots him when she hears him cocking the trigger on his gun. The bullet goes through a boarded up window, letting light in, and symbolically destroying the darkness of its demon inhabitant.

Earlier in the film, Chilton tells Hannibal how Clarice and Crawford scammed the killer, and that he was not going to see the birds and walk on a beach. But, at the end, Hannibal has escaped, like those birds, and is on a tropical island ready to get his revenge on the arriving Chilton for his “torments” by having him “for dinner.” Unlike Bill, Hannibal, a super villain - not a hero, has flown away from imprisonment. But what of our heroine? She gets the recognition for her ending Bill’s crime spree. She graduates from the training academy. But, at the reception, there is a cake in the shape of the FBI seal, and it is carved up. Is this an ominous image of the future (similar to the deconstruction of the spread made to look like an American flag in The Manchurian Candidate)?

Hannibal calls Clarice at her reception and asks, “Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?” Is Hannibal mocking her or really curious if she is no longer tormented by her dreams? We do not get an answer from her. This story does not depict elevating transformations. The iconic cowboy Buffalo Bill is turned into a serial killer. Where Clarice shot out the window in Bill’s dungeon, there is a small American flag knocked on its side. Maybe the gunfire is so loud in the United States that it is difficult for anyone to experience the peace found in silence.

Next week, the Oscars.

Contact

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

On the day of the solar eclipse I thought about how sharing this one cosmic event linked all the inhabitants of the United States together at a time when there is so much division among the country’s citizens. I also watched this 1997 film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, again on the same day, and felt the real astronomical experience and the fictional movie story were connected by the the theme of dealing with being alone and the loneliness that can accompany solitude. The title of the movie stresses the need to communicate with others, join with them, by making “contact.”

The film starts with a close shot of the earth from space accompanied by audio broadcasts spanning twentieth century events. There are numerous bits of music and headline stories, including the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, for example. The camera pulls back through the universe and the sound becomes less distinguishable until it is totally lost. The shot ends with a close-up of Jena Malone’s eye, the actress playing the young Ellie Arroway. The ocular globe’s contents mirror the shapes of stars and other stuff that make up the celestial contents of outer space. In this opening sequence we see that the infinite is experienced by a finite, mortal individual, and, thus, how the two are intrinsically intertwined. The beginning also hints at the later explanation in the plot of how aliens heard our radio signals and then responded to them.

Young Ellie never knew her mother, who we discover died during childbirth. It is one of the events that makes her different and cut off from others. She was a science and mathematics prodigy (another fact that sets her apart), and her father, Ted (David Morse) encouraged her in academic pursuits, providing her with a shortwave radio and telescope. These instruments help one to escape being alone by connecting with other people and heavenly bodies. Indeed, we see Ellie talking, in Madison Wisconsin, with someone through her microphone who lives one thousand miles away in Pensacola Florida, a new distance record for her. It is interesting to note that in the bedroom of someone whose entire life will be steeped in science, she has a painting of a unicorn on her wall, a magical creature that some wished really existed. She demonstrates her desire to break the boundaries of science when she asks her father if they could talk to her deceased mother. This question also shows how her life will be dedicated to pushing the limits of science to escape the restrictions imposed by being a circumscribed human confined to the earthly realm.

As Zemeckis did in his Back to the Future movies, he plants words and images that will be revisited later, adding resonance to the story. The reference to Pensacola, Ellie’s dad telling her she must make “small moves” to tune in other radio operators, and his statement that if there is no one else living in the universe then it “would be an awful waste of space,” show up later. After her father’s fatal heart attack when she was nine years old, Ellie is even more isolated. It is difficult for an extremely intelligent, science inclined child to be comforted by religious explanations after losing both parents. After her father’s funeral, the local clergyman tells Ellie that we are not always meant to know the reasons why things happen, and must accept God’s will. Her response is one that denies a grand plan forged by a deity, saying she could have saved her father if she had his medication on the downstairs floor. To not search for answers would deny the basic human desire to want answers. But, conversely, later, we see Ellie again trying to use science to achieve a supernatural goal, as she tries to reach her dad on her shortwave radio.

As an adult, Ellie (Jodie Foster) is working at a huge satellite antenna site in Puerto Rico, still trying to communicate with the great beyond as a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) scientist. She is there with another astronomer, Kent Clark (William Fichtner), who is blind, but has, in a cliche narrative device, overcompensated with the loss of the visual sense with amazing auditory abilities (maybe why his name is the reversal of Clark Kent). The main point here is that he knows how to listen to the sounds of the universe, and admires Ellie’s dedication to doing the same. The thrust here is that one learns by hearing, gathering data, being empirical, not forcing the facts to justify a preconceived notion.

Ellie encounters Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) at a local restaurant. There is immediate sexual chemistry between them. He carries a notebook around with him (he seems to carry a book with him most of the time, like a preacher holding a bible). He knows what SETI is, which impresses Ellie, and says he is writing a book about the effect of technology on third world peoples. He wants to meet David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), who is sort of Ellie’s boss because he handles government spending on scientific projects. Palmer pulls a toy compass out of a Cracker Jack box, and gives it to Ellie, who returns it to him, saying how it might save his life some day. This compass shows up several times in the film. Ellie’s last name is Arroway, which implies she wants to aim her intellectual sights on a path in the sky that will allow her to hit her extraterrestrial target. The compass is a directional indicator. It is possible that Palmer’s attempt at giving her the compass is to help guide her in the right spiritual as well as physical direction. She declines a romantic attempt made by Palmer. Although she wants to connect with others to lessen her loneliness, the sting of losing both parents probably causes her to be cautious of close relationships out of a fear of being hurt if that intimacy is lost.

Drumlin, unhappily visiting Puerto Rico, actually doing scientific research instead of working as a bureaucrat, considers attempting to contact alien life to be a waste of taxpayer money, and professional suicide for Ellie. At a reception, Ellie encounters Palmer again, and he questions Drumlin’s advocating that science should be practical and maybe profitable. Palmer says that’s okay, as long as it isn’t at the expense of the pursuit of truth, which is what the term “science” is all about. Drumlin, who has heard of Palmer, says it is ironic that the anti-science theologian is arguing for funding pure scientific research. Palmer says that he is not against science, as long as it is not “deified at the expense of human truth,” which he sees as something the soul needs beyond physical truths. Ellie now realizes the man she finds attractive is religious. He has a Master of Divinity degree, but dropped out of the seminary because he couldn’t handle celibacy. His line is one can call him “a man of the cloth without the cloth.” He tells Ellie that he did secular humanitarian work coordinating with third world countries to help out the people living in those nations. So, he is a person who wants to help people physically and spiritually. They leave the party, and Ellie points out astronomical formations in the sky. She says she became hooked on her field of study when she learned as a child that Venus, appearing shiny and beautiful, actually contained poisonous gasses and sulfuric acid rain. She says she was hooked after acquiring this knowledge. This admission points to Ellie’s desire to not be placated by deceptive appearances, and wanting to delve deep to discover truth.

During their conversation, Ellie tells Palmar about all the mathematical  possibilities that indicate that there should be life on other planets. He then echoes her father’s statement that if not, it would be an “awful waste of space.” Hearing her dad’s words again, she turns lovingly to Palmer, and significantly says, “Amen.” The two go to Ellie’s place and make love, (“knowing” each other in the mental and carnal biblical sense?) showing how the spiritual and scientific worlds can, at least for the moment, coexist. Palmer tells her that he had a religious revelation, an epiphany that was beyond intellectual explanation. He felt God was revealed to him. Interestingly, he says that he no longer felt “alone,” which again emphasizes the theme of wanting to be part of something greater than oneself. She says that she was thrown out of Sunday school because she would ask vexing questions, like “Where did Mrs. Cain come from.” She was not placated with unsatisfying answers. She applied, even as a child, scientific standards to the allegory and symbolism of religious texts which do not hold up to literal scrutiny, but still sustain many people in other ways.

Palmer sees a picture of her father on a shelf, and asks about Ellie’s parents. After finding out about losing both at such an early age, he repeats the keynote line about how awful it must have been being all “alone.” Palmer wants to see her again, but she says she will be busy with work. She tells him to leave his phone number. But, when she leaves him, she looks lost, again seeking direction, wanting to be close to someone, unsure about investing herself romantically with someone who thinks so differently, and maybe afraid of making herself emotionally vulnerable to loss. Kent tells her that Drumlin pulled their funding. They decide to raise money from the private sector to rent time at the antenna array in New Mexico. She tells one of her colleagues to get some Hollywood cash, because filmmakers have been making money off of aliens for years (an obvious inside joke here). As she packs up to leave, she sees the phone number Palmer left, but leaves it behind. He also left her the compass, which she takes, and wears around her neck, a kind of symbol of her need for an old school GPS tool to help her on her scientific quest, which mirrors Palmer’s spiritual one, to find truth, and become part of something grander.

Ellie eventually winds up at the corporate headquarters of industrialist S. R. Hadden (John Hurt), whose name, according to IMDb, comes from an ancient Assyrian king by the name of Esarhaddon, indicating, possibly, pagan power? She pitches for money to fund the New Mexico project. The executives there tell her proposal sounds less like science, and more like “science fiction.” She counters by saying the airplane, breaking the sound barrier, and landing on the moon were once thought of as science fiction. She doesn't say make a “leap of faith,” but in essence that is what she implies when she urges them to pull back, take a look at the “bigger picture” involving the possibilities of scientific research, and adopt some “vision,” to see the positive results to be obtained in funding her project. She notices some surveillance cameras as one of the men there takes a phone call. He says she has her money. She looks up at the camera and mouths a thank you. In a way, her pitch was a prayer, and Hadden is a secular, god-like being, who has all-seeing eyes in the sky, is all-knowing about people’s lives, is very powerful, flies in the air all of the time, and hardly ever lowers himself to land on earth. If not a god, he is Ellie’s guardian angel, who comes to her rescue, or so it seems, several times.  

Fours years pass, and Ellie is at the array in New Mexico. Unfortunately, Kent tells her that her old nemesis, Drumlin, doesn’t want the government to rent them the telescope time anymore, considering that use of the array impractical. So, they have three months to vacate. She sits on her car (a means of transporting you to get to where you want to be, which sums up Ellie’s past and future) at the edge of the Grand Canyon, a vast expanse of area that symbolizes the universe that Ellie wants to explore. She is typically alone, listening to sounds from outer space, when she hears a modulated transmission. The camera zooms in on Ellie’s eyes, echoing the opening of the movie, emphasizing the connection between the individual and the infinite beyond. She excitedly calls the finding into the control room, and she and her fellow workers verify the transmission comes from the star Vega, which is about twenty-six light years away. The transmission alters, sending out bursts that signify prime numbers, which shows the sounds are not natural in origin, but sent by intelligent life, speaking in the universal language of mathematics. It is interesting that this event that turns science fiction, according to the Hadden executives, into science fact occurs close to Halloween, which is a holiday centered on the supernatural. It is a bit ironic that while Ellie is reaching out, listening to the sky to join with something beyond herself, we see a TV interview in the control room with Palmer, who has become a best selling author, and a spiritual leader, saying that despite the internet, technology has not made us happier, and we feel more alone than ever. He talks about how we as a species have lost our sense of direction, which is exactly what Ellie has been trying to find, and which the compass symbolizes.

Ellie must communicate with other scientists around the world to verify the source of the signal. Not only is this act a practical plot action, it also shows, thematically, that Ellie is not only making contact with an alien civilization, but also connecting with the rest of the world, taking her out of her seclusion. But, her discovery and actions create conflict with narrow minded people and envious ones. Michael Kitz (James Woods) is a government security adviser who wants to classify Ellie’s work and militarize it. He represents those who have no vision beyond their egocentric selfish view of life, and become paranoid, believing that those that are different are a threat to their existence. He represents xenophobia. Drumlin, who doubted Ellie’s work, now wants to selfishly capitalize on it. He tries to take over the project, interrupting Ellie continually as he tries to commandeer the conversation.

Kent, with his superhuman hearing, realizes that there are audio and visual components to the transmission. They view Adolph Hitler’s opening remarks at the 1936 Olympic Games. It just happens to be the first strong signal sent into space, but, some pervert the message, considering it a threat, while Neo-Nazis see it as a vindication of their beliefs. Throngs of people visit the New Mexico site to advocate their take on the discovery. Their response to this event is one that thwarts the coming together of a universal community. Added to this mix of self-centered people are those who see the transmission as only between God and people on earth. There is one evangelical religious fanatic (Jake Busey), who stares directly at Ellie as she drives by with anger in his eyes (as opposed to the desire for universality in Ellie’s). He shouts that God has spoken to us from the heavens, and we don’t want scientists, who produced the atomic bomb, and poisoned the air and waters, to talk with the deity. Although he is crazed, he makes a legitimate indictment against the negative accomplishments of science and technology, and seems to represent an extremist, violent version of what Palmer is saying. But, even rational politicians and journalists discuss how the signal has religious overtones, because human religious history has propagated a unique relationship between God and earth, and the possibility that there are others in the mix upsets the theological applecart.

Kent also finds a tremendous amount of scientific and mathematical digital documents on the edges of the transmission, but they do not line up, and the scientists can’t uncover the primer to help translate the language of the messages. Here again is where the capitalist angelic presence of Hadden appears. He invites Ellie aboard his airplane, and shows how much he knows about her personal life. He hacked into the database that contained the alien documents. He says he wants her back in the game that Drumlin has taken over. He comments that he was once “one hell of an engineer.” He says an advanced culture thinks in multiple dimensions. He projects the data pages on a screen and shows how the pages are three dimensional cubes, and they line up when they are joined in that fashion. The translating primer is on the edge of each ‘page.”  The decoding reveals schematics for a machine, which turns out to be a transporter. Of course, people, like Kitz, react with fear, believing it is a means to destroy us, and question the morality of the aliens, advocating, despite our history, that humans hold the ethical high ground.

Palmer is now a spiritual adviser to the president. After being apart for over four years, he and Ellie meet at the White House discussion about the nature of the signal. He says that whether or not the transmission has religious significance, he does not see any reason to take an alarmist view. His words take on extra meaning as he smiles at Ellie, implying that they should try to find a way of finding common ground, which, of course, is the theme of the film. At a reception, Ellie and he discuss his book, and their differences again cause some conflict. She raises the concept of Occam’s razor, which states that, all things being equal, the simplest theory concerning a problem is the preferred answer. She asks which is simpler: that there is a supernatural being that created, and rules, the universe with no proof of his existence, or there is just the physical cosmos that we observe. She says that God may have been created by humans just to provide a feeling that people are not so small and alone (that word again). She says she would need proof of his existence. Palmer counters by asking her to prove the real love she had for her father exists, which of course she can’t, even though she knows it to be true. To be fair, this analogy is a false one. There is a difference between proving the physical existence of an actual, measurable phenomena, and a feeling, like love, which is not a concrete thing. However, suppose, one can argue, that God is not part of the material universe, but is other-worldly; then proof by scientific means will not work. The, religious experience, like the one Palmer says he experienced, is akin to Ellie’s feeling of love, and is then subjective, not objective. The problem comes when religions try to impose their dogma on others based on personal feelings, because religion is, by nature, absolutist in its beliefs. This way of thinking is illustrated by the religious fanatic who haunts Ellie in New Mexico and outside the scientific reception.

The decision is made to build the machine. Palmer is on the committee to choose who should be the traveler. But, Drumlin wants to be the one to go, despite Ellie’s qualifications. Palmer hears warnings from scientists that this mission is an extremely dangerous one with a small chance that the explorer will be able to return to earth alive. Palmer meets with Ellie and asks her why would she give up her life for this quest. She significantly says that she has been searching her whole life for verifiable answers to questions that religion, for her, has not satisfactorily provided. She wants to know why are we here, what is our purpose, who we are. She holds up well at the candidate interview until Palmer asks if she believes in God. Her answer is that there is no evidence establishing a deity, and the panel decides that if ninety-five per cent of the world believes in a supreme being then she is not a good representative to be an emissary to an alien civilization. Of course, Drumlin says that he believes in God, and he is chosen. When Palmer later visits her in her hotel room, she says that she was honest and Drumlin told the panel exactly what they wanted to hear. Palmer says that he couldn’t choose in good conscience someone who thought the vast majority of the world suffered from some kind of mass delusion. Ellie then returns the compass to Palmer, indicating that they are traveling in different directions.

The machine is built at a tremendous cost. At a test run, Ellie recognizes the religious fanatic impersonating one of the technicians on the platform where Drumlin is. She warns him, but the man sets off a suicide vest bomb, killing Drumlin and others, and destroys the machine. After the memorial service, Ellie again gets an electronic transmission from her benefactor, Hadden, who is even higher up in the heavens now, with a god-like view of earth, on the Russian space station, Mir. But, he is all too mortal, since he says the environment there has slowed down the cancer that is killing him. He shows her with a Google Earth type of view that there was a second, backup machine built on an island. The secret site was controlled by Americans, and built by Japanese subcontractors, who were acquired by Hadden industries. He has her ticket, and asks her, “Wanna take a ride?”

Palmer shows up at the ship that acts as the control center for the machine. He tells Ellie that the real reason he voted against her was because he didn’t want to lose her. He now is there to support her, and gives the compass back to Ellie, showing how they are on the same path again. It is significant that Ellie, the person of science, argues against having a secured chair with a harness installed in the pod in which she will travel, because no such construct was mentioned in the schematics. She is placing trust, in a sense faith, without actual proof, that the aliens have provided safe instructions. The pod drops through these revolving power loops and she travels through a wormhole to Vega and beyond. She sees celestial events that move her emotionally, not scientifically, leaving her speechless. The compass she wears comes loose, and she detaches herself from her chair harness. She safely floats after the compass while the chair violently breaks away from its bolts and crashes into the ceiling of the pod. Her faith in the aliens was justified. And, in a kind of twist, the compass, which she jokingly told Palmer to hang onto because it might save his life, actually does saves her, again validating her journey. When she arrives at the destination, she passes out. We again have a camera focusing in on her eyes, which shows her connection to the universe as a whole. She is transported down into an artificial construct that resembles Pensacola, Florida. But, the scenery is stylized, more vibrant in color than normal, yet with no sun out, and the waves moving backward. Also, when Ellie, after waking up, touches the air around her, it distorts the scenery, showing that the environment is a version of reality, sort of like a movie.

She sees some wavering lines approaching her on the beach which coalesce into the form of her deceased father. She realizes that he is not really there. The aliens have downloaded her thoughts and memories to make it easier for her to relate to where she is. But, in a way, she has finally broken the bounds of her early communications exploration, and successfully made contact with her dead father, who lives on in her mind. The alien, however, provides no absolute answers. The machine that transported her was built eons ago by a race that was long gone before the current inhabitants used it. In a way, to search for ultimate answers is a fruitless act, there always being more questions to ask. He does say that there are many other civilizations out there, and many took the same journey to make contact that she did. So, humans are part of a much larger universal community. The alien makes an assessment of humans, which sums up the primary theme of the story. He says to Ellie, “You are an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.” Intelligent beings are driven to seek a connection to something larger, even if they go about reaching this goal in different ways, as do Ellie and Palmer.

Ellie wants to ask tons of questions, but the alien says that she must return home now. He is a bit mired in an almost bureaucratic tradition when he says that this is the way contact has been made for billions of years. But, it is possible that humans are not quite evolved enough to receive the answers yet to all of the questions Ellie would like to ask. Her species has taken the first step, and in time there will be others. He sounds like Ellie’s father when he says she must take, “small moves.” He says there are no tests here, but that is not entirely accurate. She returns back to the pod which drops through the energy hoops, into a safety net close to the ocean. Forty-three cameras show that the pod dropped straight through the hoops. Her recording device showed only static. So, she has no proof of her trip, and the evidence indicates that she went nowhere. The ‘test” is believing in what happened, convincing herself, and others, that her story is true.

Ellie’s position is now reversed. She, like Palmer, must defend her beliefs against skepticism. An inquiry, led by the grandstanding Kitz, throws back the Occam’s razor argument at her. The simpler explanation is that her whole experience may have been engineered by the now dead Hadden, maybe to unite the world, or just to conduct an elaborate hoax, or possibly for his company to obtain lucrative rights to new technology. He gets Ellie to admit that if she were in the the shoes of the members of the inquiry that she would respond with exactly the same degree of “incredulity and skepticism.” Another member, taking on the Doubting Thomas role that Ellie once adopted, says she has no evidence and tells a tale that strains believability, yet expects them to take it “on faith.” She says she can’t withdraw her testimony, because she knows that she had an experience (as did Palmer). Her words again annunciate the theme: “We belong to something greater than ourselves.” And, that none of us is “alone.” As she walks out with Palmer, the press ask him what he believes. He says even though they are bound by a different covenant, he and Ellie both seek the truth. He shows his faith in her when he says, “I, for one, believe her.”

The theme of faith and belief versus empirical proof would have best been left alone, in my opinion, at this point. But, the story shows that there is a “secret” report, its hidden nature not really explained, which tends to verify Ellie’s story because there were almost eighteen hours of static recorded on her camera device. The story skips ahead eighteen months, and Ellie, in receipt of a healthy grant to expand the SETI program, possibly making more “small moves,” repeats her father’s words to group of children, that if there is nobody else out there in the endless expanse of the heavens, then it would be “an awful waste of space.”

IMDb point out that there is a repetition of a star pattern in several places in the movie: in the popcorn on the floor where Ellie’s father dies; the quadruple shining star system Ellie witnesses in the pod; in the few sparkles of sand in the Alien’s hand on the artificial beach; and again at the end of the film, as Ellie imitates the alien by picking up some partial glistening gravel near the rim of the Grand Canyon. This configuration seems to point to Ellie’s words at the inquiry about “how tiny and insignificant and how rare, and precious we all are.” Individually, we may seem minuscule, but together, we approach infinity.

The next film is Friday Night Lights.