On the latest episode of Time on Screen, Zach Kazan and Kat Shoulders are diving deep into a wormhole on a journey to the heart of the universe. Contact, Robert Zemeckis’s 1997 follow up to Forrest Gump, is on tap this week. It’s a personal favorite among several Worn & Wound team members, and has an inherently time centered plot device (and some surprising connections to watch enthusiasm in general) that are worth discussing.
Mostly, though, Contact is a lasting tribute to the ideas of the late Carl Sagan, who is the focus of much of the conversation in this episode. The film follows astronomer Eleanor Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, as she – and the rest of the world – grapple with the discovery of a lifetime: a radio signal from a distant star system, an unmistakable sign of intelligent life. These hypothetical situations were a fascination for Sagan through much of his life, and the film approaches it from a grounded and scientifically realistic perspective, uncommon for a summer blockbuster from a big studio.