History Film / Contact

-->'''Ellie:''' For as long as I can remember, I've been searching for something, some reason why we're here. What are we doing here? Who are we? If this is a chance to find out even just a little part of that answer... I don't know, I think it's worth a human life. Don't you?

** [[spoiler: While traveling through the second wormhole, a ghostly image of her face manifested from her three times. The first two were "I had no idea" and "They're alive", which she said a few minutes later when she saw an alien city ("They're alive.") and upon seeing a beautiful cosmic sight ("I had no idea."). The third was "Oh God!", which she's already said at the start of the journey.]]

** JKF's first inaugural address.

* BrokenAesop: After the laborious effort to establish total equivalence between faith in religion and faith in science -- representing both as mere personal choice in the absence of any hard evidence -- the film breaks that [[AnAesop Aesop]] by [[spoiler:definitively showing that Arroway, as opposed to the more religious characters across the aisle, actually ''has some evidence'' of her claims, and the evidence is being suppressed by the government officials involved]]. Granted, Sagan would probably have approved.
-->'''Constantine:''' I assume you read the confidential findings report from the investigating committee.\\
'''Kitz:''' I flipped through it.\\
'''Constantine:''' I was especially interested in the section on Arroway's video unit. The one that recorded the static?\\
'''Kitz:''' Continue.\\
'''Constantine:''' The fact that it recorded static isn't what interests me.\\
'''Kitz:''' [''pauses''] Continue.\\
'''Constantine:''' What interests me is that [[spoiler: [[WhamLine it recorded approximately eighteen hours of it]].]]\\
'''Kitz:''' [''leans forward so he is looking directly into the camera''] That is interesting, isn't it?

* RuleOfCool: The opening sequence shows a pull-back from Earth where we hear 10-year-old music before we've even left the solar system, completely missing the real propagation times for the radio signals, but it doesn't matter because it gets the message across so powerfully.