Eighteen hours in the pod and....

Easy not to defacate for such a length. Easy to not eat or drink for such an amount of time. Some Shamans put their initiates in isolation until they experience a vision. Sometimes this can take many days (and nights), during which the initiates don't eat or drink. They probably won't defacate, either.

But the urination is an interesting point. I can't remember if I have ever attempted to be that long without urinating.

Still, it's not even 24 hours, so it should be possible, given that she hasn't drank anything for a long time, and her bladder is pretty much empty when she leaves, and then she doesn't drink more during those 18 hours.

Too bad that the 'proof' the movie uses kind of foils the more interesting and logical explanations, like Astral Projection / OOBE-stuff. That would be so easy and simple.

Someone, who took LSD in the sixties (or whenever it was), described how he is still convinced that he actually spent YEARS elsewhere in 'euphoric bliss', that was only interrupted rarely by the 'interview' that was going on at the same time, when he was trying to explain about 'time' to the camera.

The problem is that this movie messes up such possibilities completely by the 'tech approach' - because the 'recording device' surely can't astral project or LSD-hallucinate, this means her body had to _PHYSICALLY_ be elsewhere for 18 hours. That's the only explanation this movie's plot allows. Too bad.

Why the movie ends so stupidly, and why such an effort just to have a TINY CHAT (without any signifigant messages exchanged), that isn't even shown or proven to the population of the planet (Earth)...

..well, if they had shown us something AMAZING, and left it as a possibility for us all, maybe many of us would have difficulties in 'adjusting' to the craziness of THIS world again.

If we knew there's something much better out there, maybe the corporate work-drone-wage-slaves wouldn't be so willing to do the evil bidding of those corporations, institutions, militaries and governments.

If the movie had ended in a happy note of people freely travelling to better worlds that offer higher cultivation of spirit and all areas of human life, many might have become dreamers that actually want that to happen. This could lead to destabilization of the current status quo.

So it had to leave on a 'nothing signifigant can happen to most people, go back to work'-note. This movie really kills all the magic, mystery and wonder it manages to muster during its way too long and long-winded runtime. It's so promising and uplifting and interesting and exciting .. until it ends with the stupidest message possible; "Yeah, there's SOMETHING out there, but you will never have the chance to experience it, so you might as well just go back to your mundane corporate existence, like a good, little drone."

As if any otherplanetary race would DO something that stupid.. as if something like THAT could ever be considered "the first step"!

The UFO stories and 'E.T. Channeler' books are way more interesting than this, diluted story that kills itself in the end. Whatever you think of Adamski or Daniel Fry or countless others that have similar, very wild claims, their stories are -way- more interesting than Sagan's lame imagination (Sagan works for 'them' anyway.. so you are not going to get truth from him), or anything this movie showed us.

Even if you take their writings as fiction, it's more entertaining, more complex, more interesting, and more hopeful than this movie's makers want people to even imagine.

This movie is technically competent to the point of being impressive with its weird, surreal, 'impossible' camera zooms with mirrors and windows (I never usually notice that stuff, though), and it brings forth some interesting ideas and good acting performances, and Jodie Foster is passable in the role - a bit typically unrealistic fema-fascist crap (as if any WOMAN dreams of E.T. contact, if she can have other options, like suckering in a wealthy simp-husband while having an assortment of thugpassion on the side, let alone be willing to work so much as a loner against all odds and being ridiculed by everyone, etc. etc.. when do you EVER see this in real life? Only ugly, mannish women with no other choice would be even close to becoming something like that) is annoying though - and there's basically nothing that wrong about this movie, besides all the corny silliness and forcibly trying to tug the heartstrings of the audience with syrup in the form of music and story elements.

And of course claiming that MATHEMATICS is the only truly universal language! Whoah. How about TELEPATHY?

Wouldn't that be way more universal? Even ANIMALS understand lower telepathy and express lower spiritual abilities (most ape.. uh, two-legged humanoid denizens of Terra have sadly suffocated this natural ability, and have cultivated cultures that systematically suffocate this natural instinct that young kids still have).

Can you communicate with children with MATHEMATICS?

How do you say "Hello" in MATHEMATICS?

Can you communicate with animals with MATHEMATICS?

When an Extra-Terrestial human, who doesn't yet know your language (or english), lands near you and you want to communicate with them, do you use MATHEMATICS?

No. You use telepathy, gestures, tones of voice, drawings, etc.

Only some really thick-headed, close-minded, Nietzschean, nihilistic science-worshipper could think that. Think of a nasal-sounding thick eyeglasses-wearing egotistical, academic, lab-coat-'scientist' that sees nothing but cold numbers, whatever he/she looks at.

Anyway, I am digressing - my original point was that too bad that the movie pisses (no pun intended) on its own possibilities by the forced _TECH_-'proof' in the end (technology saved the day! YAY for TECH!), and also that the end is so stupid because the moviemakers couldn't afford to open people's minds for fantastic realities that might very well be possible for all of us, if we just stop accepting this dull reality as the only thing we can ever live in.

This movie wants to have it both ways - show us something fantastic, but convince us that WE can't experience it, because SHE already did, and that's all that was offered, sorry.

What a gyp!