Contact Review
by "Ivana Redwine" (credwine AT ix DOT netcom DOT com)July 21st, 1997
CONTACT (1997)
A film review by Ivana Redwine
Copyright 1997 by Ivana Redwine
Produced by: Warner Bros. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Effects by: Sony Pictures Imageworks, Cinematography by Don Burgess. Starring: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Angela Bassett, John Hurt, Rob Lowe, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, David Morse, Jena Malone.
In director Robert Zemeckis' screen version of the late Carl Sagan's bestselling 1985 novel CONTACT, there is a moment of pure movie magic: After the public learns that a broadcast has been received from intelligent extraterrestrial life, we see a car moving slowly through the circus-like atmosphere of a huge crowd that has camped out around a scientific facility in the New Mexico desert. The crowd, which contains everything from an evangelist to an Elvis impersonator, is a motley crew of various and sundry people, most of whom are in the throes of something between a party mood and a blissed-out state. Inside the car, Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), the brilliant radio astronomer responsible for detecting the broadcast and recognizing its meaning, stares through the window in disbelief, dismay, and horror. Her idealism, honesty, and determination have served her well in the arena of science, but she is ill-prepared to deal with society's reaction to her discovery.
Foster's performance is what takes CONTACT far beyond the pale of the kind of vacuous entertainment that most moviegoers have to settle for during the summer, and the actress is again a strong candidate for an Academy Award nomination. (Foster has previously won Oscars for her acting in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and THE ACCUSED.) In addition to featuring a great star turn, CONTACT is a film with intelligence, heart, and some of the most aesthetically beautiful, dazzling, and well-integrated special effects sequences I have seen since Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
The film's visually breathtaking opening sequence revolves around radio and television signals as they speed away from earth into the depths of space, and through the wizardry of special effects, we follow them on the way out. Eventually all this manages to dovetail back into the eye of a young girl, and we are introduced to the film's heroine as a child. Young Ellie (well played by actress Jena Malone) is a short-wave radio and astronomy buff whose hobby is trying to contact faraway places via short- wave radio, marking each success with a thumbtack on a map. Soon her child's imagination becomes fascinated with the possibility of life on other planets. Her father, who helps to nurture her interest in astronomy, makes the point that if intelligent life didn't exist somewhere other than on earth, it would be "an awful waste of space."
There is a telling scene early in the film that reveals young Ellie's character and foreshadows the kind of woman she will become. The girl's beloved father, who suffers from a heart condition, has an attack one day, and while Ellie runs upstairs to get his medicine, he dies. A priest attempts to comfort the grief-stricken girl, but Ellie can find no consolation in the priest's appeal to spirituality and mysticism. Instead, she channels her energy into a cool, rational analysis of what happened and reaches the conclusion that she should have kept some of her father's medicine downstairs so she could have reached it more quickly in an emergency.
Years later, Ellie Arroway is an adult with an earned Ph.D. who is conducting research at an observatory in Puerto Rico. There she meets Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a writer/theologian who is studying the effect of technology on the local population. Joss's faith in God is as strong as Arroway's scientific skepticism, and the contrast between their belief systems is one of the film's main themes. It is fitting that Joss turns out to be a former priest who loved the theological aspects of the priesthood, but whose raging hormones had made him realize he would not be able to fully honor his vows. One of the functions of the Joss character is to provide a love interest for Arroway, and the film makes it clear that, in spite of their dedication to their respective careers, they do not observe celibacy. Later, he goes on to write a bestselling book that is a mix of religion and philosophy; due to the book's success, he becomes a sort of new-age spiritual guru. Although the character as written is little more than a cardboard cutout, McConaughey is convincing as Palmer Joss: his kind face and obvious sex appeal give the role more dimension and credibility than actually seems to be in the script itself.
Ellie is able to enjoy her research at the Puerto Rico observatory for only a little while before the funding for the project is suddenly cut by her superior, David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt). Drumlin is a scientist-administrator with an icily pragmatic approach, which serves as a counterpoint to Ellie's passion and idealism. To Drumlin, science seems to be more of a vehicle for self-aggrandizement than anything else. I liked what Skerritt did with Drumlin's character--adding just the right touches of slippery suaveness, ruthless ambition, and shameless opportunism to his portrayal.
When Drumlin pulls the government appropriations from the Puerto Rico project, Ellie seeks private funding for her research. After many setbacks, she finds a strange ally in S.R. Hadden (in a strong performance by John Hurt, who imparts an eerie spectralness to the character). Hadden is a brilliant engineer turned entrepreneur, and his wealth allows him to indulge in an eccentric lifestyle. His idiosyncrasies include the avoidance of being earthbound: he lives on a plane that rarely lands, and later in the film takes up residence on a space station. He offers to fund her project, and she moves her research to New Mexico, where she can use the Very Large Array of radio telescopes to listen to the skies.
Ellie's intensity and dogged devotion to her work finally pay off, and she intercepts a broadcast from an extraterrestrial intelligence, but her narrow focus makes her a little naive about how the media, public, and political interests are going to react to the news. When a press conference is held to announce her discovery, Dr. Arroway is busy going over flash cards in preparation for speaking to the journalists. But before she can say anything, her old boss David Drumlin takes over the podium and tries to take credit for her discovery. It is outrageous behavior, especially since he was the man who cut the funds for her Puerto Rico project, telling her she was throwing away her career if she stayed in such an unpromising line of research.
Naturally, the media goes into a feeding frenzy once the news of the alien broadcast is out. As was done in Zemeckis' FORREST GUMP, CONTACT employs digitally manipulated images from old newscasts, including footage that features Bill Clinton in the cameo role of--you guessed it--the President of the United States. Zemeckis had originally intended that the role of the President be played by Sidney Poitier, but eventually decided against it. The inclusion of the modified news footage was done without Clinton's permission, and according to reports in the press, the President was not pleased.
An exciting thread in the film concerns plans transmitted by the aliens for a device that could possibly transport humans deep enough into space to enable contact with the extraterrestrial intelligence, and an international consortium joins forces to build this machine. I was really impressed by the superb production design and deft special effects that went into the completed device. Its visual aspects have strong Jungian resonance, drawing on mental models of the untouchably small and the untouchably large. The machine reminded me of both electrons revolving around a nucleus and planets revolving around a star, while also resembling a sort of three-dimensional mandala. Luckily I saw CONTACT at a theater that has an excellent sound system, and the crystalline clarity of the vibration-like noise the device gives off while being powered up gave me goose bumps. It was a sound that was strangely primal, while at the same time eerily mechanical and otherworldly.
Another memorable sequence in the film takes place when Ellie is transported into deep space through a series of wormholes, and the special effects made it so believable that I felt I was along for the ride. As a result of her journey through the wormhole, Ellie goes through an experience that changes her life and subtly alters her perspective on things. However, the way the film treated what happened at the end of her journey seemed to me to be a bit of a letdown. Then, however, the movie recovers much of its earlier momentum, and in an ironic twist, Dr. Arroway has to try to convince a government panel of something for which the only evidence appears to be her own incredible eyewitness account. The coolly rational scientist must ask others to do what she herself had been previously incapable of doing--take something on faith.
Thanks to the cinematography of Don Burgess and special effects by Sony Pictures Imageworks, CONTACT is a richly cinematic film. The special effects are elegant and effective, and although they are often dazzling, they never overwhelm the story and often enhance the movie's emotional impact.
I was particularly impressed by the cinematography depicting New Mexico and the area near the Very Large Array, especially the shots that emphasized the vastness of the surrounding landscape. To me this functioned as an earthbound frame of reference that echoed the expanses and aching loneliness of space. In a similar vein, the shots of handfuls of sand and dirt, twinkling away like stars, reinforces the same kind of feeling. While watching this, I could hear in my imagination Carl Sagan's voice saying "billions and billions…"
Although it has many vibrant moments, CONTACT is a little uneven and at times it is heavy-handed, resembling a TV movie in its unwillingness to trust the audience to think for itself and to be able to follow the story without intrusive guideposts and heavy explication. However, viewers like me who admire the film will be disposed to overlook these flaws. In any case, I admire Zemeckis' willingness to take chances in films like FORREST GUMP and CONTACT. These are the kinds of movies that elicit strong reactions, ranging from ire to admiration. Because CONTACT contrasts the realms of spirituality and faith against the realms of reason and logic, some people will never get past their knee-jerk reactions and won't be able to enjoy the film for what it is--an entertaining mix of science fiction and a sprinkling of science fact. But the movie doesn't play it completely safe, and this gives the film quite a bit of power, even though it eventually loses its nerve and goes for a warm, fuzzy, all-encompassing, new-age kind of resolution. However, even though Zemeckis pulls his punches on loaded issues, at least he is willing to address them, which was something I didn't except to see in a big-budget summer Hollywood blockbuster.
In my opinion CONTACT is a very good film that unfortunately sometimes misses its mark because of minor flaws. As good as the movie is, I couldn't help but think that it had the potential to be even better. During the first part of the movie, CONTACT dangles tantalizing glimmers of becoming truly provocative, but in the end it is geared more toward entertainment than deep critical thought. Nevertheless, it is an emotionally engaging film that features an outstanding performance by a great actress, Jodie Foster, and that is enough to give it passages of incandescent power.
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