Subject: Review: Contact (1997)

From: "Ivana Redwine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 Jul 1997 02:21:04 GMT

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.