deeplyshallow // contact

contact

Palmer Joss: By doing this, you’re willing to give your life, you’re willing to die for it. Why?

Eleanor Arroway: 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?

I have written many times about Contact in the archives of this web site — so many times, in fact, that a review hardly seems necessary. Even the newest readers of my site seem to have picked up on my unchecked adoration of this movie. Unnecessary though it might be, it’s a little surprising to me that it’s taken this long to add Contact to my growing list of reviews.

It’s impossible to say enough about the movie’s opening scene, a three-minute journey from Earth to the far corner of the universe, viewed as if through the rear window of a vehicle. (Here’s a breakdown I wrote several years ago.) The scene accomplishes a very specific goal: to dwarf the viewer with its unspoken reminder of our importance, relative to the universe. It’s a visual cue whose sentiment is echoed several times later in the movie, when multiple characters observe that, if we are in fact alone in the universe, then that would seem like “an awful waste of space”.

The movie is based on the only novel Carl Sagan ever published. It’s a phenomenal literary accomplishment, a plausible science fiction story that’s heavy on the science and yet swings around an emotional sledgehammer. The movie and its source material share the same basic premise — a promising young scientist, perceived to be wasting her time and talent on the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, discovers a message from the stars. As is rarely the case, the movie is extraordinarily faithful to the book; its changes are minor, and do nothing to undermine the larger story.

That said, I wish this movie were three hours longer than it is. (Yes, you heard me. I wish this were a five-and-a-half-hour-long movie.) There are so many wonderful sequences in the book that I would have loved to have seen brought to life onscreen, particularly prolonged arguments about the usefulness of organized religion versus the usefulness of science, and the portrayal of a team of scientists sent on their journey as opposed to a single voyager. Nobody would have watched the movie who wasn’t already a devoted fan of the book, so I suppose I can forgive the truncations. But only barely.

What’s perhaps surprising about Contact is that it’s an emotional and philosophical movie that’s disguised (although unconvincingly) as a sci-fi thriller. The early scenes of Eleanor Arroway as a child, full of curiosity and excitement about things like CB radio and meteor showers, are unexpectedly sweet; the sadness of her unfortunate orphanage permeates the movie even well into her adulthood, culminating in an otherworldly confrontation that would make a dead man grow a little misty.

Carl Sagan’s novel brimmed with curiosity and reason, and it’s the movie’s faithful incorporation of those elements that sets it apart from other science fiction movies, most of which fail to deal with alien encounters in a believable way. (Close Encounters of the Third Kind accomplishes this as well.) Most of the curiosity in the film is expressed by Eleanor Arroway herself; Jodie Foster and Jena Malone, who portrays the young Eleanor, create this aspect of the character together. Many movies simply slap a young actor onscreen and tell you that it’s a younger version of the actor you’ll be watching later; Foster and Malone utilize a tag-team approach, adopting each other’s mannerisms to build a complex persona that works throughout the entire movie. (In fact, in one particular moment, they occupy the same place at the same time — so effectively that you almost don’t even notice the difference.) The result? A character whose every utterance, whose extreme passion for science, is so thoroughly grounded in what we know of her childhood, that we understand her from beginning to end. When she changes, we change with her. It’s an extraordinary performance.

The movie spends much of its time on other people’s reactions to the discovery of the Message. Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) is a spiritual leader who keeps a decidedly open mind about this sudden threat to his faith; on the other hand, Richard Rank (Rob Lowe), a vocal member of the religious right, immediately demands action. Michael Kitz (James Woods), who heads the National Security Council, attacks the validity of the message, raising questions about — you guessed it — national security, and who should know what. And then there’s the extremist who goes only by Joseph (Jake Busey), who takes a much more proactive approach.

The acting is precise and effective across the board. I’ve already mentioned Foster and Malone, and they’re both outstanding. This is my favorite of Jodie Foster’s performances, perhaps because the character is so suited to the actress that it’s difficult to separate Eleanor Arroway’s opinions from those of Foster herself. Foster plays the hyper-intelligent, socially-awkward Arroway perfectly.

The supporting cast is superb, including McConaughey, who has lately made a career out of destroying one. The same buffoon who embarrassed himself in Failure to Launch and Sahara was once supposed to be our next smart leading man, what with his capable work in A Time to Kill and Amistad, along with Contact. Here he is religion’s everyman, a former priest who realizes that he doesn’t have all of the answers, and that he probably wouldn’t understand them if he did. He’s a rational voice among the religious loudmouths that spout off on CNN and condemn the scientists. The movie condenses one of the most wonderful sections of the novel, a twenty-page conversation between Eleanor and Joss about the constraints of faith and science, both; when Eleanor challenges Joss to prove God’s existence, he challenges her in return:

Ellie: So what’s more likely? That an all-powerful, mysterious god created the universe, and decided not to give any proof of his existence? Or, that he simply doesn’t exist at all, and that we created him, so that we wouldn’t have to feel so small and alone?

Joss: Did you love your father?

Ellie: What?

Joss: Your dad. Did you love him?

Ellie: Yes, very much.

Joss: Prove it.

Meanwhile, James Woods is pitch-perfect as the conspiracy-driven Kitz:

Kitz: Your having sent this announcement all over the world may well constitute a breach of national security.

Ellie: This isn’t a person-to-person call. You can’t possibly think that a civilization sending this kind of message would intend it just for Americans.

Kitz: I’m saying you might have consulted us. Obviously, the contents of this message could be extremely sensitive.

Ellie: You want to classify prime numbers?

He raises legitimate questions, even if they are fueled by small-minded concerns, and his final dialogue in the film reveals an entirely new facet of his character; it’s a terrific surprise discovery that the man is deeper than we’ve allowed ourselves to consider.

As the despicable David Drumlin, the professor who somehow manages to steal Eleanor’s credit even while dismissing her as an embarrassment, Tom Skerritt is thoroughly unlikeable. Drumlin plays the government and the media like a violin, manipulating them with a skill that leaves true talents like Eleanor in the dust; his colleagues recognize him for the hack that he is — “He sure knows he’s on television,” one character observes of Drumlin during a test of the Machine; another mutters, “Can you say grandstanding?” — but nobody else seems to. Until his explosive exit from the movie, Drumlin holds the world in his palms. His comeuppance is tempered by some false bravado that gets him labeled a hero.

And David Morse, who plays young Ellie’s father, takes his small role further than expected; this should be no surprise, however, given the extreme attention given to his character in Sagan’s novel. Ted Arroway is the reason that Eleanor is a curious young girl, and a smart, driven woman. Very early in the novel (in fact, on the first page) we become aware that their relationship is quite simple, and different from your average father and daughter:

When she was two years old, she would lift her hands over her head and say very sweetly, “Dada, up.” His friends expressed surprise. The baby was polite. “It’s not politeness,” her father told them. “She used to scream when she wanted to be picked up. So once I said to her, ‘Ellie, you don’t have to scream. Just say, “Daddy, up.”‘ Kids are smart. Right, Presh?”

The movie is a genuine marvel of self-discovery, observed very intimately by the journey that this young woman takes, quite literally, to the stars. That sense of discovery is echoed by Alan Silvestri’s score, which is gentle and awash with quiet wonderment. I am not a fan of Silvestri’s work, but his work on Contact is profoundly moving, particularly the nearly eight-minute-long medley that closes the film.

As impressive as the performances and the music are the special effects, which are astonishingly tasteful and almost minimalistic for a film of this nature. Robert Zemeckis isn’t known for his restraint, and however much I have disagreed with his opinions in the past — namely his insistence on giving away his plot details in movie trailers (i.e. the twist in What Lies Beneath and the rescue in Cast Away) — he accomplishes something wonderful here. The movie is almost a throwback in its simplicity. Even the most impressive special effects are left to stand on their own, with no attention called to them, so that in most cases they are indistinguishable from the rest of the movie. (In particular I am always knocked flat by the scene in which young Ellie runs to the medicine cabinet; the camera trickery here is genius, and yet I failed to notice it until I listened to Zemeckis describe, on the director’s commentary track, how he achieved it. I still can’t figure it out, even after watching it frame-by-frame.)

Even on repeated viewings, not a note of the movie rings false, a truth that it shares with the novel. Sagan was closely involved with the movie until his death seven months before it was completed. Zemeckis dedicates the film to him, and one gets the sense that Sagan would have been quite pleased. But it wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t. The movie’s a knockout either way.