Faithless, and therefore unhappy, astronomer, Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster), searches for years for signs of extraterrestrial life. Along the way, she is thwarted by shortsighted scientist Dr. David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), and she meets man-of-faith, Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), who will later become an advisor to Bill Clinton. Finally, she discovers a broadcast from space that includes instructions for a mysterious machine.
Contact is a message film, a club-you-over-the-head, drill-it-into-your-brain, napalm-your-pupils-and-let-your-optic-nerve-incinerate, message film. I’ve seen Mack Trucks jack-knife with more subtlety. Interestingly, it isn’t the same message Carl Sagan was trying to get across in the book. This is not meant to complement Sagan for his fiction, as he is responsible for the general plot. Sagan was a brilliant scientist who had a knack for explaining the complexities of astrophysics in an entertaining way. That ability does not translate to fiction. But Sagan was not a man of faith, and all Contact is about is faith. Apparently, science is a religion, and all religions are the same, so it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe. Swell.
To articulate this highly dubious theme, director Robert Zemeckis, a man with a deft eye for comedy but who can’t tell drama from melodrama any better than his Forrest Gump, is willing to violate all rules of good storytelling. Hackneyed dialog? It’s here. Dramatic speeches on the meaning of life, recited directly to the audience? They’re here. Crying children? Oh yes.
The first hour of the film is basically about funding. Arroway has funding. She loses funding. She searches for funding. She gets more funding. There is nothing more exciting than accounting and grant proposals. But stuck in the middle of this breathtaking bookkeeping is the implausible romance of Arroway and Joss. Joss apparently hangs out around radio telescopes. Hey, who doesn’t? He is deeply religious, and she’s an atheist. Because they are played by reasonably attractive stars who are costing the studio some bucks, they naturally jump in bed together. There’s no other reason. But Arroway won’t phone Joss afterwards because she has no faith and her daddy died years ago. But don’t worry romance fans, you know it will all work out once she gets faith. Then it’s back to funding.
That’s not really fair of me. It’s not all about funding. There’s also needless flashbacks to Arroway getting cuddly with her father and asking inappropriate questions like can she call her dead mother on the radio. And there’s a combo funding/flashback scene where a rich guy, who pops up whenever there’s no reasonable way for the plot to progress (to the extent that it ever does), shows Arroway scenes of her own life, many that we’ve already seen. Wow, nothing I like better than watching characters watch things I’ve already watched. I suppose the rich guy had a point as you never know when an obsessed scientist might forget her own life.
But then we get past the funding angle and into the overly emotional snarking. You see, Dr. Drumlin opposes most of what Arroway does because…he’s evil. That’s pretty much all the character development he gets. He’s an evil scientist. When Arroway makes contact with aliens, Drumlin wants to take the project from her because…he’s evil. There’s also one-note Michael Kitz (James Woods) who’s perpetually grumpy and tries to get in Arroway’s way because he’s evil. He’s an evil government agent.
In this second hour, when people aren’t arguing just for the sake of arguing, we’re presented with contrived events. Ignoring the absurd choices for space traveler, and ten or twenty other equally fanciful moments, I’ll just mention the terrorist. Yes, there’s a terrorist. He just walks in with explosives strapped on. So, there is no security at the most important and most expensive project in history. OK. As hard as that is to accept, harder is that Arroway is the only one to spot him. Gosh that girl is everywhere.
Zemeckis, apparently proud of his gimmick of putting film characters into archival footage, does it again. Our “heroes” get to sit in on meetings with President Clinton. What Zemeckis fails to understand is that the trick worked in Forest Gump, to the extent that it did, because it was funny. Here, where it is played seriously, all it does is rip the viewer out of the film. It draws far too much attention to itself. I’m not thinking, “Hey, there are the characters dealing with this important issue with the president of the United States.” I’m thinking, “Hey, Zemeckis has stuck film of his actors onto old film of the president…again.”
Now let me get to the meat of this mess, which means I’m going to be giving away some spoilers from late in the film. This shouldn’t “spoil” the film for anyone as you’d have to be drunk with a bag over your head not to see this plot point coming. So, Arroway is going off into space on the alien transport device (no, that’s not the spoiler as the studio’s advertising tells you that). The machine looks pretty good—nothing that films and the occasional TV show haven’t done as well, but I feel I should mention it when the film has something that isn’t a failure. Once it fires up, we get the big FX scene. I’m sure the filmmakers were very proud of the little tunnel through space they made. I’ve seen this before in Stargate and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but if you like tubes, this is a nice one. Now why they felt that Arroway had to tell us she was in a tube, I don’t know, but as she glides along, she hands out handy information like, “I’m going into another worm hole.” No kidding. I wondered what was happening before my eyes.
Then she reaches the end of her trip, and finds…this is the spoiler folks, turn back if you don’t want to know…her dead father. Alright. Over two hours, and all we get is her father. Wooo. I’ve seen TV shows do this many times. They use one of their regular actors to be an alien in disguise or a dream being, normally because they are too cheap to pay for another actor and because viewers expect to see all their favorite characters each week. Contact doesn’t have those excuses. It has no in-story reason for Dead Dad popping up there. This is part of that theme. The faith theme. Ahhhh!
Sorry. Onward. So, with painfully slowness, the film has finally brought us to the alien, who is Dead Dad and all he does is say “Hey, love each other.” That’s it. If that’s all you have to say, just send a postcard next time.
There follows the stupidest inquiry I’ve ever heard of in film or reality. We’re back to the snarking, but I was too overwhelmed by the absolutely nothing that came out of the alien visit that the pointless bickering did not break through to me. Ah, but it isn’t pointless, because it all leads to Arroway’s revelation that she has faith. Now, religion and science can go off together, hand-in-hand. At least that means this very long film is over. Go in peace.