Long Distance Call

I recently went back and watched Contact again (for perhaps the third or fourth time), a movie I haven't seen in many years. It's based on a novel by Carl Sagan, and chronicles the reception of Earth's first communication from an extra-terrestrial intelligence. I remember really enjoying the film myself, and the majority of critical reviews for the film are positive. But the negative reviews all seem to be strong, claws-out criticisms. I wondered what I might think of the movie today.

The elements that drew me in the first time are still plainly evident. This isn't Hollywood blockbuster science fiction. Carl Sagan tried to imagine what contact with aliens might really be like, and the film presents that well enough that it's refreshingly different from any other movie I can think of. Aliens don't land among us, they send a radio transmission from 26 lightyears away, and it's up to scientific ingenuity to figure out how to even understand the message. A story in which outer space meets puzzle solving? Yeah, call me hooked.

The story then goes on to mine deeper thematic territory, with multiple threads exploring the clash between science and faith. ("Faith" in this story usually means "religion," though that isn't always the case.) Among the issues raised by the movie: How would believers in religion react to confirmation of alien life? What role should religious beliefs play in selecting an emissary to communicate with an alien? Is steadfast belief in science itself a form of religion? What happens to the character of a scientist confronted with an experience that can't be rationally explained?

No, this is not a lightweight tale. But in this, I think I can see something of why certain reviewers reacted negatively to the film. In a movie -- even a longish one like this (that runs two-and-a-half hours) -- there's not really enough time to probe deeply into these issues. The questions have to be raised expediently, sometimes in "obvious" ways, and the story must roll on. I've never read Carl Sagan's novel, though I imagine it afforded the space to be more in depth and more subtle with these issues. In other words, I watch the movie, find it thought-provoking, am willing to do the "homework" in thinking about the issues on my own, and like the movie. Those who just stop at what is presented in the movie might find it lacking, too superficial, or too "on-the-nose."

Director Robert Zemeckis deploys a fairly large visual arsenal in telling the story. There's extensive use of virtual sets in the climax of the movie. Then-president Bill Clinton is rotoscoped into a handful of scenes. There are several conspicuous "one-ers" (long takes unbroken by cuts), including one set inside a mirror before the camera finally pulls back into the "real world."

Then there's that opening shot, worthy of mention all by itself. It's a single 3-minute shot created entirely with CG, and at the time was the longest uninterrupted CG sequence in any live action movie. It starts with a view of the curve of the Earth, and then just starts pulling back -- past other planets, out of our solar system, out of our galaxy, and ultimately out of the pupil of our young protagonist's eye. It might seem like a technical overachievement, until you consider the many important roles in plays in the story. It conveys the sheer vastness of the universe (an important point that recurs throughout the film), it defines the sense of wonder and exploration in the main character, and it illustrates the time it takes for radio transmissions to travel from Earth out into deep space.

There's plenty of solid acting in the film. Jodie Foster is a great choice for the protagonist; she's both someone you want to root for, and someone able to easily explain the science for those less savvy in the audience. Matthew McConaughey is a nice foil to represent issues of faith vs. science. James Woods and Tom Skerritt are wonderfully slimy villains, one blatantly adversarial, the other conniving and self-serving. William Fichtner is a fun confidante for the main character, and convincingly plays blindness. John Hurt chews the scenery in two pivotal scenes, and really has fun with it despite the high amount of exposition he has to deliver. David Morse is touching as the protagonist's father. Jake Busey plays a convincing crazed zealot (though one wonders how hard that could have been with his father to model the behavior). And yes, Angela Bassett and Rob Lowe are there too.

I confess that I'm predisposed to like a movie like Contact, but I think I love it because it's just a well made movie. I grade it an A-.