D: Robert Zemeckis
S: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughy, Tom Skerrit, James Woods, John Hurt
Science Fiction is the genre of the end of the millennium. Since it began
roughly a hundred years ago (at a time when it was considered merely a product
end of the century anxiety), it has consistently explored and expressed
a concern with the state of the present through a meditation on the form
of the future. But it is not merely allegory, nor simply prophecy. Science
Fiction does not presume to predict the future, nor make meaning of the
present. It gives form to the human anxieties about where the technocentric
modern world is headed, using equal degrees of speculation and observation.
Whether or not you like it is an entirely personal matter.
Emerging at a time when technology had changed the perception of man's potential
beyond a measure understandable today, it was poised unwittingly at a moment
which marked something greater than the immediate fears of modernity. Our
self-imposed understandings of the cosmos have altered over time to the
extent that each conceptual evolution is perceived as heresy or revolution.
The physical fact of the turn of the millennium is nothing more than a matter
of doodles by long-dead noblemen who presumed to know the mind of God. It
is only a date, not even one recognised by all of the inhabitants of the
planet. But it is so potent a symbol of advancement that its arrival has
brought out fundamental anxieties among a species which remains as uncertain
and floundering in its conception of its relationship with the universe
today as when it first achieved self-awareness.
Advancement itself is a relative term, and one predicated only upon the
standards we set for ourselves. But the feeling, perhaps even the certainty,
that there are greater forces abroad than mankind whose standards are even
greater and more unattainable has become acute in the last century of this
millennium because of our perception that with the advance of dates and
of technology, we are coming closer to a chimerical event horizon which
will take us over the brink and into contact with them.
Robert Zemeckis' film of Carl Sagan's novel deals with these themes and
ideas, not simply by virtue of being a genre film, but quite explicitly.
As an entry in the sub-genre of alien contact yarns, it adds little other
than to reassert a religious dimension which has been absent on screen since
the fifties version of The War of the Worlds.
But Contact ultimately concerns itself with the loftier ideas of
the meaning of science and advancement and with debates on religion and
humanity, which despite the heavy-handedness with which the enterprise has
been undertaken, actually sustain interest in the picture throughout its
elephantine running time and overly-familiar surface details.
It charts the tale of dedicated cosmologist Jodie Foster, whose need for
human contact has driven her throughout her life towards greater and more
powerful technological devices with which to achieve it. As she becomes
more academically qualified and develops a career, she leans towards the
flagging SETI programme and focuses on gaining the attention of extra terrestrials.
When she succeeds in tapping an alien radio signal, mankind is faced with
a decisive moment to which it responds according to its social and religious
sub-divisions.
In an establishing scene, Foster's character asks her loving father (David
Morse) if her Ham Radio will allow her to contact her dead mother in heaven.
This sets an emotional sub-plot in motion which comes, eventually, to define
the entire film. It passionately argues, and not without skill, that technology
has not really brought us closer together, but driven us further apart.
It argues that the search for proof which defines the scientist is really
a part the human drive to establish the necessity of faith in the order
of the universe, and in God. It neatly links the disciplines of religion
and science, arguing that emotional contact between beings is the most important
constant in the universe, even if their philosophies and viewpoints differ.
Foster's romance with Presidential Spiritual Advisor Matthew McConaughy
brings clashes and oppositions into a harmonic dialectic through a physical
relationship (sexual and asexual as it is by turns according to the ruminations
of the plot) which brings them together as fellow travellers on the road
to truth, different though their paths may seem.
To say Contact is profound is to state the obvious. The film itself
states it repeatedly. But whether or not this profundity communicates to
its audience is another matter. At a budget of $90 million and working in
a genre which, even though it is enjoying a renaissance at the box-office
these days, is still not credited with any degree of philosophical insight
by the general populous, the decision to make the film a slow, portentous
meditation on the issues rather than a conventional sci-fi conspiracy thriller
like the X-Files, or a slam-bang action pic like Independence
Day was quite a brave one. A great deal of time and effort has gone
into making this film look and feel 'important'. Its cast of major actors,
especially Foster, its use of real TV stations and reporters (and even footage
of U.S. President Bill Clinton), and its handsome location photography give
it the feeling of a major statement on the world we live in. Its slow pace,
deliberate dialogue, carefully contrived situations and multi-layered characters
are all very much in the vein of shifting the focus away from the illusions
generated by ILM and Robert Zemeckis, and onto the meaning of it all.
This either works for you, or it doesn't. To many, Contact will seem
like pretentious, overlong waffle. To others it will simply be too risible
for words. Yet there is enough film making craft, and just enough balance
in its presentation to tip the scales to the side of a well made movie rather
than a slipshod gamble.
But somehow it never quite manages to soar to the emotional heights of Close
Encounters of the Third Kind (which it resembles in some ways, which
is no surprise given Zemeckis' pedigree) or becomes the metaphysical trip
of 2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris. Zemeckis is skilled at
what he does (though there is a certain sadness to watching such a self-consciously
weighty film from the director of Used Cars,
I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Back to the
Future), but he has the old Hollywood curse of being nothing more than
that. This film is rendered with a care and attention which successfully
places its subject on screen for study and analysis, and even though there
is evident passion in the material, one does not really sense it in the
film itself. Even Foster seems to go through the film in a method actor's
daze: a strong and meaningful performance that somehow never really gets
past the fact that it is Oscar Winner Jodie Foster in action here. The same
applies to the rest of the cast, all of whom seem overwhelmed by the material
and move as if through ether. Not that they are not good, but they never
fully draw you in as characters (except the ever-dependable James Woods,
who's as marvelously hateful as ever as the heavy). Your responses to them
are modulated according to the issues under discussion at each particular
point in the story, and though they move in and out of sympathy, they're
still not fully credible as people. John Hurt's sinister performance as
an eccentric cancer-ridden billionaire borders on horror-like caricature.
Yet it is a film of some value, a contribution to the end of millennium
angst now plainly visible even to the general public which does not merely
exploit it. It attempts to address the fundamental questions facing us as
human beings, and brings it all back to the question of what it is that
we are rather than what 'they' are. This is not to say, of course, that
the matter of 'them' is not addressed, or that it shouldn't be. But the
pertinent questions asked about our world and its systems of belief are
ultimately far more thought-provoking and far-reaching that the speculative
imponderables this genre uses in its own quest for form and structure. Its
positive religious sub-text should also come as a relief to those disappointed
on one hand by the general absence of such discussion in the genre, and
on the other, the endless fascination with damnation visible recently in
films including Event Horizon and Spawn.
Contact is finally a big Hollywood movie about big human issues.
That very form offends some people, and most Europeans will undoubtedly
dismiss it as worthless claptrap. But there is some satisfaction to be derived
from viewing it on its own terms, and it might stimulate discussion if the
viewer can rouse themselves from the postmodern apathy that is the psychological
shield generated to combat end of millennium panic. Wake up and smell the
future. It's exactly the same as the present, only with more players.
Review by Harvey O'Brien copyright
1997.