Contact

CONTACT(1997)

Should have called this one Ayn Rand's The Rockethead. Just as Rand's work is that of the novel of ideas meshing with the traditional romance, Contact is a romance novel meets a science fiction novel. I have to admit that it does so both intelligently and movingly a good chunk of the time.

Foster worked so hard in this movie I felt like a tree sloth watching it. In a lot of ways, I guess, you could also call it Radio Silence of the Lambs. Jodie Foster plays a driven, put upon radio astronomer that many try to underestimate or take advantage of. If you replace 'radio astronomer' with 'FBI agent', you'll see what I mean. But whereas Foster's character had to prove her worth to the creepy Hannibal Lecter, here she has to prove her worth to the creepy United States of America (well, and the world, but they don't seem to come off as creepy as the Americans. Look at the American men in this movie. Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt. Oh yeah, and the blind guy. Given the choice, I think I would have become a lesbian (not that Jodie Foster is going to end up playing a lesbian any time soon. I was just talking about myself, of course)).

She's made contact, you see, with an alien race that is beaming a multi-layered signal to earth. If she can convince everyone that she's good enough, smart enough and strong enough (oh yes, and soulful enough), she can go into space at the behest of the aliens.

The director, Robert Zemeckis, is an odd guy. And I don't just mean that he looks like Drew Carey with bad hair plugs. He's an intelligent director who won the best director Oscar after a career of ultra-technically savvy fx laden comedy/adventures. A craftsman's craftsman, Zemeckis seemed to be consigned to raking in the moolah with blockbuster hits and little chance for critical acceptance by his peers (the poor man's [or, more exactly, the not-as-rich man's] Stephen Spielberg, who I hear has been Zemeckis's mentor in a lot of ways). Then Zemeckis directed Forrest Gump, tossing in money of his own to cover some of the pricey optical effects in return for points on the back end, and suddenly Zemeckis found himself with a ton of money (somewhere in the 50 million plus range for Gump) and that little gold phallus that Hollywood gives as its highest honor.

He was still the not-as-rich man's Spielberg, mind you. The year before Spielberg had managed to both take best director's honors and directed the biggest grossing movie of all time. But he had to get two movies out in the same year to do it, and look at the lesson he learned. It was not the sequel to Schindler's List that terrorized people in the movie theaters this summer (well, it wasn't that leaden sequel to Jurassic Park either, now that I think of it, but you know what I mean).

With Contact, Zemeckis is trying to fulfill the promise of Gump, a promise of the seamless use of special effects as a way to further story and character (part of what made Zemeckis's other films so largely satisfying is that the special effects, although the point of the movie, were also used, for the most part, to this end). And as Gump was ultimately a scary absolution note to baby boomers for abandoning the principles of the '60s, Contact is an odd and scary flick that sings the praises of workaholism even while it paints Foster as so driven as to be empty. Her voyage teaches her to be more spiritual, more thoughtful, less driven, but, on the other hand, there was no way she could have gotten there if she hadn't driven herself to the end of her nerves to get there. What kinda conundrum is that?

All that said, the movie is entertaining and moving and doesn't leave that same sort of icky spot on my soul that Gump did. Once Foster actually embarks on that otherworldly voyage, her acting brings you and holds you rapt. When mixed with the special effects, the result is such an absorbing mixture of dread, awe and rapture on my part (and the rest of the dead-silent audience) that the french critics should definitely give it the "Pure Cinema" award for 1997. The climax is also useful to catch a bearing on Zemeckis (for those of us who are into that sort of thing). Zemeckis is to Kubrick as Contact is to 2001. Both are superb master craftsmen with an eye for detail, but Kubrick's cynicism about huiman nature is not only more convincing then Zemeckis' "cultiver notre jardin/follow your bliss" philosophy, Kubrick's cynicism somehow seems less cynical somehow. Part of that may be that Hollywood never met a happy ending it didn't like, but part of that may be that Zemeckis, like the rest of us, has developed and believes strongly in the level of self-absorption, whether as driven workaholism or beatific emotional bliss, that keeps Americans functioning, half-asleep and inattentive, as our dark machinery rolls through the world, supposedly at our behest.

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