Foster Passes Hearing Test

Whatever’s Out There has always fascinated people Down Here, especially movie people. But these days, instead of watching the skies (as those 1950s films encouraged everyone to do), people are listening to them. “Contact” tells us what one woman heard and how the world reacted.

Starring Jodie Foster in an exceptional performance as the radio astronomer who listened, and directed by Robert Zemeckis in his first outing since “Forrest Gump,” “Contact” is superior popular filmmaking, both polished and effective. But despite its success and its serious intentions, it’s finally a movie where the storytelling makes more of an impact than the story.

Balanced between wanting to deal with the philosophical and scientific issues that concerned Carl Sagan, who wrote the original 1985 novel, and making sure to satisfy the cravings of a mass audience, “Contact” manages to have it both ways most but not all of the time. Not as profound as it would like to be, with a decidedly soft central message, it is nevertheless thoughtful and intelligent for the Hollywood summer entertainment it basically is.

Expertly directed by Zemeckis, who makes this kind of prestige studio production look easier than it is, “Contact” never loses touch with its “who are we and why are we here” sense of wonder about the universe that is its greatest strength. While it has a strongly sentimental side and wanders into conventional territory more often than it realizes, “Contact” manages an almost gyroscopic ability to right itself whenever absolutely necessary.

Much of this is due to Foster, whose skill and presence seem to increase with each picture and who dominates “Contact” in the best possible sense. Her portrayal of astronomer Ellie Arroway, a character she knows intimately, demonstrates why no one is more persuasive at conveying intelligence and single-minded passion to the point of confrontational anger. Foster is “Contact’s” lodestar, and when she is on screen, the film can’t help but be engrossing.

Arroway is first encountered in a prologue as an 8-year-old shortwave radio buff with a gentle father (David Morse) and an eagerness (well-conveyed by young actress Jena Malone) to hear from far-away places. Dad also ignites her interest in extraterrestrials with a folksy “if it is just us, seems like an awful waste of space” homily the film likes enough to use three times.

As an adult astronomer who has come to trust her work more than people, Arroway has turned into someone accurately characterized as “brilliant, driven, a major pain in the ass . . . obsessed with a field that’s considered professional suicide.” That would be her affiliation with SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a group of scientists who listen doggedly for a signal from the skies.

Arroway’s superior, National Science Foundation head David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), is markedly unsympathetic, typically greeting her with a dismissive, “Still waiting for E.T. to call?” A further run-in with Drumlin leads Arroway to reclusive billionaire S.R. Hadden (an assured John Hurt), who lives on an airplane and knows exactly what he wants to do with all his money.

Arroway also connects with a different kind of man, Palmer Joss, played by heartthrob du jour Matthew McConaughey. A kind of self-defrocked priest, “a man of the cloth without the cloth” who “couldn’t live with the whole celibacy thing,” Joss is a writer who feels the modern passion for technology and science is corroding the world’s moral values.

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Though the science vs. religion, does-God-exist discussions he has with Arroway are some of “Contact’s” most interesting, Joss has a tendency to come off as a ruggedly handsome signboard for the film’s ideas. Also, the James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg script upgrades Joss to much more of a conventional love interest than he was in Sagan’s book. It’s a transition that has its bumpy aspects as Joss, a construct more than a fully fleshed-out character, pops in and out of events in a not-always-convincing way.

Clocking in at 2 1/2 hours, “Contact” is most alive during its central section, when Arroway, sitting next to a photogenic group of dish-shaped radio telescopes near Socorro, N.M., and hoping as per usual for a sign from the cosmos, hears what is unmistakably a signal from the beyond.

The source turns out to be Vega, a spot 26 light-years away, and how Arroway and her colleagues take the numerous steps necessary to decipher that message, what it says, and how Arroway fights to retain a part in its implications, are conveyed in a rush of images and sequences that are so invigorating it’s possible to be swept away and overlook how skillfully it’s all been put together.

For this, much credit has to go to director Zemeckis, cinematographer Don Burgess and editor Arthur Schmidt. The wizardly storytelling style they employ is seamless and involving, with all manner of elegant camera moves. Even bravura sequences like tracking Foster as she runs from her car through the lab to check on the signal (a scene that according to American Cinematographer was shot in two separate locations months apart) are so intrinsic to the narrative they never seem showy or excessive.

“Contact” has difficulty maintaining this momentum through its extended final segment. Partly it’s that the initial section, the quest, makes the best use of the strengths of Foster’s characterization, of Arroway’s almost painful eagerness to make intergalactic contact. Also--and this goes to the heart of what “Contact” is lacking--the idea of the search turns out to be more involving than the knowledge that ends up being found.

Not helping is the tendency of the plot (despite appearances by James Woods as the president’s national security advisor and Angela Bassett as a White House power) to get increasingly contrived and unsatisfying as the story unfolds. Even more than usually involving visual effects (supervised by Ken Ralston) can’t fill that gap.

Still, when you think of how little to chew on summer films usually give us, “Contact” has to shine by comparison.

* MPAA rating: PG for some intense action, mild language and a scene of sensuality. Times guidelines: Scenes of explosions and space travel may be unnerving for younger children.

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‘Contact’

Jodie Foster: Ellie Arroway

Matthew McConaughey: Palmer Joss

James Woods: Michael Kitz

John Hurt: S.R. Hadden

Tom Skerritt: David Drumlin

Angela Bassett: Rachel Constantine

A South Side Amusement Co. production, released by Warner Bros. Director Robert Zemeckis. Producers Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey. Executive producers Joan Bradshaw, Lynda Obst. Screenplay James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg, based on the novel by Carl Sagan. Cinematographer Don Burgess. Editor Arthur Schmidt. Costumes Joanna Johnston. Music Alan Silvestri. Production design Ed Verreaux. Art directors Lawrence A. Hubbs. Set decorator Michael J. Taylor. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.