On paper, this a pretty dull way to film the moment of first contact between humans and aliens.
It goes like this:
1) A radio signal that sounds quite like a dishwasher reaches Earth.
2) Jodie Foster hears the signal on her headphones.
3) After moving some equipment around, turning on some laptops and fiddling with some volume knobs, Foster and two co-workers realise the signal has morphed into a sequence of prime numbers.
4) The team decides to alert colleagues in the astronomy community, and then beyond. Ends.
Of course, on screen, as anyone who has seen Contact knows, this is one of the most tense, thrilling, brilliantly sustained passages in any movie, ever.
First, there's Foster, out alone in the desert at dusk. She and her team are using a giant telescopic array to look for alien signals, and Foster likes to drive out – and hang out – near the big white dishes. She's devoted her whole life to the hunt for extraterrestrial life, yet most people think she's crazy. Is even she losing hope?
Foster is superb in this film, and by this point we are properly rooting for her. She's had so many knock backs, it's all so unfair, and also, frankly, nothing very exciting has happened so far – unless you count people saying "No" to further funding for her research projects, flashbacks to when her dad was alive and a brief dalliance with a religious guy played by Matthew McConaughey. We really want her to hear a radio signal from an alien now.
Then there's the sound – the exquisite, extraordinary, complex use of sound in this 10-minute sequence. While Foster sits in the desert, her two co-workers are messing about back at the array command room; on the TV in front of them, McConaughey is on the Larry King show talking about how the human race has never been so unhappy, so disconnected. Then we pull out for a moment, to a shot of planet Earth, and the sound of that TV conversation sounds distant, as if we're picking up the signal from high orbit. And then, there it is: the little dishwasher noise. Just for a moment. Could that be – it?
Next we're back with Foster in the desert – and there's no dishwasher noise! But she's turning on her laptop, and putting on her headphones, and leaning back against her windscreen in the gathering gloom. Please let her hear it! We move closer to Foster. The dishes behind are still now, her face is still, and we hear nothing but cicadas.
We cut to McConaughey, still on the TV in the office, and for a moment we see that a warning signal is flashing up on a monitor in the background. But the volume is off and Foster's co-workers are oblivious. We move still closer to Foster; finally, as we zoom in so close we can only see her left eye, we hear a little static, then what could be a heartbeat. It's so very subtle. Her eye opens. The only thing on the screen is that blinking eye – and then the higher notes of the signal cut in, the sound like a dishwasher. And we know, and she knows: this is it.
Foster sits up. "Holy shit," she says.
Then comes the third plank of genius: the adrenalin-soaked blur of action, fiendishly edited, that transforms this sequence – about a woman hearing a radio signal – into an action-packed rollercoaster ride. No film can ever have made so much from a woman starting a car, repeatedly yelling some space co-ordinates out on a radio – "Right ascension, 18 hours, 36 minutes, 56.2 seconds!" – and driving back to her office.
Just the bit where she's running up some stairs and through some doors while still shouting out instructions on her radio – it's heart-stoppingly exciting. "And tell Willy to break out the big boy!" shouts Foster. Who knows what the big boy is?!? Or who Willy is?!? Who cares?!? There is only the terror that somehow the signal will end before they can get the array latched onto it.
Once we're back in the bunker, our emotions are sadistically toyed with. For a while, as they try to rule out bugs and detect the source of the signal – a distant star called Vega? But they've scanned it a bunch of times! – the dishwasher noise is constantly in the background. Then, suddenly, it's gone; there's only static. No, whispers Foster. Is this it? Is it all over? Her eyes are bright with tears.
But just as you give up, the signal returns! And now it's more complex. "Those are numbers," says Foster. "Those are primes."
How can it be from Vega? It doesn't make sense. The team gets its geek on, arguing for a while about how wrong it all is. The system is too close, too well known. Now Vega is about to dip below the horizon and they are going to lose the signal. Even if they are made to look like idiots, they need to share the information. So now we have someone up on a monitor from Australia, a fellow geek, and he confirms the signal, confirms it's from Vega, and says he will take things from here. This is the wonderful moment because you know it's real now, that the discovery can't be snatched away from Foster.
"Who we gonna call now?" asks one of the co-workers. "Everybody," says Foster. And with that, this triumphant piece of film-making is over. As for whether it can possibly make up for the beach scene later, you be the judge.
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