Preposterous study of faith and despair

Rating: Null/10 (31 January 2004)

SPOILERS!!
Supposedly based on something penned by popularizer and self-promoter, Carl Sagan, this is a movie about a hoax, wrapped in a sci-fi film, and promising a tragedy which is not ultimately explored. A famous billionaire concocts a scheme to fool SETI with a message to which he later conveniently provides the - key. The doubt is left that a recording of an outer space trip, in the blink of an eye, though nothing was recorded but static. This isn't explored and seems to be tossed away by the filmmaker in favor of his irony of science made into religion - as a matter of faith.
The means to explore the irony and emptiness is, again, preposterous. A rich billionaire somehow manages to fool ground based observers that a unique message is being sent from a far away star system, travelling from earth 26 years, and sent back at higher amps almost immediately. The transmission parroted back is of Hitler opening the 36 Olympic Games. Included in the Hitler broadcast but on another carrier, which the billionaire decodes for Foster's character, are the blueprints for a gigantic gyroscope looking thing into which a ball, a manned capsule, is simply dropped as the three separate rings of the gyro spin rapidly. Why it doesn't act like a giant baseball bat, I don't know.
So the story follows Foster's character from amateur astronomer and something of a techie savant, to the beginning of the SETI hoax, through the discovery of the hidden blueprints, and up to the construction of a public model of this giant gyro courtesy of NASA. She wants to go. But overbearing Skerrit's character gets the nod, instead. He goes before the selection panel and essentially says, I believe in God. And Foster either wasn't sure, or simply didn't.
Anyway, a terrorist cult leader, played by Busey (and son looks so much like father) - yeah, this gets better all the time - a terrorist cult leader doesn't want Foster, the unbeliever, to visit the aliens, or something. So he gets it into his head to sabotage the project. Apparently security is so lax, that he manages, James Bond style, to infiltrate the command center of the giant gyro. Foster recognizes him, on closed circuit. And she tries to alert the Skerrit character. Too late. Somehow, Busey sabotaged the rig, and it blows, spewing shards like a helicopter breaking up on hitting the ground, and killing Skerrit and bunches more nearby.
But all is not lost. You see, secretly, on Hokkaido, in Japan, a second exact duplicate of the giant gyro was built. And Foster is now top of the list for the Japanese project. So off she goes. Apparently security is a little tighter, this time. She walks bravely out onto the gantry, as if boarding a rocket to the moon, climbs into the ball, and once the firey gyro is spinning crazily, in she goes.
And what a trip it is. She sees a galaxy up close. She floats down onto a reverse wave beach, with distortion effects, which allow her to touch said galaxy and cause it to react to her 'giant' touch. She gets to talk with her dead father about the 'human condition'. And plop, her capsule is in the water. It was all just a dream.
And the end of the movie puts her on the stand at a Congressional hearing where the Woods character proposes the hoax theory. And she is in the dock saying all she has to go on about her dream being more than a dream is - faith.
Ultimately, the point of the film isn't to propose a defense of faithlessness. It's simply to propose that all religions are alike; and only a meanie like Busey would think, otherwise. As such, it misses its own point. If faith is real, it's worth saying it is. If faith is convincing, but false, as with the dream/hallucination of the Foster character, it's better it not be held as faith, but based on only reducible fact. She basically tempts fate, as some would say, by constantly challenging the supposed faith of McConaughey's character of the fornicating priest - who insists he has a faith, of some sort of other, and wonders if she does, as well. But when it turns out that she does, namely this dream of hers, the 'contact' is made as he defends her to the press, after they've about written the whole thing off as the most expensive and elaborate hoax in all of history, as well. She's not alone. And he's not alone. But both of their faiths are baseless. And she has surrendered the touchstone of scientific verification, as well. She's even more pathetic. She just - knows. And he himself never really defended science.
Both fail to find real faith, but find each other in their emptiness. A more interesting film, a sequel, would follow up the hoax to see if after finding each other, that they found something true and worth believing, as well. Or does the story end with confusion, despair, and a hole in each of their souls? It would not be a happy ending. But it would seem the logical course for what this film sets up as a classic tragedy.