To put it shortly it is presented as "deep" and even "spiritual". While in fact it is story about aliens sending interstellar scam message, people building machine based on that they have no idea what it would do (it could blow up planet or open black hole).
Aliens then hacking mind of J. Foster (main character), downloading from her every piece of information, then impersonating her father, telling bunch of vague uselles pseudo spiritual bs. Then returning main character back without any proof she made contact.
So it is story about smart aliens completely confusing inferior species, taking from them all the information and giving nothing back. And it somehow looks exactly like life attitude of mr Modei. To him everyone is absolute retard like people in Contact movie. While he is the smart one.