Close Encounters of the Third Kind

I remember "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" from childhood. I remember feeling like I was watching a foreign film, it seemed so mysterious and weird, and I was astonished to see one of the main characters speaking mostly french. I thought of how little dialogue there was in the film, yet I always knew what was going on. I remember the lights in the film, not just the ones caused by the UFOs, but the whole motif of the it all; the flashlights, the car headlights, and the helicopters flying towards the people who thought they were seeing the UFOs. I remembered the music, that little five note piece performed by the humans in order to contact and communicate with the aliens. That piece always felt like the start of a children's lullaby to me.

Today "Close Encounters" is still a wonderful film, I have seen it over and over again, I'm amazed at how simple the story structure is, yet how brilliantly a piece of film it really is. It pulls you in at the very beginning as we hear an ominous sound of music at the beginning during the opening credits. We hear it growing louder and louder until it crescendos into the first shot of a dessert windstorm, and we see the first lights of the film coming from a jeep pulling up towards the frame. We are introduced to a group of scientists or government officials headed by a Frenchman named Lacombe. They are investigating the mysterious re- appearance of a group of fighter planes thought lost from the 1940s.

Elsewhere we see Barry (Cary Guffey) a little boy who awakes to find his toys going berserk in his room. Barry isn't frightened by these happenings, he's more inquisitive. He runs off into the night as if following something, while his frantic mother (Melinda Dillion) goes after him.

Then there's Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) a family who goes out the same night to investigate unexplained power outages. It's with Roy we get the first glimpse of a UFO as it hovers over him with a big bright light which cause him to get a sunburn. Later Barry and his mother see UFOs too, which Roy tries to follow as best as he can until they escape into the night sky.

After this encounter we see Roy becoming obsessed with what he saw, his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) thinks he has gone nuts. He begins seeing strange mountainous shapes all over. He meets up with Barry and his mother later on, and we learn that they are seeing the same shapes. This all leads to a quest for Roy, he doesn't know what it all means, but he knows it's important, and he has to figure it out at all costs. This causes him to alienate his family, virtually abandoning them in order to discover this truth.

So what is "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" really about? In a way it's a little science fiction story about this first communication with benevolent aliens from another planet. On another level it's about one man's obsession which causes him to completely leave his family. It's also about this search for some greater truth, almost a religious experience one might feel towards something, it remains unexplained but we know it's important.

But "Close Encounters" is also a film about music and light, and using those elements in telling a compelling story. There isn't much plot in the film, it's all leading to a very simple conclusion, but it's shrouded in mystery, and the way we are drawn into the story is what's so unique about it. The spaceships in the film aren't really shown in their full glory till the climax, what we get leading up to their appearance are moments containing brilliant light. Sometimes the light can fill up the screen, sometimes there are shreds of it coming through cracks in the door or through a kitchen window.

The music plays an important part as well, it breaks the language barrier between the aliens and the humans. Nothing is ever spoken between the two different beings, but an understanding is met. The ending of the film comes with the beautiful melding of music and light as the alien mother ship comes down, and the language becomes symphonic, we don't know what is being said, but we don't have to, it's all there on screen.

This film was directed by Steven Spielberg, it was his follow-up to his hugely successful "Jaws", but with "Close Encounters" he takes his story telling skills leaps and bounds forward. Spielberg is often mistaken as only a talented craftsmen, but you can sense a young boy genius becoming an auteur with this film. It's with "Close Encounters of the Third" where we first become aware of what is Spielberg cinema. It's a film he made when he was still young and ambitious, he had his own theories about film, and was able to make them both personal and popular.

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" came out in the summer of 1977, it was a blockbuster, but it could still be thought of as an artistic achievement. By comparison with today's nonsensical blockbusters, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is quiet, ominous, it doesn't show its cards till the end, but it keeps you intrigued, emotionally invested, and touched. Most blockbusters have given up on giving us an experience as joyful, and innovative as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", they rely on loud explosions and special effects rather than sublime story telling. These films move like muddled sounds all mixed together that hurt the senses, where as "Close Encounters" moves like an orchestra of music and vision which fit perfectly for the movie screen.