Pa Robert Succi
| Published
I have children, yes ET is extraterrestrial gets a lot of mileage in my family. Just last year my car park had a late night retro session and we were able to enjoy it on the huge screen with all the necessary snacks. This is a fun film full of hope, wonder, expert level product placementand plenty of alien antics thrown in for good measure. But for now ET a perfect children’s film, must be a true Spielberg masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kindand it’s the kind of movie that works differently when you’re an adult.
Definitely a movie about the mysterious an alien visitors, but it’s also about family breakdown, something that hits hard when you have children of your own and think about what’s really at stake. Having not seen the film since I was too young to fully appreciate it, I also realized that Homer Simpson’s mashed potato circus tent is lifted straight from Richard Dreyfuss’ dinner table trance as Roy Neary’s obsession begins to take hold.
The aliens are the vehicle, but the family is the story
One thing I like to do is re-watch movies and TV shows where I’m around the same age as the main character, just to see how different or similar our lives are. I am still too young to give Soprano a decent watch, but it’ll be fun when I realize the only thing I have in common with Tony is my passion for jerky. U Close Encounters of the Third KindRichard Dreyfuss Roy Neary is also about my age, and the first thing I noticed was how much of myself I saw in him. He’s a working-class guy who lives in the suburbs with his wife Ronnie (Terry Garr) and three kids. His household is chaotic, but his life is full.
Roy works as an electrician, and one night he sees an unidentified flying object that changes his life forever. He becomes obsessed and this encounter is all he can think about, to the point where his behavior becomes increasingly erratic as he tries to recreate the monolithic structure he keeps seeing in his mind. Meanwhile, Gillian Hiller (Melinda Dillon) encounters the same phenomenon that caused her 3-year-old son Barry (Carrie Guffey) to go missing, presumed to have been abducted by aliens.
Meanwhile, scientists Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut) and David Laughlin (Bob Balaban), puzzled by the sudden appearance of a naval aircraft that originally disappeared in 1945, are on the verge of finding out who these visitors are and what their arrival means for the rest of the world.
All three of these storylines weave together expertly, and when the third act climaxes with everyone gathering at Devil’s Tower in Moorcroft, Wyoming, everything falls into place. It’s awe-inspiring, visually spectacular and absolutely soulful.
It’s hard to watch as a dad
Which I wasn’t prepared for when reviewing Close Encounters of the Third Kind as his father watched Roy slowly lose himself to some unknown force that made him behave erratically. The look of concern on his family’s faces as his obsession fully materializes is the same look my family gives me when I say I’m going to lose 20 pounds and get my abs back. You know they love him, but they’re also not quite ready to tell him he’s out of his mind.
Naturally, Roy gets close to Gillian, one of the few people who believe him, and you really can’t blame him. Given his strange behavior, his family is right to be concerned about his and their own well-being. Thinking about it from Roy’s perspective, I could only imagine how alone he must have felt trying to unpack what was clearly a traumatizing event and find some clarity in the aftermath.
The end result is the total collapse of his family because they didn’t see what he saw and he gradually resents them for it. Meanwhile, Ronnie, who is just trying to hold the family together, starts to resent him because she can’t relate to what he’s been through and she needs him to come back to reality.
Family drama in Close Encounters of the Third Kind does so much heavy lifting that you almost forget there’s an entire fleet aliens flying, speaking through mathematical semitones. It also made me appreciate Spielberg’s original instinct to never show the inside of the Mothership, and why he regretted including those scenes in the 1980 special before removing them again for the 1998 director’s cut. The film is about aliens, yes, but the story about Roy and his family is more compelling.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of viewing for a long time Close Encounters of the Third Kindit’s just as exciting today as it was in 1977. The special effects hold up surprisingly well, and considering its $19.4 million production budget, one wonders why they don’t make movies like this anymore. I realize that $19.4 million was a lot of buy back then, but the movie still looks better than the movies coming out today with budgets north of $200 million.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
For fantasy, spectacle, drama and the hope that alien visitors arrive in peace, you can stream Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Peacock at the time of this writing.
