The Steven Spielberg Retrospective Part 1: The 1970's - Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Release Date: November 16, 1977

Run Time: 137 Mins

Nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Supporting Actress Melinda Dillon, Best Music, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects

Won 1 Academy Award for Best Cinematography and 1 Special Achievement Oscar for Sound Effects Editing

Read on after the jump...

By Sean Knight

Steven Spielberg’s 1977 follow-up to his mega hit Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is quite possibly the most ambitious film that he has ever made.  It features a sprawling science fiction narrative stretching from Indiana to India, several distinct characters, and some of the best special effects that money could buy at the time.  It also features one of the greatest climaxes in the history of motion pictures.  And it does all of this without a single action scene.  It is a film about the possibilities of what could happen upon first contact with Extraterrestrials.  For one of the first times in Hollywood history, a science fiction film was made that didn’t feature aliens coming to kill us.  Close Encounters was a story about believing in the impossible, searching the stars and following your dreams.  It’s the kind of movie that would never be made in today’s modern Hollywood.

Spielberg has always had a fascination with the possibility of life beyond this planet.  Close Encounters itself is a sort of remake of an amateur feature that Spielberg made years earlier called Firelight.  With this film, Spielberg was able to expand on the ideas that he first touched on in Firelight and present one of his most autobiographical tales to date.  It should be noted that Close Encounters was made well before Spielberg was a father and the relationship of the protagonist, Roy Neary (played by Spielberg’s “alter ego” Richard Dreyfuss), and his family is somewhat based off of Spielberg’s childhood.  In fact, the whole idea for Encounters occurred to Spielberg when he and his father witnessed a meteor shower in New Jersey when he was a small child.  In the film, Neary becomes obsessed with the unknown after he witnesses a UFO sighting.  This leads him to be estranged from his wife and children. Growing up, Spielberg and his father did not get along and ultimately his parents ended up getting a divorce.  I bring this up because through much of Spielberg’s career there is a theme of child abandonment, divorce, and distant father figures.  It all starts with this picture and these themes are expanded upon in subsequent films, most specifically E.T.  At the end of Close Encounters, Neary leaves his family behind and boards a spaceship leaving earth.  Spielberg now says that, as a father, he would not have made that decision today.  This is a prime example of how much Spielberg let his childhood dictate his filmmaking as a young artist.  Like all of the best filmmakers, Spielberg was exploring and working out his own issues through the medium that he loved best.

The slow build in Close Encounters is what makes the film so intriguing, much like Jaws before it.  There is one scene, in the middle, where Spielberg uses his knack for building suspense that he learned from Jaws – the abduction scene.  Toys come to life, the dishwasher goes haywire, and blinding gold and red lights flood the house of a small boy and his mother.  The boy is intrigued by the light; the mother is terrified of it.  It’s such a beautiful image and perhaps the most powerful moment (besides the climax) in the film.  The wonderful thing about being a child is that you aren’t afraid of the unknown.  Children are curious creatures who have the capacity to imagine things beyond most adult’s wildest imaginations.  The image of the child opening the door and embracing the light is said to be the image that Spielberg claimed represented his entire career.  Spielberg has always been willing to explore the unknowable in his films.  He is that perpetual child always opening the door and basking in the glow of the light from beyond.

The climax and denouement of Close Encounters is a thirty-minute sequence that has come to be known as the "mother ship landing sequence".  The whole film builds to this encounter and it is a wonder of special effects and genuine human emotion.  The protagonist finally gets to see the fever dream he has been chasing for two hours.  It is here that Roy Neary actually becomes Steven Spielberg.  We are seeing man’s first encounter with an alien race through Spielberg’s eyes.  His dream is brought before us on screen.  And when Roy Neary decides to step onto that mother ship it is very much Spielberg stepping onto that mother ship going where no filmmaker has gone before or since. He wisely chooses not to show the inside of the ship, or what happens to Roy, once he leaves with these alien beings.  That is for the audiences’ imagination and for Spielberg’s. James Lipton pointed out something interesting when Steven Spielberg was on Inside the Actor’s Studio that the director had never thought of before.  The scientists in the story use music and computers to communicate with the extraterrestrials. "Your father was a computer engineer; your mother was a concert pianist, and when the spaceship lands, they make music together on the computer" said Lipton.  It could be said that this is subconsciously Spielberg further exploring the divorce that had ripped his family apart and trying to heal the wounds that lasted into his adulthood.  But Spielberg would not be finished with extraterrestrials or the divorce of his parents after Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  His most personal film, and my favorite film of all time, was yet to come.

By J.J.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

I was worried that this movie was going to be like every other Science Fiction/Alien movie. You know what I’m talking about-Aliens are seen as scary creatures that invade earth and try to destroy it. I wasn’t interested. Close Encounters of the Third Kind couldn’t be farther from that.

                  The opening sequence of the movie does a really good job of setting the action of the movie in motion. The first characters we meet are Scientist Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffait), his interpreter, mapmaker David Laughlin (Bob Balaban) and a slew of other scientists. They have discovered a F19 airplane fully intact but the pilots are nowhere to be found. They also find a lost ship in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Meanwhile, in Indiana an Air Traffic Controller listens as two planes nearly collide with what is described as a UFO type aircraft.

                  Then we meet Barry. Sweet little curious Barry. His toys come to life in the middle of the night. It wakes him (as it would anyone). I really appreciated how brave Barry was. Most kids would run screaming to mom and dad but not Barry. He wanders down to the kitchen and discovers something and follows it outside. What do you think he saw? My imagination has been running rampant trying to figure out what was in the kitchen.

                  By this point his mother Jillian (Melinda Dillon) has woken up and sees that Barry has wondered outside. Like any good mother would do she races outside to get him.

                  In another part of Indiana we met Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss). Due to a massive power outage Roy has been summoned to fix the problem. It is while he is driving down a dark country road that he encounters the UFO first hand. He immediately becomes intrigued and speeds off in pursuit of the UFO. He nearly runs over little Barry and his mother.  The UFO zooms over them.

                  While most people (including myself) would be having a panic attack and jumping in their cars to get as far away from danger as possible Roy feels the exact opposite. This is exciting! Something huge is happening and he witnessed it firsthand.  He shows the same kind of curiosity that Barry shows.  I found this to be a unique connection between these two characters.  They vary in age but both are drawn to the unknown and want to learn more about it.

                  Roy becomes so consumed with trying to figure out what is going on. An image of a huge mountain has been ingrained in his mind and he becomes so obsessed with figuring out what it means that it puts a pretty big strain on his marriage. Ronnie (his wife) ends up leaving him and taking the kids to her sisters.

                  My favorite moment of the whole movie is when Jillian notices lights approaching the farm house. The house comes to life. Poor Jillian is frantic. Barry is drawn to the front door.  Jillian grabs him and holds him close as the action comes to a climax. Jillian tries to use the phone and when she does this Barry crawls through the doggy door. He’s gone.

                  OK. What the HELL is Spielberg’s deal. This is the 2^nd time something has happened to a child. First the kid gets eaten by a shark and now a child has been abducted by aliens. Is this a reoccurring thing in Spielberg movies? I don’t know how more I can handle.

                  I was pretty depressed at this point. All I could think about what happened to Barry. Where did they take him? What we’re they doing to him. I was bracing myself for the moment where the camera cuts to the inside of the spaceship and the aliens are doing all these experiments on sweet little Barry. I would NOT be able to handle that.

                  It isn’t until the ending of the movie that we see that this movie is not about alien taking over earth. The mother ship lands on earth. This scene was visually stunning. Absolutely stunning. I have wracking my brain trying to find a movie that could top that and I can’t. I just can’t. The humans are communicating in a positive way with the aliens. I LOVE that. Why be afraid? They haven’t done any harm to anyone so they must not be here to invade us. They just want to learn about us. They want to communicate with us.

                  The best moment in the entire movie is when the ramp comes down and people start walking out of the ship. Soldiers, ordinary people, and SWEET LITTLE BARRY (!!!!) make their way out of the ship. They are followed close behind by aliens who seem excited to see new creatures. They sense that Roy is different and is just as interested in them as they are in him. And, well….I won’t ruin the ending for you.

                  This movie teaches us that curiosity is a good thing and to not be afraid of the unknown. What is out there should be explored but in a positive way.

                  I’m really angry at myself for waiting so long to see this movie. It is my favorite Spielberg movie I have seen so far.