Every other day leading up to the release of his new movie Bridge of Spies, we will be dissecting a film in Steven Spielberg's oeuvre. I've picked ten movies spanning the length of Spielberg's career, five of which I have seen and five of which I haven't. Today's film is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, young Spielberg's alien encounter passion project.
Other Reviews in this Series: Duel,
1941, Empire of the Sun, Amistad, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Catch Me If You Can, War of the Worlds, Munich, Lincoln
Other Spielberg Reviews: Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Bridge of Spies
(If you haven't already, check out my new archive in the corner ---->)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Francois Truffaut, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban
Runtime: 137 mins.
1977
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a movie about aliens visiting Earth and making their first (official) contact. The entire film unravels like the first act of an alien invasion movie blown up, drawn out, and made resonant in its own right.* We see the bizarre effects of the impending alien contact on all sorts of people, only a handful of which are main characters. The most central, most explored, and most interesting human is Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), who encounters a UFO on a lonely road at night, and cannot stop thinking about it. His obsession morphs into something strange and uncontrollable, and he alienates his family in the process of trying to figure out what it is that pulls him so.
*I hesitate to make this comparison, but this movie operates much like M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable in the sense that that film is the first act of a superhero origin story blown up, drawn out, and thus fashioned into a spiritual journey. We forget, but once upon a time Shyamalan was heralded as the new Spielberg. A few years ago the new new Spielberg was supposed to be J. J. Abrams. I think it's a testament to Spielberg's singularity that we clearly have not yet found his heir to the blockbuster throne.
I've seen
Close Encounters of the Third Kind twice now, and I still have no idea exactly how I should think about it. Part of that must be that the film thematically denies this brand of dissection, imploring us, "Don't think about it: just go." It's a film about a religious conversion, among other things.
Part of it might be that this is the truest, most essential Spielberg film. That's a bit of a paradox, as so much of
Close Encounters is antithetical to the sort of blockbuster that Spielberg invented. There's no strong, clear narrative arc. The protagonist isn't easily sympathetic--in fact he's kind of despicable. There aren't any explosions or fights. There isn't much of any conflict whatsoever. Nor is it akin to Spielberg's later dramatic fare, with large sweeping narratives and big historical personalities. This film is an unfocused story of everymen and nobodies. Despite all that, the one major constant of all of Spielberg's filmography, a trend that
Close Encounters doubles down on, is a profound sense of awestruck wonder. That most Spielbergian of cinematic tricks is purest in
Close Encounters, which is not coincidentally the
only movie in all of Spielberg's career that he both wrote and directed.* Spielberg is the anti-Nolan for this reason: Nolan demands you apply your intellect to his puzzle box narratives, and rewards you for doing so. Spielberg doesn't care about any of that; if anything, Spielberg demands that you abandon your sense of logic and go along for the ride. Wonder by its nature defies the critical gaze, so maybe that's where I hit the roadblock.
*Poltergeist controversy notwithstanding. (The rumor is that in addition to writing the film, Spielberg ghost directed it.)
Or maybe it's just that
Close Encounters is the sort of movie that demands to be revisited every five years or so, and is different every time. I read an article about the film recently, and the comment section was radically split between people who loved the ending (spoiler alert I guess?), whereas a large contingent found it unbelievable and/or morally reprehensible that Roy Neary decides to leave his earthly family behind and go off spacetrotting with the extraterrestrials. Personally, I love the choice. I think it's a perfect button on a movie about the inexplicable pull of the unknown. But then again, I'm a young whippersnapper who doesn't have a family of my own. Spielberg himself has admitted that, after having children, he feels like he screwed up that ending. Either way, I'm glad we got the movie we got. The ending of
Close Encounters spits in the face of typical mainstream movie catharsis, and that's a big part of why it's so damned interesting.
Close Encounters is Spielberg's first movie after the massive breakthrough hit of
Jaws, and it feels like he still has something to prove. The main character's arc could be read as a religious narrative of course, but it could just as soon be read as the story of the intense and uncanny pull that cinema exercised over young Spielberg's mind. That being said, the whole film sort of washes over you, like a bath in a baptismal font. Maybe it's the lack of conflict, or the deliberate pacing, but all of
Close Encounters feels very much like a dream: I only recently watched it, yet I'm having a hard time remembering everything that happened, instead returning again and again to the key moments that have been emblazoned upon my memory. The abduction of the child. The inspired destruction of the suburban home. The musical conversation with the alien mothership. These strong images remain when everything else floats away.
I don't care so much about any of the other characters, but I can't stop thinking about Roy Neary's arc. This certainly means that Dreyfuss did an excellent job. His performance is engaging without being ingratiating, and subtle without being workmanlike. He's not lovable. He's not a piece of crap. He's just a person who feels the need to build a mashed potato mountain.
Special credit goes to the visual effects and, in particular, the lighting design. Apparently Spielberg did a lot of the effects concepts himself, another indicator that this was his labor of love. The visuals fit perfectly with the tone of the movie, and sometimes may look a bit shabby, but feel more real than 95% of effects driven movies. And the lighting is absolutely brilliant. The major thing I remembered from seeing
Close Encounters years ago was the blaring orange light that shone through the door during the abduction scene, a scene that is a master class of building tension and the sole point in the movie where the aliens read as overtly sinister. Throughout the movie, the interplay of unnatural light and sound (or lack thereof) works beautifully to establish the uncanny without forcing tension.
It feels weird to rate
Close Encounters. It's not one of my favorites, but I think it might be a masterpiece, and I appreciate the hell out of it. It's just one of those films that unveils the ultimate bankruptcy of a numeric rating scale for works of art.
4 /
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