- Whatever else it may be, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a film that evokes wonder. Is there life elsewhere in the Universe, and is it intelligent? Could or would such alien civilizations ever visit Earth? How would humans communicate with completely foreign forms of life? Maybe I pondered some of these issues for the first time when I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind or E.T. as a child. These days, my educational background and profession make it difficult to imagine a time when I wasn't aware of such subjects, but it wouldn't surprise me if my first introduction to the fundamental questions of alien life really did come from TV, movies, and yes, even the works of Steven Spielberg.
- It is precisely because the film successfully engenders such a strong sense of awe that I hesitate to completely pan Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With the exception of Douglas Trumbell's always-superb visual effects, this film has a lot of problems. It overflows with Spielberg's faux-realist "controlled chaos" approach of having a bunch of characters talk and yell all at once. It features a protagonist, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), who wouldn't even win a popularity contest in his own home. It asks the aforementioned cosmically interesting questions, but then proceeds to answer them in the silliest ways imaginable. It's a truly singular film that improves tenfold upon the look of the classic b-picture flying saucer movies without retaining any of their charm.
- The story is simple: aliens visit Earth, but spend most of the film revealing themselves exclusively to oddballs. Neary knows what he saw, and he's willing to neglect his wife (Teri Garr) and kids to prove it by constructing mashed potato sculpture. His infinitely more sympathetic female counterpart Jillian (Melinda Dillon) believes in aliens because they keep trying to forcibly abduct her son (Cary Guffey). The researcher Lacombe (François Truffaut!) and his multi-lingual assistant (Bob Balaban) become involved when missing WWII planes and warships magically reappear in the desert just as hordes of Indian chanters pick up on an increasingly familiar musical cue. And then there are guys like that farmer (Roberts Blossom) whose credulity seems as infinite as the Universe itself.
- My question to the aliens is also simple: why travel all this way if you're just going to horse around? Judging from the missing pilots, our extraterrestrial visitors have been in the neighborhood for at least 30 years, but they've just now gotten around to what is apparently their first real attempt to communicate. Naturally, they have chosen the most puzzling and indecipherable methods available to convey to humanity the latitude and longitude of Devil's Tower, Wyoming, although it's never clear whether they also specify a date and time. Once their enormous mothership finally completes its spectacular landing, the film's visual climax, the rather drably designed aliens give back the people they stole, hold an impromptu concert, and accept some volunteers into their ship. By the end of the film, Neary has abandoned two sets of people he allegedly cares for! As a child, I might have been inspired by such a portentous work of science fiction. As an adult, I find myself scratching my head in amazement, but not always in a manner that the film intended.
- Lance Henrikson had a bit part, and Carl Weathers was in the extended version.
