Close Encounters of The Third Kind

Released: December 1977

Director: Steven Spielberg

Run Time: 135 Minutes

Rated PG

Composer: John Williams

Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Cast:
Richard Dreyfuss: Roy Neary
Francois Truffaut: Claude Lacombe
Terri Garr: Ronnie Neary
Melinda Dillon: Jillian Guiler
Bob Balaban: David Laughlin

Interest in extra-terrestrial life has been around for decades.  In 1947, a mysterious object crash landed outside the city of Roswell, New Mexico.  While it was later determined that the object was used to monitor nuclear testing, that didn’t stop people from speculating that the object came from outer space.  In fact, when the military said that it was a “weather balloon,” a lot of people and conspiracy theorists got downright suspicious.  The idea that life could exist somewhere other than Earth invaded the imaginations of the United States and eventually, the world.  People really wanted to know if there really was extra-terrestrial life out there somewhere.  A lot of the movies that were released the following decade reflected that mentality and idea, the most famous of which was The Day The Earth Stood Still.  Alien invasion also started entering the picture and the whole science fiction genre took off.  It hasn’t slowed down one bit.  In 1977, a little known director named George Lucas released a small film that changed the way movies were made:  Star Wars.  Later that year, Steven Spielberg would release his own little sci-fi movie: Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Close Encounters opens in the middle of the Mexican desert, when a number of US government officials discover that World War II planes had appeared right out of nowhere in the middle of the night.  Meanwhile, in Indiana, an electrical worker by the name of Roy Neary is on his way to help fix a problem at a certain junction when he sees mysterious lights in above his truck.  His truck begins to shake and rattle, and then it all stops and the lights move on down the road.  Stunned and curious by what he has seen, he tries to follow the lights.  He then realizes that he’s not the only one who has seen this phenomenon and attempts to try and discover what it all means and why it happened.  The story in Close Encounters is really good.  This is not your typical science fiction film.  It’s kind of slow, but it’s more focused on the characters and how they are affected by certain events.  What makes this movie so interesting to me, is that there’s no villain.  There really isn’t.  The closest you’ve got is the US government, but here they are trying keep people away to prevent panic.  That makes sense.  At the same time, they are trying to find a way to communicate with the visitors instead of just blasting them out of the sky.  That’s what separates this movie from a lot of other science fiction pictures.  You see the same thing from different sides, and Spielberg manages to bring it together almost flawlessly.

Part of what really drives this film are the performances.  Richard Dreyfuss’ character of Roy Neary starts out as a regular guy who likes to do sculptures in his free time.  After his first encounter with the visitors, we see his mental state crumble because he becomes obsessed with finding the truth.  This obsession has such a clear and terrifying effect on his family that they leave him.  Richard Dreyfuss is a phenomenal actor and he puts everything that he’s got into this role.  Terri Garr plays Roy’s wife, who becomes scared of her husband’s manic behavior.  The late Francois Truffaut is fantastic as Lacombe.  His character’s a scientist, but he also comes across as very sympathetic as he understands why the people that had close encounters want to see what happens next.  There’s a lot of stellar performances here, even a brief bit from Lance Henriksen who would go on to play the android Bishop in Aliens.  Overall, the acting’s pretty solid across the board.

Now, I said earlier that the performances help drive the movie forward, but what really sells the whole thing are the visuals.  I’m telling you, for a movie that’s nearly 40 years old, the visual effects are astounding.  Why?  It’s all done without CG.  This was 1977, CGI really wasn’t a thing back then.  This is a very colorful movie.  The lights and ships are all very distinct and different from each other.  One of the coolest effects I’ve ever seen was when a young boy was getting abducted by the visitors.  The visitors arrived in this very ominous cloud and there were lights flashing in it.  It was spectacular.  They save the best sequence for last, when they finally make contact.  All the alien ships show up and fly around being totally cool.  Then the mother ship arrives, and holy smokes is that thing huge.  The special effects by Douglas Trumbull are second-to-none.  The scale is absolutely insane.  This is all set against the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

The music plays a very important part in this film.  Not just because of the background score by John Williams, which is absolutely fantastic, but it plays a huge part in trying to communicate with the aliens.  You have to listen to it to understand:

The last time I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind was when I was about 6 or 7.  That’s quite a long time.  What I did remember was the ending of the film with that huge ship and the conversations the people and the visitors using tones and music.  I remember it being very captivating.  Having seen it again about 27 years later, it’s still one of the most spectacular movies I have ever seen.  It’s not an action movie, but it is exciting.  There’s a level joyfulness and optimism in the movie that we really haven’t seen since.  Yeah, Star Trek featured an optimistic future, but Close Enounters asks what would happen if we were visited NOW.  I think the movie is just as important today as it was during the late 70s.  This is an astounding film in every aspect.  It’s one that you can watch with your family and your kids, even though you may want to plug their ears as there is some language in the movie, but it is SO visually distinctive that no one has made a movie quite like this before or since.  I can’t recommend this movie enough.  It has to be seen to be believed.  If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for?  Get out there and rent or better yet, BUY it.  This is one of the rare movies that I don’t give a score for.  Why should I?  It’s so imaginative, fun, exciting and unique.  It gets it all right.  It’s a classic in every sense of the word.

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