After witnessing UFOs, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) finds himself plagued by visions of a mysterious object, which he is compelled to draw and sculpt.
When fellow UFO spectator Jillian’s (Melinda Dillon) son Barry (Cary Guffey) is abducted by the mysterious visitors, the pair head to Devil’s Tower, a natural outcrop that resembles the image they keep imagining...
It is hard not to compare Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the blockbusters of today. And I gave up trying to avoid the comparisons.
While it is partially the result of natural escalation, today’s blockbusters are so much more action-focused.
Despite its premise and spectacle, Close Encounters is not an action film. In some ways, it is the opposite.
Despite some hardware, there is no real threat of military escalation - from either the humans or the aliens.
Unlike the protagonists of later blockbusters, the film is based around ordinary people. There are experts and specialists at the margins, but the focus is on Roy (Richard Dreyfuss) and Jillian (Melinda Dillon).
And who can see such a large-scale movie now coming down to an exchange of musical notes?
This movie is as distinct from the popular offerings of today as it probably felt compared to the disaster, war and post-Jaws monster movies of its release.
The film opens with Lacombe (François Truffaut) and his team discovering planes from WW2 in the Sonora Desert. It sets out a mystery that is ultimately based on a conflict between adult anxiety and child-like innocence.
The scenes of Jillian’s son Barry greeting the unseen UFOs are played for suspense, with the aliens kept offscreen, and the sense of danger increased by the choice to position the camera at Barry’s eye-level.
Now these scenes are iconic for exemplifying their creator’s childlike sense of wonder.
For audiences at the time, coming on the heels of Jaws, the movie’s playful sense of suspense must have played differently.
That sense of fear is maintained in the adult reactions to the encounters. But so is the child’s embrace of the unknown, and the uncanny - see the scene where Ray gathers materials for his Devil’s Tower model. In the background, his son is enthusiastic, helping his dad carrying bricks back inside the house.
That juxtaposition also provides the film with a rich vein of irony that adds to the film’s fundamentally playful take on the story - the headlights rising over Roy after he distractedly waves the ‘vehicle’ past - the scientists try to wheel the globe of the world around corridors; Roy trying to reach his wife on the phone while the massive model of Devil’s Tower looms behind him (just as expertly timed is the secondary gag of the news report in extreme right of frame, repeatedly showing the real Devil’s Tower (but only when Roy’s back is turned).
While the central story is small, Spielberg’s delight in crowds and the bric-a-brac of people energises the movie - the crowd who shows up at the initial encounter site look like they have come for a party, with signs, food and games.
Scenes like this play to the film’s less paranoid view of humanity. In Close Encounters, people do not (just) come with guns.
I had never seen the film before, and I was surprised at the way the film has Ray’s family drive away, and there are no cutaways or reunion when his bizarre behaviour is validated.
I am not familiar with Spielberg’s work. I caught a couple of the big titles as a kid, and I have probably seen the lionshare of his recent movies. But seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind for the first time hammers home how unique his voice is.
The subtle way he juggles tones and his deceptively simple control of framing and blocking - it is hard to think of a conventional narrative filmmaker with such an understanding of cinematic tools as him.
He has gotten a little more contemplative and cynical in outlook in recent decades (I am very interested in re-watching Munich), which makes this period of his work a little more special.
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