Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977

[8.2/10] A brilliant flash of light. A terrifying rumble that grows louder and louder. The tumult of a family in crisis and a military and scientific detachment scrambling to catch up. The catharsis of the lost lambs across decades returned home no worse for wear. The terror of a family member losing their grip on their sanity. An image that cannot be erased from the mind. A compulsion that cannot be resisted. The rush of wind and the zoom of the camera to deliver the emotional impact. The wide-eyed stares at marvels off in the distance. A towering vessel lit up with luminous splendor. A wondrous, transcendent experience, without account or description, washes over everyone touched in it.

There is little in the way of plot in Close Encounters of the Third King, Steven Spielberg’s early sci-fi classic. Man sees UFO. Woman loses child to unknown entities. Government springs into action in the face of the paranormal. All of them converge at the same Wyoming mountain and experience the arrival of something from beyond the stars. That’s pretty much it. The characters don’t really grow and change. The progression doesn’t feature much in the way of narrative turns. And there’s little in the way of cause and effect to fuel the film’s story.

And yet, whatever the rare script from Spielberg himself lacks in narrative ambition, it makes up for in spectacle, in mood, in awe. Close Encounters is less of a tale and more of, well, an encounter, something powered as much by the emotions and energy at play as it is any sense of storytelling. This combination of sight and sound and splendor is nothing short of an experience, an extended vignette, there to capture the feeling of an extraterrestrial encounter -- the wonder, terror, compulsion, and catharsis -- rather than any sundry plot details.

Instead, Spielberg leans into his specialty -- stacking sequence on escalating sequence until the audience is the same ball of nerves and expectations his characters are, and then granting us, and them, an emotional release in the final reel.

Take your pick of virtuosic setpieces here. Some unknowable force raises Roy’s truck as electrical outages sweep the countryside, in a moment that chills the blood with the uncertain powers at play. Jillian strains desperately to hold her son back from the pull of those same forces bursting through every nook and cranny in her home, in an interlude that presages Spieberg’s work on Poltergeist. A scientific superteam whisk themselves across breathtaking foreign terrain in search of the sound that could change their lives. An entire installation of military brass and scientific luminaries make a tonal connection with alien life, as a gargantuan,city-like UFO descends from the heavens and vindicates the cryptic hints and madman obsessions that led the collection here. Close Encounters is a triumph of these extraordinary images.

Nonetheless, what Spielberg and company may do best in this early outing is capture a sense of total chaos. People are constantly talking over one another in this film. Every conversation is interrupted with the cacophonous sounds of modern life interrupting. Televisions, helicopters, children screaming, neighbors' hairdryers, shouting superiors, record players, whirring machines, all run at full bore and add to the sense of inherent tension and panic that suffuses the quest to find what presence is communicating to us in these strange ways.

It lends to the grit of an otherwise polished piece. For a movie steeped in such spectacle, it is surprisingly raw, carrying that sweaty, workaday, spirit that was the style du jour in 1970s cinema. Despite all the supernatural events that challenge the movie’s players in unpredictable ways, the scariest moment in the whole film is a domestic one. Roy losing his marbles, deciding to crash his shrubbery through his kitchen window, rambling about seeing the bigger picture, and scaring his traumatized wife into taking the kids away while the neighbors look on in befuddled judgment, rings true for a family dealing with one of its members suffering a mental break. Nothing sells the unease, the ominousness of Roy and those like him being drawn to the alien presence like a moth to the flame than that stretch in the story.

On the other side of that terrifying sense of panic, Spielberg and his collaborators use every tool in the cinematic toolbox to evoke the sense of something greater, something momentous, something awe-inspiring as the aliens make their presence known. Despite some more languid pacing in the final act, there’s a stillness, a steadied focus, once contact is fully and finally made, that has more power given the bedlam it follows.

Light is the filmmaker’s greatest tool, with blinding flashes and colored beams conveying the sense of the otherworldly. The sound design is masterful, with low rumbles that quake the gut and clear tones and patterns that create a melodic sense of connection between peoples. And frequent Spielberg collaborator John Williams turns in an incredible score, with motifs and a swelling orchestra that communicate the momentousness of these experiences, giving them a flavor and feeling to accent the images.

What images! Close Encounters is nearly fifty years old, and the effects still stun. The alien ship itself is rightfully iconic, a tangle of erector set pieces slung with christmas lights that coalesces into a towering whole. The visions of lights racing through the sky, electric baubles blinking in and out or otherwise misbehaving, light and particles finding their way into each crevice, stand the test of time. Even the aliens themselves, tastefully obscured and given to silhouettes and brief shots of an animatronic, are plausible and tactile in a way all our modern CGI has trouble matching.

Such visions are not meant to be analyzed on the level of narrative cohesion.Think too hard about the story for a moment, and the warm majesty of Roy joining the aliens gives way to the realization that these extraterrestrials seem to have tampered with his free will and are tearing him away from his wife and children. Government operatives misleading the public to make contact with life from other worlds, asserting the right to represent humanity with little apparent coordination with others in the global community, rests uneasy despite the aspirational tone and competence that the top brass, and the gravitas that none other than François Truffaut himself brings to the table.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is not built as a story, though. It is built as something to be felt, to be awed by in a wash of images and sounds and moods that envelop the audience as its figures are bathed in eerie but inviting light. The film works on an emotional level, presenting an array of spectacle not just for spectacle sake, but to evoke that human response to the extraordinary and unknowable, in the characters on screen and the viewers watching it, The movie is hardly the most realistic depiction of what first contact might be like, but it captures like no other the chaos such an arrival would provoke, and the humbling, nigh-spiritual place a visit from the worlds beyond would hold in our hearts and minds.

THE CAWPINE OF 'CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND'

WRITING: 8
ATMOSPHERE: 9
CHARACTERS: 7
PRODUCTION: 10
INTRIGUE: 7
NOVELTY: 9
ENJOYMENT: 9

The Good:

Jaws might have been the ultimate summer blockbuster that made Spielberg into a household name, but it's his fourth feature-length Close Encounters that I see as the beginning of his golden era as a director. Filled with tension and horror inspired by Jaws, grounded science fiction as later seen in E.T. and a sense of adventure as will again be seen in the Indiana Jones films, this film is an undisputed classic and a must-see for everyone calling themselves a science fiction fan.

Close Encounters mixes Spielberg's use of carefully chosen angles, close-ups and wide shots with a mix of colour, lighting and breathtaking practical effects, creating one of the most beautiful science fiction films I've ever seen (the film received an Oscar for Best Cinematography). Star Wars was released the same years and it's grey and gritty realism pales in comparison with the fantastical colour palette of Spielberg's film.

Just as convincing is the sound design, mixing and music in this film. Sound is used to create a creepy atmosphere and a world of its own and the majestic John Williams score is one of the best he's created, with the legendary five-note jingle as its centrepiece.

This film is Richard Dreyfuss' show to steal. He was great in Jaws, but his obsessive and slowly intensifying performance here is what one could call career-defining. Towards the end of the film, his character has become just as creepy and unnerving as the film itself.

Unlike the epic space opera that is George Lucas' Star Wars, Spielberg's sci-fi opus is more of a traditional, mysterious and philosophical science fiction close rot 2001: A Space Odyssey or Arrival. Its script spends more time developing a sense of mystery around the alien arrivals than action or thrills. The philosophical and sociological death this film contains could be widely discussed in all eternity.

The scary sequences use sounds, light, wind and other simple effects to form an almost horror movie type of atmosphere. They are the most impressive sequences of the film and set the sinister mood effectively.

After a long build-up, which mostly seems to lead to nowhere, the film moves onto its final act and finally offers some explanations and clarity as to what has been going on for the past 90 minutes.

Those haunting final scenes are among the most memorable in cinematic history, everything leading up to them during the film’s final hour is tense, and unnerving, thanks to masterful editing and a great John Williams score. The final few moments are strongly embedded in my memory, due to the haunting and well-crafted imagery.

The meeting between humanity and the mother ship works so well because it's a piece of dialogue performed through Williams' score. That’s my favourite sequence in the entire film. The sequence also samples the theme from Jaws, which adds to the sense of danger.

The alien puppets at the end look hauntingly realistic. They send shivers down my spine.

The Bad:

The central characters come across as somewhat one-dimensional. Roy seems obsessive and crazy from the starts, so the way he slowly ruins his marriage doesn't impact us so strongly as we don’t know how he usually is. His wife is even less well developed.

The script thrown in several lengthy scenes with Roy being obsessive or scientists solving mysteries together by talking on top of each other. The point would have come across just as well with fewer such scenes, so they seem like filler material.

In some ways, the overall plot feels more like a depiction of Roy's obsessive madness than an attempt to understand the alien arrivals and their true purpose. While the last act is fascinating, the conclusion leaves the audience wanting answers that are never given.

The Ugly:

Mentioning National Geographic in dialogue two films in a row is lazy scriptwriting, Mr Spielberg!

THE CAWPINE RATING: 8.43 / 10 = 4 stars