|
|
|
Close Encounters | ||||||||||||||||
|
|
s music swells over a black screen, we are suddenly plunged into the midst of a swirling dust storm. A group of investigators has descended on a desert locale where a host of antique planes has materialized. Central to this team is a Frenchman named Claude Lacombe (Truffaut). The scientists utter some enigmatic observations about the anomalous aircraft. Then we cut to the Muncie, Ind., nighttime home of Jillian Guiler (Dillon) and her toddler son, Barry (Guffey). Barry has been awakened by some mysterious phenomena, including all his electronic toys coming alive. He is lured outside by intruders we never see, and his mother follows in alarm. Meanwhile, air traffic controllers are dealing with a UFO that nearly causes a midair collision. At the same time, we pop into the household of Roy Neary (Dreyfuss) and his wife, Ronnie (Garr), as they experience a typical night of bickering with their children. But soon Roy, an electrical lineman, is summoned by his superiors to deal with a widespread power outage.
Lost at a crossroads, Roy is suddenly subjected to a close encounter as a hovering UFO buffets his truck. When the UFO speeds off, Roy follows madly. His path intersects with that of Jillian and Barry on a country road. The three are buzzed by a flock of UFOs, and their lives are forever altered. Roy returns home and drags his family to the site of his epiphany at 4 a.m. The next day, he continues to be obsessed with his encounter. His life begins to go downhill, as he loses his job and devotes all his waking minutes to seeking explanations for the celestial flyby. Roy and others like him have been implanted with a vision of a towering geological formation and also with the ghost of a musical refrain.
Lacombe and his team are meanwhile making progress. The musical refrain of alien origin shows up in India, and is reproduced by the experts as a broadcast back into space. This broadcast triggers a response consisting of a string of numbers which pinpoint the future alien landing site: Devil's Tower, Wyo. The government manufactures a cover story of a toxic accident to cordon off the site. But Roy—whose family has abandoned him to his madness—and Jillian—whose son has been abducted by the aliens—see through the hoax and show up at the landing site. Despite the best efforts of the authorities, the man and woman penetrate to the landing strip and witness the descent of the immense alien mother ship. Jillian gets her son back, and Roy's fate is to become an ambassador to the stars.
Antithetically embracing the alien
The most amazing thing about Close Encounters is the fine line it walks among so many antithetical viewpoints. It is not hostile to the wildest beliefs of the most fanatical UFO kooks, but it does not overtly endorse them. It is scientific in its approach, yet also rings in horror riffs and religious allegory. It is comedic and sober, uplifting yet tragic. It is international in scope, yet quintessentially American. It consists mostly of mundane scenes set in everyday locales, yet closes with blockbuster SFX (by Douglas Trumbull). In short, the popularity of this propulsive, economical film derives from its providing something for everyone.
Let's examine the seeming contradictions. In terms of honoring the canonical points of ufology, the film endorses the notion of alien abductions, but without such ginchy points as anal probing or miscegeny. The smallish UFOs resemble classic descriptions, but with better and hipper design. (The tiny red blob that always lags behind is plainly a kind of Tinkerbell analogue, more fairy sprite than alien.) The paranoid "men in black" motif is followed, but halfheartedly, since the government seems more blundering than diabolical. When revealed, the aliens are typical Small Grays, except for an innovative hyper-attenuated one (foreshadowing those in the Kubrick-Spielberg A.I.). Taken all in all, Spielberg has abstracted the most marketable points of the UFO myth and packaged them for general consumption.
While the essence of the quest that leads to first contact is eminently scientific in nature, Spielberg cannot resist adding complementary superstitious layers to his story. The jostling that Roy undergoes in his truck and the assault on Jillian's household are pure horror scenes, and could easily be spliced into films about poltergeists or the opening of the gates of hell. The mother ship lands, of course, at Devil's Tower, and mention is made of "angels" as a priest blesses the volunteers who are about to board the ship. The mixture of comedy and tragedy, of optimism and despair, is fully integrated as well. Roy's descent into fixation and obsession is both silly and sad. When he finally ends with a gigantic model of the Devil's Tower dominating his living room, he becomes the essence of every crazy artist or prophet who has sacrificed quotidian comforts for his vision. (Dreyfuss' performance is superb, as are all the others.)
Anchored in the detritus of modern American suburban life—plastic toys, junky cars, fast food—and with the presence of famous French director Truffaut serving as a kind of token nod to the global scope of this historic meeting, the film is allowed to soar at the end with the arrival of the humongous mother ship, itself a kind of cathedral of light. In the re-release of 1980, we were treated to additional interior views of the ship, and the reaction shots of Roy's stunned face. As he undergoes a near-epileptic shaking fit in the face of such glory, we finally realize how transcendent such a moment would be, and Spielberg succeeds in conveying the unconveyable.
Surely one of the biggest literary influences on this film is Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953). But the psychical components of first contact derive more from the work of J.G. Ballard, with his antiheroes deranged by cosmic forces. Remember that Spielberg was later to film Ballard's Empire of the Sun (1984). — Paul
|
         |
|
| Home |
Copyright © 1998-2006, Science Fiction Weekly (TM). All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium strictly prohibited. Maintained by scifiweekly@scifi.com. |
