Director Report Card: Steven Spielberg (1977)

7. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

When he was six years old, Steven Spielberg's father woke the boy up in the middle of the night and drove him out into the middle of the field. There, he witnessed a spectacular meteor shower. The event had a profound effect on the young Spielberg, creating a fascination with the stars and the night sky. At 18 years old, he would make a flying saucer movie called “Firelight,” which would gross exactly one dollar at a local drive-in before being lost to the ages. As an adult, he began developing a project called “Watch the Skies,” initially envisioned as a low-budget documentary. The story grew more ambitious the more Steve thought about it. After a typically intense draft from Paul Schrader was rejected, Spielberg and a team of writers would further develop the story into “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Following the smash success of “Jaws,” Columbia Pictures would give Spielberg a blank check to realize his dream project about U.F.Os. The project went over-budget and over-schedule but it was worth it, as Steven Spielberg delivered another blockbuster hit and instant classic.

Strange events are happening around the globe. Jets and ship, missing since World War II, reappear in the desert. Pilots are reporting sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena. And Roy Neary, an electrician in Indiana, goes out to investigate a power outage when he sees an alien spacecraft flying over the roads. Neary immediately becomes fascinated with the visitors. He drives his family away with his growing obsession with the UFOs. He meets up with a small community of believers, including Jillian, a woman whose young son has been abducted by the visitors. Soon, they are gathering around Devil's Tower in Wyoming, seemingly the chosen location for man's first meeting with extraterrestrial intelligence. 

All throughout “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” people are trying to decipher meaning from strange signals received from beyond. The military scientists ponder over what a series of musical notes, heard all over the world by contactees, could possibly convey. Roy, and the other individuals who have been touched by the otherworldly visitors, are plagued by incessant visions. Every day objects, like a handful of shaving cream or a pile of mashed potatoes, suddenly have a secret meaning only Roy can see. He tears his life apart trying to understand what this inexplicable feeling could possibly mean. All he knows is that it's important and that he's been chosen to understand it. 

While the specifics are extraordinary, this is a premise everyone can relate to. We are all looking for a deeper meaning in our lives. We're all receiving input from the universe, mysterious and confusing, and trying to understand it. Many people turn to religion to bring coherence to their chaotic lives. It becomes impossible not to notice that “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is full of religious connotations. Much like God, the visitors work in mysterious ways, their exact goals never entirely becoming clear. They communicate through visions, mania, and vague phenomenon. This attracts a following of true believers, driven to make a pilgrimage to an important location. And, just like angels, the messengers come from the sky. “Close Encounters” seemingly confirms these ideas by giving a priest a prominent appearance in the final act. I'm not saying Spielberg made an ancient astronauts movie, suggesting major religions were the results of alien visitors. It's simply that the film partakes in the same ideas to convey a similar meaning.

Someone's religious beliefs are deeply personal. And it's clear “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is a deeply personal film for its director. Much like “The Sugarland Express,” it's an early expression of Spielberg's most persistent theme. When we first meet the Neary family, it's far from harmonious. The kids are hellions, constantly creating mess and noise. Roy is a dreamer, represented by his love of “Pinocchio,” but his family doesn't seem to get that. Roy's wife, Ronnie, dismisses his frantic fixation on flying saucers once it begins. Eventually, his drive to fulfill this dream of his, to understand what he's feeling, pushes his family away from him. Once Spielberg became a father and started making more sentimental movies, he expressed regret over the way Roy Neary leaves his wife and kids behind. Yet I think it works, as the trauma of a family dissolving can lead to growth sometimes too. 

As much as “Close Encounters” is clearly a personal film for Spielberg, it's also an international epic about a global phenomenon. The first scene is set deep within the Mojave desert, French-speaking scientist and specialists flocking around missing WWII vessels. The story also leaps around to the Gobi Desert and Northern India. Through this subplot, of the military attempting to determine the alien messages, the film gives us an inside-out look at a government cover-up. It takes a while for this storyline to wind its way back around to Roy's small scale story of obsession. This expands the movie's scope, making “Close Encounters” truly feel like an epic. 

You can't make a movie about UFOs without talking about government conspiracies. The script doesn't have time to get into the deep lore of Roswell or Project Blue Book, even if these things obviously inspired the story. As far as paranoia-inducing conspiracies go, “Close Encounter's” is fairly benign. The government genuinely is trying to keep the public safe, when it concocts a cover story of a poison gas spill around Devil's Tower. The worst thing the military does to people here is spray them with sleeping gas. Yet it's still clear that Claude Lacombe, a French scientist, and a cartographer-turned-translator – people whose missions are to understand and communicate – feel uncertain about these actions. Once again, we see Spielberg's uncertain relationship with authority. He doesn't inherently distrust it but also believes that it must operate from a place of empathy and understanding. 

At this point in his career, Spielberg hadn't had many opportunities to create the sense of awe his work would become famous for. You can't afford that kind of glitzy spectacle on the low budgets he had mostly worked with up to this point. With “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and his first mega-budget at his disposal, Spielberg could truly indulge his desire to bask in wonder. This is most evident in one of the film's most striking sequence. That's when Roy first encounters the flying saucer, when a spotlight bathes his truck and everything inside the cab floats through the air. Shortly after that moment, miraculously glowing and flying cones of light dance over the isolated roadways. The audience has to feel the significance of these events on Roy's life, or else nothing that follows will work. “Close Encounters” perfectly conveys the wonder and mystery of these moments. 

While most of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is about otherworldly wonder and longing, extraordinary events are liable to be terrifying to live through too. In the middle of “Close Encounters,” it features a mini-horror movie sequence worthy of the director of “Duel” and “Jaws.” Jillian sees an ominous storm cloud swirling over her farmhouse. Her home is plunged into darkness. Orange lights peer into the privacy of these rooms, through keyholes and windows. Every mundane object around the building leaps to life, benign, familiar settings suddenly becoming sources of fear. The safety and sanctity of the inner sanctum is violated by inexplicable forces. It's a fabulously scary scene, with excellent sound design and use of special effects, with a fittingly grim and unexpected climax. It's a perfected version of what Spielberg might've been trying to pull off in “Something Evil” and would fine-tune further in “Poltergeist,” if you believe he directed that one. 

That scene, so perfectly effective when taken on its own, is a great example of just how goddamn graceful “Close Encounters” is in execution. Spielberg took all the lessons in shooting, framing, and editing he had learned over his last two movies and applies them here. Vilmos Zsigmond, returning from “The Sugarland Express,” creates countless gorgeous images. The use of lighting and shadows here, colorful beams of light breaking through the darkness, is legendary for a reason. Editor Michael Kahn cuts the movie so tightly and perfectly. The scene in India, where fingers pointing up towards the heavens occurs right before a perfectly timed cut, is only the most obvious example. Everyone at work in this film were bringing their A-game. You see that skill in every facet on-screen.

Spielberg initially envisioned Steve McQueen as the star of “Close Encounters of the Third Encounter.” He was developing this script all throughout filming “Jaws,” which is where Richard Dreyfus – who is definitely not a Steve McQueen type – convinced the director to let him star in it. This was the correct decision. Dreyfus has a manic humor to him, that makes Roy's mental breakdown almost seem fun. He has a fantastic rapport with the actors playing his kids, a child-like energy keeping these interactions light-hearted. Dreyfus easily fits into the role of a Spielbergian everyman, while also bringing a lot of specificity to the part. Just about anyone can relate to Roy, an ordinary guy who dreams of more, while Dreyfus makes him feel like a fully fleshed-out human being.

Supporting the theory that “Close Encounters” may actually be a metaphor for filmmaking itself, Spielberg would cast Francois Truffaut, his favorite French New Wave director, in a key role here. Though Truffaut did next to no acting before and after, he actually brings an understated energy to the role that suits it perfectly. Bob Balaban, himself a rather Dreyfus-like figure, provides some relaxed comic relief as the make-shift translator tossed into this extraordinary circumstances. Melinda Dixon is also nicely cast as the single mom also caught up in the first contact, with an understandable vibe that blends nicely with Dreyfus' more manic energy. Teri Garr also has the thankless role of the square wife who has to put up with this madness.

For a film where music is so important, in that an out-of-this-world melody motivates large portions of the plot, Spielberg knew to bring back the most iconic of all his collaborators. John Williams was on hand to create another instantly recognizable piece of music. The five tone motif that the visitors communicate with is so simple but so defined, that it manages to send the exact needed message. As for the rest of Williams' music, it's equal parts grand, foreboding, and playful. The up-and-down cadence of the main theme is especially remarkable, for the way it brings the bobbing lights of the flying saucers to mind. While it might not be as instantly beloved as his “Jaws” or “Star Wars” score, it's pretty damn great nevertheless. 

If “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” can be said to have a major flaw, it's that the ending goes on a little too long. The climax of the film is a showcase of special effects. Douglas Trumbull's extraordinary miniature effects makes the alien mother ship into an enormous floating city, decorated with streams of colors. Carlo Rambaldi's creature effects creates a more benevolent version of the classical gray alien, intentionally child-like in their appearances, expressions, and mannerisms. As far as climaxes go, an intergalactic lightshow and love-in can feel slightly underwhelming. It certainly drags on a bit, the film feeling like a lot of build-up for nothing much at all... Yet it didn't feel that way when I first saw the movie as a kid. Back then, I was blown away by the effects and totally sucked up into the movie's sense of wonder. I still respond to it on that level, all these years later. 

If the most famous version of the ending feels a little long-winded, it's actually even longer in some of the alternate cuts. By the time “Close Encounters of the Third Time,” Steven Spielberg had already been established as a name brand director. It was the first of his films to ever get a re-release treatment. The 1980 Special Edition runs three minutes shorter than the original theatrical cut and is most famous for showing us the inside of the alien mothership. It's yet another series of blinding lightshows, largely unnecessary. Always dissatisfied with this cut, Spielberg would later assemble a Director's Cut – a few minutes longer than either previous version – for the film's twentieth anniversary. This is the most widely available cut of the movie now and probably the best version, better paced than the Special Edition but keeping a handful of improvements not present in the Theatrical Cut. 

Regardless of which particular version you watch, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is a brilliant piece of filmmaking. It would be another box office hit, grossing over 300 million dollars in 1977 money. Spielberg would earn his first Best Director Academy Award nomination, after being snubbed for “Jaws.” This was one of eight Oscar noms the film gained, with its cinematography and sound effects team ultimately winning statues. Released the same year as “Star Wars,” it would mark science fiction as a commercially viable genre that deserved to be taken seriously. Beyond any of that, it's a fantastically engineered motion picture that is touching, personal, frightening, and awe-inspiring. Maybe it doesn't have an exploding shark but I still think it's pretty damn good. [Grade: A]