By Robert Scucci
| Published
I have kids, so E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial gets lots of mileage in my household. Just last year, there was a retro night screening at my drive-in, and we got to enjoy it on a massive screen with all the right snacks. It’s a fun film, full of hope, wonder, expert-level product placement, and plenty of alien antics for good measure. But while E.T. is a perfect kid’s movie, Spielberg’s true masterpiece has to be Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and it’s the kind of film that hits differently when you’re an adult.
Sure, the film is about mysterious alien visitors, but it’s also about the disintegration of a family, something that hits hard when you have kids of your own and think about what’s actually at stake. Having not watched the film since I was too young to fully appreciate it, I also realized that Homer Simpson’s mashed potato circus tent is lifted straight from Richard Dreyfuss’ dinner table trance as Roy Neary’s obsession begins to take hold.
Aliens Are The Vehicle, But The Family Is The Story
One thing I like to do is revisit movies and shows when I’m around the same age as the protagonist, just to see how different or similar our lives are. I’m still a few years too young to give The Sopranos a proper watch, but that’s going to be a fun one when I realize that the only thing I have in common with Tony is my affinity for cured meats. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Richard Dreyfuss’ Roy Neary is also about my age, and the first thing I noticed was how much of myself I saw in him. He’s a working-class guy living a somewhat comfortable suburban life with his wife Ronnie (Terri Garr) and their three children. His household is chaotic, but his life is full.
Roy works as an electrical lineman, and one night he sees an unidentified flying object that changes his life forever. He becomes obsessed, and the encounter is all he can think about, to the point where his behavior grows increasingly unhinged as he tries to recreate the monolithic structure he keeps seeing in his mind. At the same time, Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) experiences the same phenomenon, which results in her 3-year-old son Barry (Cary Guffey) going missing, presumably abducted by aliens.
Meanwhile, scientists Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut) and David Laughlin (Bob Balaban), who have been wracking their brains over the sudden reappearance of Navy aircraft that originally disappeared in 1945, are on the precipice of figuring out who these visitors are and what their arrival means for the rest of the world.
These three storylines all play masterfully off each other, and when the third act culminates with everybody gathering at Devil’s Tower in Moorcroft, Wyoming, everything falls into place. It’s awe-inspiring, visually spectacular, and absolutely heartbreaking.
Hard To Watch As A Dad
What I wasn’t prepared for while rewatching Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a father was watching Roy slowly lose himself to some unknown force that’s driving him to behave erratically. The look of concern on his family’s face as his obsession fully takes hold is the same look my family gives me when I say I’m going to lose 20 pounds and get the abs back. You know they love him, but they’re also not quite ready to tell him he’s lost his mind.
Naturally, Roy bonds with Jillian, one of the few people who believes him, and you really can’t blame him. Given his strange behavior, his family is right to be concerned about his, and their own, well-being. Thinking about it from Roy’s perspective, though, I could only imagine how alone he felt trying to unpack what was clearly a traumatizing event and find some clarity in the aftermath.
The end result is the complete collapse of his family because they didn’t see what he saw, and he slowly comes to resent them for it. Meanwhile, Ronnie, who’s just trying to hold the family together, begins to resent him because there’s no way she could relate to what he experienced, and she needs him to snap back to reality.
The familial drama in Close Encounters of the Third Kind does so much heavy lifting that you almost forget there’s a fleet of aliens flying around communicating through mathematical semitones. It also made me appreciate Spielberg’s original instinct to never show the inside of the Mothership, and understand why he regretted including those scenes in the 1980 Special Edition before removing them again for the 1998 Director’s Cut. The movie is about aliens, yes, but the more compelling story is the one being told about Roy and his family.
If it’s been a while since you’ve had the pleasure of watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it’s just as enthralling today as it was in 1977. The special effects hold up remarkably well, and when you consider its $19.4 million production budget, it makes you wonder why they don’t make movies like this anymore. I understand that $19.4 million bought a lot more back then, but the film still looks better than movies coming out today with budgets north of $200 million.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND SCORE
For the imagination, the spectacle, the drama, and the hope that alien visitors come in peace, you can stream Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Peacock as of this writing.
