Review: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

UFOs appear at various places around the world, including Indiana where Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) has a close encounter while out driving one night. Whilst Roy is haunted by this experience and visions of a strange mound, his wife (Teri Garr) and children are unable to cope with his increasingly disturbed behaviour. More sympathetic to Roy is a young woman (Melinda Dillon) whose toddler son (Cary Guffey) is taken away by aliens one night. Meanwhile, scientist Francois Truffaut and American translator Bob Balaban are investigating various strange phenomena across the globe and seemingly preparing for a rendezvous with whatever is out there trying to communicate with us. Roberts Blossom plays a UFO-obsessive old coot in a small role.

I’ve seen this 1977 Steven Spielberg (“E.T. The Extra Terrestrial”, “Jaws”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Minority Report”) favourite three times now, the second time being the ‘Special Edition’. The first two times I just didn’t get into it, but seeing it again in 2015 I have to admit, I kinda liked it. Not a great deal, but enough to finally give it a good grade instead of an average one. I think Spielberg is the greatest filmmaker around on a good day (On a bad day he’s also the guy who gave us “Jurassic Park”, “A.I.”, “1941”, “The Adventures of Tintin”, and “The Water Horse”), but this isn’t one of his great ones as far as I’m concerned. It’s a good film with moments of greatness. In fact, I think his underrated version of “War of the Worlds” is a vastly superior UFO film.

 

The chief assets here are Richard Dreyfuss, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (“Deliverance”, “The Deer Hunter”, “Blow Out”), and composer John Williams (“Star Wars”, “Jaws”, “Superman”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”) who might just steal the show. Personally, I think the infamous musical notes/first contact thing gets overplayed to the point of irritation, but there’s no doubt that the rest of the music score is terrific stuff. As for Zsigmond’s contribution, this is a stunning-looking film with a terrific use of light and shadow throughout. As egotistical as Richard Dreyfuss can sometimes come across in interviews, I’ve always found him one of the more likeable screen presences over the years, and that’s no different here. He’s a terrific choice for a Spielberg surrogate here and it’s his skills as an actor that are ultimately most crucial in getting this one over. He’s instantly relatable, in a terrific performance that is the only thing in the entire film that really makes you feel something. Well, something positive at least. You see, if this film had been about a single guy without kids, it’d be a much, much better film than it is. With a frumpy Teri Garr as the instantly unsympathetic and horribly whiny wife, as well as the annoying kids, it’s much more difficult to like. It’s not Garr’s fault, it’s a horribly written role, but you end up feeling sorrier for the Dreyfuss character for having to put up with these awful, whiny people. That said, Dreyfuss’ best moments in the film are those in which he is acting all obsessed and freaking his family out with his bizarro behaviour. It aggravated me that Garr was so unsympathetic towards him, and the kids were ear-splitting, but Dreyfuss is excellent in these scenes. I also thought Dreyfuss’ first encounter was exceptionally well-done, right down to the eerie silence. Silence, like Richard Dreyfuss, is underrated. I like that the UFO here early on involves blinding lights. It’s simple, effective, and elusive. To me, if UFO’s exist, they will likely be beyond our comprehension in every respect, and so at least in the early scenes we get some of that vagueness where you’re not quite fully understanding what it is. Also this is a rare film where lens flares work for me. It might even be the genesis of the irritating phenomenon.

 

The other scenes that most impressed me in the film were the scenes where Melinda Dillon and a scene-stealing Cary Guffey are being freaked out by the UFO. These rather terrifying and extremely well-staged scenes suggest what this film could’ve and should’ve been. Unfortunately, Spielberg wanted to give us a film about ‘first contact’ that suggests the aliens (who don’t look too dissimilar from “E.T.”, just a different colour) are a 3^rd grade primary school band playing the tuba and xylophone. Yeah, that’s got limited appeal to me. I get that not every alien film needs to resort to the whole ‘aliens are hostile and want to take over the planet’ deal, but I think “Mars Attacks!” got it right. Aliens are less likely to be music-lovers and more likely to be snarky dickfaces (or at the very least, be completely beyond our comprehension). I know not all aliens need to be a violent menace, but Spielberg’s alternative simply wasn’t compelling to me. I liked the vagueness early on, but here it annoyed me. Having said that, there are elements to the finale that I liked very, very much. Even with some dated FX, the visuals in the finale to me are far more interesting than the twee musical note stuff. The mothership is truly gorgeous, and yes maybe even awe-inspiring.

 

Overall, though, I think Spielberg really misses out by going global with this and focussing on a bunch of boring shit with Francois Truffaut and the musical note nonsense. 18 minutes is way too long to wait for the main character to show up, in my opinion. Spielberg later did the more expansive alien story much better in “War of the Worlds”, but more to the point “E.T.” is a vastly superior film for being a more intimate one. It’s called Close Encounters, not far-reaching encounters. Yes, the film has spectacle and scope, but the key to the film is Dreyfuss’ character, and much of what is outside of that is unnecessary padding. There’s some truly effectively creepy and scary moments in this film, but Spielberg eschews this in favour a twee ‘first contact’ story that isn’t as interesting as it could’ve been. Dreyfuss is terrific, the film is only slightly above par. Spielberg also scripted and came up with a lot of the visual conceptual work himself. 

 

Rating: B-