Lower Decks

The recent release of ‘The Fourth Kind’ was a box office failure, and it might have been as much about the film itself as the fact that it seemed to casually reference another movie from thirty years earlier, Steven Spielberg’s second big hit, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’

‘Close Encounters’ is one of those classics that anything but a casual knowledge of movies will make anyone aware of, but perhaps not actually seen. I’ve only seen it myself for the first time this year, possibly because there was another sci-fi picture from 1977 that I’d spent a great deal of time concentrating on, but for so long, there it was, consistently referenced only really known as a Spielberg film, and an early starring role for Richard Dreyfuss. But really, all I knew was that it involved, well, a close encounter, with aliens and was unlike anything else, certainly ‘Star Wars.’

But that was all I knew, and for a long time. I’d see the video or DVD packages, the anniversary releases, occasionally, but it never seemed relevant in my family, and when I started delving into the backlog of material I wanted to catch up on, again, it waited somewhere in the dark recesses, until suddenly, as these things often transpire, it felt like the right time. I had no idea what to expect. Although I’ve seen a fair number of Spielberg films, I can’t say I’m proficient, exactly, and I always feel a bit of trepidation when I watch an older film, no matter who made or starred in it, because I’ve often found the technical aspects (or acting) to compare unfavorably to modern filmmaking (something no one ever really mentions, as if it isn’t important).

My first reaction was that there was definitely an original flare to this experience, that it certainly wasn’t a ‘Star Wars.’ If I’d been thinking, I might have recalled my limited familiarity with ‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,’ Spielberg’s later, more beloved sci-fi classic, but there’s a big difference in the storytelling, because where ‘E.T.’ focuses on a boy and a goofy alien, ‘Close Encounters’ centers squarely on an almost impressionistic unfolding on Dreyfuss’s awareness that the community episode with UFOs has affected him more closely than others. He grows distant from his family, obsessed with a mound shape he sculpts out of mashed potatoes, dirt mounds in his kitchen, and eventually feels compelled to travel toward a destination he can’t explain. There are others the film tracks, a boy, but Dreyfuss is always the focal point.

If we follow a man, clearly it’s still a childlike experience. Spielberg has come in recent years to criticize his film, abhorred by how casually he splits apart a family, allows a father to abandon his children, but I don’t think such admissions are necessary. ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ is a unique experience in that it doesn’t for a moment dwell on what most other stories involving aliens do, except in the panic the army feels when all these civilians start appearing in the middle of their efforts to crack a ship’s secrets. Spielberg, in strict contrast to his later remake of the classic ‘War of the Worlds,’ never gives in to the fear that aliens would only come if they want to destroy our planet. In ‘Close Encounters,’ an ingenious, musical form of communication is discovered, an extended sequence that has more of science to it than human frailty. The aliens themselves are so content to give us time to understand, it becomes almost baffling, and well, alien.

‘Close Encounters’ was made at the dawn of the blockbuster era, which Spielberg had ushered with ‘Jaws’ two years earlier and would, with Indiana Jones, help nurture, but it’s unlike anything else you’re likely to experience. A movie like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (another one I still haven’t gotten around to, even though I spent a summer reading the books) might be similar, but Spielberg made such a psychological effort not even the independent sensations like ‘Blair Witch Project,’ ‘District 9,’ or ‘Paranormal Activity’ in recent years can compare. ‘Close Encounters’ never once trades it impact on shock, but rather tries to help the viewer identify with Dreyfuss only in that he has an extraordinary journey under the most ordinary circumstances. It’s a mundane story on an epic scale.

And it’s still, more than thirty years later, one of the best films ever made. You’ve really got to see it to find out why.