A Close Encounter of an Overblown Kind

Close Encounters of The Third Kind Written and directed by Steven Spielberg Sack Cinema 57

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is an optimistic movie about flying saucers with a lot of nice special effects. There is no moral dilemma, no alienation, no analysis of post-industrial society, and very little sex. The plot is unoriginal; the acting unspectacular. If you go to see it, go to see what talented Douglas Trumbal, the special effects person, thinks extraterrestrial creatures and their space ships ought to look like. And go for escape. Moviegoers who have always found sci-fi flics somewhat witless will probably feel the same about this one, while those who have traditionally been awed by anything faintly supernatural are sure to get their money's worth. But do not be decieved. Close Encounters is, at best, fun, but not great.

The film tries to answer two basic questions that have been on a lot of minds: Is there anybody out there? And, if so, are they friendly? The answers the film provides are overwhelming affirmatives. Consequently, this movie will probably herald a new wave of UFO-mania and will set UFO-debunkers back years (see page one). The one redeeming factor is that from now on, people will be running to try to catch UFOs instead of running away to avoid being caught. One could argue, seriously, that this movie has earned its keep just because it will obviate a lot of fear on the part of those who stay awake nights fearing alien invasions and who take movies such as Close Encounters seriously.

The movie's main message--that amity and understanding will reign between us and our interstellar neighbors if we just extend a welcoming hand--conveys, in fact, unwarranted hopefulness. It is ridiculous to assume that folks from the other side of the universe will have such a touching respect for the sacredness of human life when earthlings themselves do not seem all that concerned. The notion becomes even more unbelievable when you consider that, from the aliens' point of view, we are inferior creatures. Just think what we do to our guinea pigs and chimpanzees. When the aliens courteously return--without a scratch on them--all the human specimens that they had kidnapped in order to examine, it makes you wonder what we did to deserve such good neighbors. Close Encounters is as optimistic as War Between The Worlds was pessimistic, although, admittedly, reality is difficult to express in a movie about things from other plxnets.

The movie commences with several scenes of people befuddled by various mysterious and unexplainable events which the viewer can easily speculate have something to do with flying saucers. Several groups experience close encounters of the first and second kind (sighting a UFO and obtaining physical evidence of a UFO, for those unfamiliar with the jargon), but these people either do not believe what they saw, or are smiled at when they try to make others believe them. Director Steven Spielberg effectively makes the point early in the film that no one could possibly know whether a self-proclaimed UFO sighter was crying wolf or actually saw the real thing. This maneuver is designed to spur on your imagination and prepare you to accept the fantastical scenes coming up.

Suddenly, the screen shows a beautiful, starlit night in peaceful Muncie, Indiana. A five-year-old boy (Teri Garr) and his single mother (Melinda Dillon) are drifting off to sleep to the sound of crickets. Then strange things start to happen: the child's electric toys begin to stir, household appliances go haywire, and objects start moving about in the air. The fearless boy is amused and seems to notice a mysterious presence in the room. The commotion ceases, and the child's sluggish mother awakens only in time to run after her little boy who has gone trampsing across the fields after the mysterious night visitor yelling, "Wait for me, wait for me!"

The flying saucers' visit to Muncie causes myriad electrical failures, and a young electrician (Richard Dreyfus) is dispatched to investigate the breakdown of a nearby regenerating unit. Lost and confused, the electrician stops in the middle of the road and consults his map. A pair of headlights appears behind the truck; the electrician waves the car on and submerges into his map again. Another pair of headlights appears behind the electrician's truck, but this time there is something peculiar about their shape. Dreyfus waves this vehicle on also, but instead of going around the truck, it goes up and over it--revealing all sorts of blinking, heterochromatic lights in the process.

The instrument panel starts acting up, and the saucer shines a blinding light on the truck. The curious electrician pokes his head out the window and tries to focus his eyes on the UFO, but he is cowed by the light. Suddenly, the electrician's facial expressions seem to indicate that the alien beings inside the saucer are communicating with him telepathically, probably trying to force the innocent earthling to commit some dastardly deed for the invaders.

The saucer heads away, apparently tired of Dreyfus, but Dreyfus chases in hot pursuit. Who would he almost run into, but the five-year-old boy with his mother close behind. The truck skids off the road, and the electrician hops out to sve of the boy and his mother are hurt. Three or four more UFOs fly by.

The next day the electrician and the mother--as well as other townspeople--try to tell their neighbors about the amazing occurence. Naturally, no one believes them, and all they can offer as proof is a slight sunburn induced by the rays from the spaceships.

In the meantime, the cameras follow a French UFO expert--played by Francis Truffaut (who is actually a French UFO expert)--as he scrambles from one side of the globe to the other gathering evidence that has been left in the wake of the same aliens who caused the ruckus in Muncie. Our expert finds one detail quite interesting. The inhabitants of a small town in India--believing a visit by the stellar spooks to be a sign from the great one--created a four-note jingle to sing in honor of the other-wordly visitors. The expert, which his amazing conjectural powers, has a hunch that this tune (now played incessantly on Boston radio stations) is a musical "hello" from the aliens. He convinces his colleagues at an international UFO conference to support a project to send the four-note tune into outer space via radio telescope.

Unfortunately, the only message that comes back is a jumbled series of numbers that doesn't impress anyone much. But then someone notices that the numbers represent, in fact, a particular latitude and longitude--Devil's Tower, Wyoming no less. the U.S. government then assumes this will be the site for our first inter-galactic rendezvous. The area is sealed off, and the government disseminates the false report that a train carrying toxic gases had derailed and that, consequently, the area must be evacuated.

Back in Muncie, the electrician, the mother and the five-year-old boy are having problems. The boy has been kidnapped by the aliens, the mother is told by all her friends that her son probably fell in the river, and the electrician's wife has loaded the kids in the station wagon and gone to stay with her sister. In their mutual despair, the mother and the electrician find each other. Somehow, they know that the government is pulling everybody's leg about the toxic gases, and so they head off to Wyoming.

Up to this point, the movie has been strictly mediocre; if the movie is worth anything, it is because of a spectacular finale with some impressive special effects. Fortunately, the last 15 minutes of the movie will disappoint few people. The aliens arrive in a huge dazzling spacecraft as large as the mountain it lands next to. Several auxilliary space ships with adjunct paraphernalia will satisfy the craving of any sci-fi fan. The creatures return all the individualb that they had abducted earlier, including the boy (who became quite enamoured with the aliens), and, to top it off, the aliens make an appearance in the flesh, so to speak.

Although the flying saucers in Close Encounters rival the ones in Star Wars, the latter easily win the prize for original aliens. This is especially surprising considering that the costume designers in Close Encounters only had to design one other-wordly creature. Besides not wearing space suits--a definite faux pas--the aliens in this film are greenish, long-necked, pot-bellied, leathery-skinned, and have gaping mouths, which makes the creatures look boringly akin to Martians.

The meeting goes well and the earthlings and aliens mingle around for a while staring at each other before departing. As the ship leaves, all the humans wave good-bye, misty eyed and already looking forwar to a reunion (Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind).

Everything is relative, and it is only natural to compare this film to Star Wars. In this comparison, Close Encounters loses. It is not as funny, exciting, eye-boggling, or unreal, Star Wars was unadulterated fantasy and does not make pretensions of reality. Close Encounters tries too hard to be more than just a typical science fiction film. It is not.