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Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(****)
Recently I wrote about the 1959 French film "The 400 Blows", about a young boy named Antoin who's innocence was corrupted by the world around him. The innocence here is not rare, but it is easily destroyed. This optimistic tone is also present in Steven Spielberg's work.
This theme of "innocence" is also present in Close Encounters, although it manifests itself in different ways. Superficially, The 400 Blows and Close Encounters are very different films. But looks can be deceiving, and it is the overall sense of awe for the simple things that tie the two together. I'm sure it was no coincidence that Spielberg got Francois Truffaut himself to take the role of Lacombe.
It all begins one night in the Midwest, where Roy Neary (Dreyfuss) is arguing with his family about where to go Saturday night. He's not a great man, or even an especially bright man. But when he's called out in the night to investigate a citywide power outage, Roy experiences something that UFO believers only wish they could see.
Meanwhile a young mother (Melinda Dillon) is awakened in the night by her child's laughter. He sees something, and she's forced to go out into the night to find him.
The three meets unexpectedly on a road in the night, and the child would love to see this again. The two adults are motivated too; burns on their face mark where the bright lights hit them. But it's not just that; they're also given an image that drives them mad.
These flying saucers aren't completely unknown to the world either. The government is finding planes all over the place and a ship marooned in the Gobi desert. Thanks in part to a Frenchman named Lacombe, they discover where the UFO's are going to, and it just happens to be the same place that Roy has been obsessing about since his encounter.
I ramble on about the plot in a rote fashion here. It matters, of course. But it doesn't compare to the tone to the film. Since the birth of science fiction we've been told that aliens would come here to enslave us or blow us up. It seems like no one can remember such a simple thing as awe. Spielberg was born to make this movie; he's a self-professed child at heart, and his natural gift of story telling combines well with the sense of simple innocence.
Did it have to be aliens? No, of course not. Science fiction works today for the same reason that angels worked 100 years ago. There's just something unknown and eerie about it all. Leave it to an adult to turn it into a boring exercise in destruction.
I have seen this movie a few times over the years, and nothing can quite compete with the optimism here. It's because of this movie that Spielberg is one of my favorite directors, much as Truffaut is a favorite for "The 400 Blows". I recently stated that art does not need to prove a point; art does not have to somehow give us a great deal of insight into the world around us. As proof for this, I offer this movie. It's a good story; and it's filled with a sense of happiness hard to find naturally. Does it prove anything? No.
Long live all directors courageous enough to have a good idea and to play it through, despite the "business" of filmmaking.