Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

I’m gonna have a hard time being even remotely objective when it comes to writing this review of a 40th anniversary showing of Close Encounters of the Third Kind at Cinema City. If Steven Spielberg is considered the father of the modern cinema summer blockbuster, (Jaws pretty much defined that in the summer of 1976) then I’ll happily think of myself as a child of that era.

I’m lucky enough to have seen Close Encounters at the cinema first time round, and in that post Star Wars world of 1978, this quintessential Spielberg was a heavy watch for an 8 year old. At the time, I’m pretty sure many of the themes of religion and science,  family and abandonment, and losing/gaining of identity all flew way over my head. Government officials investigating strange global events (Francois Truffaut brings a real heart to these inquiries) and creating conspiracy theory and cover-ups, thread neatly with the more personal stories of Roy Neary’s (Richard Dreyfuss) and Jillian Guiler’s (Melinda Dillon) lives collapsing around them following their own particular, very personal, close encounters. Famously both NASA and USAF refused to advise when the film went into production, NASA sending Spielberg a twenty page letter advising against the movie. He took it as a sign that he was on to something good, much like Roy and Jillian discovering the true meaning to their visions and urges to paint/create giant flat topped mountains. At 8 years old, all I really wanted to see was the aliens and the spaceships. As the years have passed I’ve come to appreciate more than just those final moments. Roy’s first encounter is visually and aurally disorientating, the pick-up truck of hillbillies scanning the stars I still find eerily surreal, and little Barry’s abduction remains both brilliant and terrifying. Vilmos Zsigmomd’s photography in all these sequences is literally out of this world.  

It’s not Spielberg’s perfect movie. That would come in 1981. John Williams’ famous five note tone is etched in our collective psyches (but notably maybe not the rest of the triumphant score). I don’t connect with Roy’s family as much as I do the Brodys of Amity Island, and this anniversary showing has a totally redundant ten minute documentary at the beginning, unnecessarily reminding me via J.J. Abrams and Denis Villeneuve exactly how good this movie is. I'd have happily watched it after the movie, but before had me sticking my fingers in my ears and closing my eyes. Be that as it may, by the triumphant, awe inspiring end, I’m as giddy as Jillian watching and hearing the giant tone board communicate with the extra terrestrial space craft, and the kid that still lives inside me is running off chasing spaceships hidden in the clouds.