Review of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) by Ryan H — 01 Jun 2011

I love Steven Spielberg for his ability to keep me on the edge of my seat and excited during every single part of his films. However, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is quite different for him. We are introduced to the story by finding a group of airplanes that were reported missing in the 40s, but randomly appear again in the same condition they were taken.

Then we see Roy Neary and his family. This is the typical setup. Get a little taste of the mystery then become ready for a wild ride. When Roy goes out one night to checkup on the strange occurrences he becomes a part of the UFO's beam.

He doesn't go up. Instead, I think the beam is used to understand our civilization. That's another brilliant part of this story: it's subtlety. Spielberg gives us enough to work off of, but we don't need to know every little detail.

After this night Roy is obsessed with what happened to him. He keeps seeing this shape and he has to make it in everything. His family doesn't understand him, nor do they want to give him the time.

He obviously wasn't a big part in their life, so why should they care now? These are some heavy characters in what I thought was going to be a family film. We really don't see much of the UFO's or aliens in the film, but instead are questioning what we actually saw because of their absence.

I found the scene in the truck and the house when the UFO comes for the boy to be highly suspenseful. We don't understand what's going on and even though we have no reason to believe they have malicious intentions we are still afraid.

So much of this film reminded me of Signs. We're not quite sure what the aliens want and society as a whole is starting to see these things, but no one really knows what to do. I was surprised to see Francois Truffaut in the film.

It felt random to see him in it, but it worked well. He's a friggin boss. Brilliant script and once again brilliant direction by Spielberg. Not necessarily a family film or anything I expected, which made it that much better.