Review of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) by Christina N — 01 May 2010

UFO mystery, cosmic road movie, an Everyman's quest for meaning and his place, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind is a thrilling vision of first contact with extraterrestrials. But take away the sci-fi, the spectacular sound and light show, and what remains is compassionate, classic human drama of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances who makes a difficult odyssey.

Richard Dreyfuss' appealingly anxious and good-humoured Roy Neary is a humble protagonist having a spiritual epiphany. He's an Average Joe working stiff with an exhausting family in a chaotic home, smack in the middle of middle America. As such, a mass audience identified with him much more intensely than with a more conventional romantic adventure hero.

The phenomenal success of Jaws empowered Spielberg to realise his deeply felt personal project. Close Encounters shows all the sensibilities of the American post-War suburban Baby Boomer nurtured on Disney, 50s sci-fi and childhood experiences like being awakened by his father in the middle of the night to witness the heavenly spectacle of a meteor shower. Essentially it was an adult, skillful professional rethink of his adolescent, homemade epic Firelight; even the design prompts he gave visual effects guru Douglas Trumbull and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond originated in the Movie Brat's experiments at his kitchen table. Is Close Encounters his best film? It's inarguably one of them. It may not be his biggest commercially (although at a cost of $18 million for an initial return of $77 million at the U.S. box office it was one of the Top 10 hits of its decade). It may not be your favourite from his canon. And E.T. may be even more revealing of Spielberg's psyche. But it remains the definitive Steven Spielberg film, both in substance and style, even while he acknowledges that in his maturity he wouldn't make the same picture today: "I look at my movie and I see a lot of naivete, and I see my youth, and I see my blind optimism... It's the one film I see that dates me, that I really look back and see who I was 20 years ago, compared to who I am now". Years ahead of it's time in terms of SFX, it's a masterpiece of wide-eyed whimsy.