'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - Film Review (2-7)

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind '- Film Review (2-7)

[1128 Words]

Spielberg’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, is an insightful, tender look at that awe-striking feeling one gets contemplating life beyond the stars. 

In the midst of humanities structured society, wherein we’ve only ourselves for company, Roy Neary, a husband and father of three, struggles to return back to his role as family breadwinner, working for an electric company, after a close encounter with a UFO. 

Similarly Jillian Guilder, a single mother to 3 year old Barry Guilder, is unable to fully pursue her artistic visions of alien telepathy, an invitation to go with the aliens, because of her physical and social rule as mother. 

As the ‘aliens’ come as a symbol of a bigger picture beyond the small trivial issues of humanity; social conflicts, war etc., those who witness the swooping lights, and otherworldly crimsons beams, have thousands of years of tradition, and human understanding unravel in an instant from one single thought, knowing they’re not alone in the universe.

Fig. 1

These moments of understanding, and extraordinary awe are not restricted to the main characters, as other minor characters are also seen in equal light. Each individual is given the same close up, while the mid to longer shots see each person’s non-descript shadow.

Fig. 2

While Americans are partially favoured as the more technologically advanced (incorrect and biased), with the film showing locals from India with rudimentary transport, and travellers in the Sonoran Desert resorting to pointing, in their inability to translate their language… there’s less bias if we consider Lacombe, the French scientist, and the locals from India as they cleverly use sign language to communicate the five-tone musical phase, beyond the gap of translation. 

Suddenly positions don’t matter, as something bigger is at play, and gaps between the age and gender are broken down under the more generalised category of ‘human’.

Roy’s wife, (who wishes to stay in her isolated, traditional day-to-day life), and Roy’s argument to seeking knowledge beyond the confines of humanity, is shown in parallel to their kids fighting, perhaps the film’s way of mocking humanities emphasis on hierarchy, and self-communication. 

Fig. 3

This sense of equality draws links from the context of the time- where space exploration was both a catalyst to national conflict and rivalry, and – alternatively – a way of breaking down social boundaries, and seeing the bigger picture. 

Spielberg’s decision to see alien contact as ‘god-like’, and un-violent (with the aliens, whose presence “seems to project a sense of peacefulness and awe- of amazing grace- to all who enter into it” (Child, 2017), and humans, whose military reaction is limited to “marking out a site where it is believed the extra-terrestrial mothership might choose to make first contact” (Child, 2017), is a dewy-eyed opinion of space, and alien/human interaction. This naïve optimism towards space travel was prevalent in 1950’s America, during the Golden Age of American Futurism, even before the first satellite Sputnik 1 was launched (1957), or NASA’s formation (1958). Lamble (2011) observes how “the coming era of space exploration and moon landings was anticipated years earlier” (Lamble, 2011), as filmmakers actively began to visualise the concept. Films like ‘Destination Moon’ seriously began to consider space as a potential ground for human exploration.  Fig. 4. Shows a poster released in ‘Life Magazine’s’ 1959 issue, which- accordingly to Novak (2015), “perfectly sums up all of the techno-optimism that was so prevalent in the late 1950s — the Golden Age of Futurism.”

Fig. 4

In light of the progressing ‘Cold War’, America and the Soviet Union quickly began to fight for supremacy in spaceflight capability, in what’s now known as the ‘Space Race’. The 1960’s saw Apollo 11 famously reach the moon, (much to society’s initial bewilderment), and the televised landing gripped the attention of the millions. However, this awe, and fascination soon faded over the next 3 years, as the same trip was made multiple times to allow for “increasingly sophisticated studies of the Moon, yielding new scientific insights into the evolution of our celestial neighbour” ('Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum', No Date), . This event, along with Apollo 13’s ‘near-disaster’, quickly lost the nations interest, who felt funding would’ve fared better elsewhere. After the final space mission, ‘Apollo 17’ – 1972, space exploration took a quieter stance, and the new era of ‘Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project’ was born. 

The latter “marked a real and symbolic end to the Apollo and the ‘Space Race" as the United States and Soviet Union took “their first cooperative mission in space… after years of intense rivalry”(Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum', No Date), in 1975. A means of highlighting ‘reduced international tensions’, and ‘improved relations’.

‘Close Encounters’ was released in 1977, at the end of this sudden influx of space interest, as a refreshed look at that awe-inspiring concept of space travel, and life beyond earth (typical of the 1950’s). The 1960’s cold war rivalry motivated scientific progression, despite being conflictive. ‘Close Encounters’ see’s such conflict as deterring and unimportant, as positive thinking alone motivates Alien contact. As the excitement for space-travel faded years after, (in the midst of the Vietnam war and people’s disappointment when comparing reality to sci-fi entertainment), it soon become obvious, the more immediate way of understanding the world and universe was through entertainment and culture, rather than the select few “going to the moon collecting rock samples and sampling them” (Strasser and Semler, 2014). 

Rather than considering the wait of fast space travel, something that’s technologically beyond most of our lifetimes, ‘Close Encounters’ see’s Alien life come to us. Claude Lacombe own deterred interest in alien-like, due to his inability to see them in his life-time, is reawakened at the end. Perhaps Spielberg putting a positive spin on the reality of the publics own depressed outlook of future space travel. In terms of the media, however, we see modern sci-fi take a more cynical turn in later years, viewing aliens as less ‘friendly’ or relatable… while those that are, become quickly persecuted by the human society they wish to be received by.

Fig. 5

However, Spielberg’s own film ‘E.T. 5 years later, shows this change as “Elliot’s childlike innocents towards his alien friend” acts in conflict with “the desire of cynical, coldly painted adults to capture the extra-terrestrial and study him”(Child, 2017), while ‘Close Encounters’ has only a “few real grown-ups”, outnumbered by the “cavalcade of awestruck Elliot’s waiting to meet their best friends from the stars” (Child, 2017). 

As observed by Ben Child, public opinion is partially pessimistic when contemplating fictional alien contact, in relation to reality: “It is not hard to imagine the outcome if a real mothership landed on US soil today: Trump might well be on Twitter, threatening to nuke it to kingdom come, before our enlightened new friends got to the second part of John Williams’ famous five-note refrain” (2017).

 References

Videos

Strasser Franz, Semler Ashley (2014), ‘Why Americans lost interest in putting men on the Moon’. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-28450386/why-americans-lost-interest-in-putting-men-on-the-moon [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Websites

‘BBC Magazine’ (2015) ‘Posters of the golden age of Soviet cosmonauts’, [Online]. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34281621 [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Bradshaw, Peter (2016), ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind review – a must-watch director’s cut’, [Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/26/close-encounters-of-the-third-kind-review-a-must-watch-directors-cut [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Buckley, Sean (2014), ‘The Impact of the Space Age on Film’, [Online]. Available at: https://the-artifice.com/the-impact-of-the-space-age-on-film/ [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Child, Ben (2017), ‘Is the big-hearted Spielbergian sci-fi of Close Encounters dead?’, [Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/aug/30/close-encounters-third-kind-rerelease-steven-spielberg [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Ebert, Roger (1980), ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, [Online]. Available at: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/close-encounters-of-the-third-kind-1980 [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Errigo, Angie (2015), ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind Review’, [Online]. Available at: http://www.empireonline.com/movies/close-encounters-third-kind/review/ [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Lamble, Ryan (2011), ‘The space age in cinema’, [Online]. Available at: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/17750/the-space-age-in-cinema [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

‘NASA’ (2015), ‘Apollo Era’, [Online]. Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/wstf/about_us/our_history/apollo_era.html [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

‘NASA’ (2017)’Space Center Houston: Looking back at the Apollo era with spaceflight pioneers’, [Online]. Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/space-center-houston-looking-back-at-the-apollo-era-with-spaceflight-pioneers [Accessed Date:

Novak, Matt (2015), ’42 Visions For Tomorrow From The Golden Age of Futurism’, [Online]. Available at: http://gizmodo.com/42-visions-for-tomorrow-from-the-golden-age-of-futurism-1683553063 [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Sagdeev, Roald and Eisenhower, Susan (2008), ‘United States-Soviet Space Cooperation during the Cold War’, [Online]. Available at: https://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/coldWarCoOp.html [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

‘Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’ (No Date), ‘End Of An Era’, [Online]. Available at: https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/apollo-to-the-moon/online/later-missions/end-of-era.cfm [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

‘The Times of India’, (2003), ‘What’re close encounters of the first, second, third, fourth and fifth kind?’, [Online]. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Whatre-close-encounters-of-the-first-second-third-fourth-and-fifth-kind/articleshow/41097626.cms [Accessed Date:

‘THR Staff’, (2016), ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’: THR’S 1977 Review’, [Online]. Available at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/close-encounters-third-kind-1977-review-947485 [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Wainwright, Oliver (2014), ‘How Russia fought the cold war with space-age washing machines’, [Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/19/soviet-domestic-design-khrushchev-kitchen-revolution [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Illustrations

Fig. 1 ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, (1977), [Film Still, 1:27, 2:00]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0bBUmZHb8o and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MW3KJUa8FQ [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Fig. 2 ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, (1977), [Film Still, 1:15, 1:40]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXqm6BsqZ4M and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0bBUmZHb8o [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Fig. 3 ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, (1977), [Film Still]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JDwsjVALso [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Fig. 4 ‘Life in 1975’, (1959), [Illustration]. Available at: http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/this-cartoon-perfectly-sums-up-the-optimism-of-1950s-fu-1690319866 [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]

Fig. 5 ‘E.T.’, (1982), [Film Still]. Available at: http://www.toptenz.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/et-is-dying-570x427.jpg [Accessed Date: 12/09/2017]