In the 1977 theatrical version of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, a moment of human honesty caught me off guard: as protagonist Roy Neary sculpts a mound of mashed potatoes into the blob-image that haunts him, his elder son watches with silence and tears. It offers a glimpse of the pain that Neary has brought to his family, but writer-director Steven Spielberg will soon reassure us that a family's pain counts for nothing. The one thing that matters is Dad's rapture into heaven as a Chosen One.
When I saw this film in 1977, I hated it. Watching it now, I respect its technical merits. It looks great (with five expert cinematographers, it should), and the visual effects by everyone from model-maker Greg Jein to the legendary Douglas Trumbull ensure that visually, at least, the film will grab its audience. At the same time, Spielberg shows genuine skill with direction. He knows how to set up elaborate crowd sequences without losing focus on the placement and movements of the central characters, how to block action with clarity, and where to place the camera for maximal impact. These once-common skills can be hard to find in the Age of Marvel, and I appreciate them here.
What troubles me now is what troubled me in 1977: the failure (the refusal?) of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS to explore the implications of its evangelical message, along with the failure of any character in the film to suggest that religious adoration of alien beings might be short-sighted.
Any first contact would leave impact craters on human science, politics, philosophy, art, on all aspects of human existence. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS turns away from this, and instead, looks at one man's religious conversion. Not a bad concept, and much could be done with it, but Spielberg has no concern for the implications of ideas; he wants a rock concert light-show, and thanks to his team of technical geniuses, he can provide it. But story-telling films live or die by drama, and what this film lacks is a doubter to pose the obvious questions: Should we assume that superior technology means a superior culture? Why, against all biological odds, do these alien beings look so human, so childlike? If they can fly starships, why should they not be able to master human languages? Can we really trust these alien kidnappers?
Writers are not obliged to answer all questions (indeed, unanswered questions can make a story haunting), but I do expect writers to understand that questions will arise. I would have been less uneasy with CLOSE ENCOUNTERS if someone in the film had put up a hand, and said, "Excuse me. Excuse me! Have we really thought about the implications of our choices? Aren't we assuming more than we actually know?"
These questions would have turned CLOSE ENCOUNTERS into science fiction, but like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS playing on TV in the Neary house, Spielberg's film remains, at heart, religious. Other viewers have embraced its blank-eyed innocence, but I see a failure of imagination, a lack of dramatic development, a refusal to confront the implications of running away from your wife and children to join a cosmic cult. The result is akin to Neary's mound of mashed potatoes: it might have meant something in Spielberg's head, but here, on the plate, it looks more like a unfinished blob.
"You are a fucking idiot."
With terse precision, a Mr D on Facebook assessed my comments on CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. He continued:
"It's a movie. An action=adventure piece of crowd-pleasing entertainment. About ufo's and aliens. It's nothing more than that."
This is where he and I disagree. Films that tell any kind of story are necessarily statements of meaning. This meaning can sometimes be hard to specify; it can be plural and contradictory; it can be dramatized, so that we know how certain characters think and feel, without necessarily finding ways to transpose their personal meaning into an overall meaning for the film. But in certain cases, the meaning is presented with simple clarity, and this is often true of "crowd-pleasing entertainment" films.
Mr D implies that we should never look for meaning in popular entertainment, but as I see it, films that reach a wide audience often tell us about the unspoken assumptions, hopes, or dreads of that audience. For this reason, I think a close look at certain films can bring widely-held public attitudes to light, and sometimes, these attitudes can be disturbing. They can suggest unaddressed issues, hidden resentments, or troubling limitations of thought and feeling.
Mr D concluded, in summary:
"Get a life."
Perhaps he rejects the examined life as not worth living, but I would say that looking under public stones and peering through dusty public windows can be worthwhile, if only to see what cobwebs writhe in the shadowed spaces of our times.
Mr D encouraged me to share his comment:
"Please do. It would be a pleasant surprise for everyone if you posted something intelligent."
I suspect I might have disappointed him again.
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