The Close Encounters of The Third Kind Thread

Yes, this gave me the absolute willies as a kid

https://dygtyjqp7pi0m.cloudfront.net/i/9378/10386846_5.jpg

Glad to see you didn't find it boring, flappy, unlike the low-attention span m-f-ers in the other thread.

There was a brief spell between loving this as a youngster and loving this as a 'mature' adult when I got all sniffy about this film's putative genre, as there didn't seem to be much 'sci' in the sci-fi. I'm glad I eventually relaxed my crack and learned to enjoy the magic.

just watched the film with our eight yr old, who loved it. it remains a really astonishing film throughout, though i had a bit of trouble at first figuring out which version i saw. i think it's a slightly more definitive one, with the interior of the spaceship at the end not shown, but the scenes w/Neary melting down in his yard and the discovery of the boat in the desert remaining. What stood out to me more than anything were the domestic scenes, which were intense and particularly real in a way that surprised me (it's been years since i've seen it). Neary's oldest son seeing him sitting clothed in the shower and slamming the bathroom door closed over and over and calling him a crybaby, the youngest son helping pull out chicken wire from the neighbor's yard and Ronnie running over and threatening to hit him if he doesn't stop, the sheer mess of the house *before* it all goes to shit later, Ronnie answering the phone and talking (flirting?) w/Neary's boss and fidgeting with her wedding ring, and yes the TV on all the time.

also the horror movie elements, which are used so diabolically w/the scene where Barry is taken by the aliens, and the scene is legitimately scary. And this works well, since at this point in the film we have no idea if these aliens are friendly or a bit sinister.

also appreciate the almost complete lack of outlandish villains. the military guys obviously use some pretty duplicitous methods to lock down the area and keep the real story from getting out, let alone allowing anyone near the site, and they're not "good guys", but it's more like a foundational opposition, that's just their baseline, and they don't want to hurt people they would just prefer to keep it quiet. it's an only somewhat cynical portrayal but it rings true, and it doesn't tip over into some kind of sadistic villainy.

The acting is pretty superb throughout, Dreyfuss is good and funny and moving, Teri Garr is excellent, Truffaut (this was my first exposure to him as a kid) is really perfect for the role, and it's another Melinda Dillon performance that reminds me why every single time i've ever seen her in anything she made a major impression. She fully inhabits every character she plays in a low-key non-demonstrative manner.

also appreciate the symmetry w/Raiders of the Lost Ark: our questing hero obsessed and traversing a continent, captured near the end by a Frenchman and some military guys, who manages to witness some freaky shit with his female counterpart at night at a remote base nestled in some rocky mountainside, set up specifically to document/welcome the arrival of some unknown creatures.

otm throughout, and wow at that last paragraph!

damn omar

everytime you write about a movie i love i wanna watch it again right away - but this is one of your best <3

What stood out to me more than anything were the domestic scenes, which were intense and particularly real in a way that surprised me

Agree, I think it's a Spielberg fingerprint as I had similar reactions to domestic scenes in Jaws and Poltergeist.

The whole selection of night time ufo chase scenes at the beginning knocked me sideways as a child. Love this movie.

I watched it a few years ago and was interrupted by the gas meter reading guy, the scene from the desert was showing and he moaned about how unrealistic the helicopter appearing over the hill was because it made no sound. Shut up and get out of my house, (I wish I'd have said)

*deadpan* Quickly Brad there are thousands of lives at stake


https://youtu.be/N5aPvAndPpI

Dillon had quite a streak b/w this film and A Christmas Story.

That’s very kind of you VG...you’re a saint!

Strangely the character I’ve recently seen who reminds me most of Neary is maybe Miller from The Expanse, a similarly blue-collar type operating under a very different more noir detective form of existential misery, who also gets “imprinted” in a sense and basically abandons his life for what may very well be a one-way ticket to the unknown.

yeah that is a good parallel

rewatched today

still fantastic, still makes me laugh and i still get very teary towards the end

literally everyone in front of & behind the camera doing THE MOST in the best way, so inspiring imo

but

i def would love to rewrite the ending where he doesnt just “goodbye cruel world” & get on the ufo?
it’s such a bummer.
spielberg said he would never have ended it that way once he was married & had kids, like it was totally a “single guy” ending. i dont have kids but it just feels kinda shitty now to watch as a grownup.
i wish there was a way he somehow dragged his scared wife & kids to the devil mountain & they all saw it together & saw lil barry come home & just SEEING it all & experiencinh together as a family was somehow enough

the living room sculpture is the Best Thing Ever™️

yeah as a kid I thought oh yes, it's obviously time to go with the aliens duh. And now when I watch it I think WHAT? you're going WHERE?

yeah its v jarring now

yeah all that is bizarre. VERY single guy, also very mid-life-crisis guy (aliens as young hot affair versus the everyday borrrringness of, you know, your WIFE AND CHILDREN) and also very 70s - the whole vibe of "i've finally found what i've been looking for this last decade, i've finally discovered who I really am" --- insert religious awakenings (including born-again stuff, cults, New Age stuff), but other stuff too i think. i had to take it as a period piece for it to really work, but it's also that spielberg's momentum and the enveloping interest of the story *really* work to suppress the existence of his family for the last act or whatever.

i really like the idea of them just witnessing/sharing it being enough. i do think the ragged open-endedness and wrongness of neary's choice do kinda makes the film stick in my brain more.... the version where he goes back to his family and things are better now could easily turn out way too tidy, esp given the sentimental family itch spielberg would sometimes end up scratching later on. i guess e.t. is a version of that ending and i find that to be a profound and devastating film so maybe he coulda pulled it off.

what would maybe be most distinctive is for the family to show up, screaming at him to come back, come back, but he just keeps strolling right up into that spaceship. get a good look kids, that was your daddy... like acknowledge the darkness of this within the film and leave us sitting with it rather than have it be something that hits you later on. not sure if that's better though.

yeah having the family be somehow party to his choice to leave would be good

like yeah ok sure roy you can leave but your family will banshee-wail on the sidelines to really hammer it home for you

I watched ET last night - man that ending still fucks me up w all the crying (me + cast)
but i should have waited a week or two after watching Close Encounters, which i watched that afternoon. ET felt ~too~ childish by comparison which bummed me out & made me feel like a Grown Up™️ - do not recommend lol

(my point being that it never bothered me before, not that ET is a dumb kids movie or not good or whatever)

wait a second: the landing site is a movie set

(as is the nazis' ark-opening installation, referenced by omar above)

Only found out the other day that Jerry Garcia can be glimpsed as an extra in one of the Close Encounters crowd scenes:

In Dharmsala, India, Lacombe and the other researchers arrive to a chaotic scene. Crowds of people are running through the streets, and others, including Jerry Garcia (really), are sitting and reverently chanting 5 musical notes.

And there's also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYjLi78lViA

Not to get all #onethread up in here, but was reminded this week that one of the many things that screwed Friedkin up post-Sorcerer was he had to scrap a long-gestating SciFi project because it was too much like Close Encounters.