Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Those who hear the call of the extraordinary may respond by drawing or painting or writing music, or, as is the case here, by sculpting, but whatever form the response may take, it “means something, it’s important” (a line we are given twice, emphasising to the audience just how important this importance must be). Responding to the call may lift those who receive it higher, but it often comes at the cost of increasing detachment from the ordinary and the everyday, here personified by a shouting, whining wife incapable of understanding her husband’s passion, and a brood of sometimes sympathetic, sometimes destructive children. Along the way, the protagonist obtains a substitute wife (going so far as to share a slightly romantic kiss) with a more lovable child, but eventually they too are left behind in favour of the quest for the glory that comes with the search for the mysterious, the awe-inspiring and the infinite.
This is the film in which Steven Spielberg portrays his own inner conflict through the character played by Richard Dreyfuss: fantasising himself as a misunderstood artist, he is in fact a pathological conformist. Hence, after a set of conspiracy-type scenes in which he is pursued by apparently unscrupulous authorities, not only do they turn out to be benign (as Kael, 1980, p. 352 puts it in a favourable review, “Spielberg is much too casual” about how and why the government is systematically concealing information; he “has a paranoid plot, but he hasn’t dramatized the enemy”), but Dreyfuss ends up donning a patriotic uniform and becoming a kind of vanguard representative of the government. François Truffaut is even forced by the filmmaker to tell the stand-in Spielberg character played by Dreyfuss that he envies his more glorious special-effects-laden path. As Kolker (2011), p. 326 puts it:
“If JAWS is a response to the cultural shocks of Vietnam and Watergate, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS responds to the period of transition after these events, and E.T. to the long night of complacency and withdrawal begun in the late seventies and continuing into the eighties. The films emerge not so much from order disrupted as they do from a desire for a more dependable, exciting, and sustaining order than that which exists. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is about patriarchy lost, about the domestic unit in decay, about the authority of the father in confusion. The job of the film is to reorder that patriarchy on a cosmic level. Mediating these actions is the paternal figure of Lacombe, who travels the world to integrate various UFO sightings and help the army prepare for the arrival of the aliens. Lacombe’s paternal role is doubled: in the film he is the quiet, assured investigator and guide to the new world; but he is also François Truffaut, director of films about children and innocence, the father of Spielberg’s own imagination.“
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is, in a sense, Spielberg’s Tannhäuser.
But even if it is true that this film is about reordering patriarchy on a cosmic scale, as Kolker claims, it is still about escaping it: as Kehr (2017), p. 151, puts it, “the childish father of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is allowed to become a child again when he is adopted by the aliens”. I also recall reading a discussion with Spielberg pertinent to that, in a book of interviews with various film directors that I have unfortunately misplaced. In it, Spielberg is asked if there is any one thing he wishes he had done differently in his movie career. He replies that his one regret is to have allowed the protagonist in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS to abandon his family in order to join the aliens. This always seemed to me like confirmation that here is a filmmaker who wants desperately to be loved by everybody, and the sense that he may have offended the rules of social convention, even just a little, lingers like a secret fear that he might be exposed as just one more self-centred “artist”. It is as if he has been making up for it ever since.
This is the film in which Steven Spielberg portrays his own inner conflict through the character played by Richard Dreyfuss: fantasising himself as a misunderstood artist, he is in fact a pathological conformist. Hence, after a set of conspiracy-type scenes in which he is pursued by apparently unscrupulous authorities, not only do they turn out to be benign (as Kael, 1980, p. 352 puts it in a favourable review, “Spielberg is much too casual” about how and why the government is systematically concealing information; he “has a paranoid plot, but he hasn’t dramatized the enemy”), but Dreyfuss ends up donning a patriotic uniform and becoming a kind of vanguard representative of the government. François Truffaut is even forced by the filmmaker to tell the stand-in Spielberg character played by Dreyfuss that he envies his more glorious special-effects-laden path. As Kolker (2011), p. 326 puts it:
“If JAWS is a response to the cultural shocks of Vietnam and Watergate, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS responds to the period of transition after these events, and E.T. to the long night of complacency and withdrawal begun in the late seventies and continuing into the eighties. The films emerge not so much from order disrupted as they do from a desire for a more dependable, exciting, and sustaining order than that which exists. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is about patriarchy lost, about the domestic unit in decay, about the authority of the father in confusion. The job of the film is to reorder that patriarchy on a cosmic level. Mediating these actions is the paternal figure of Lacombe, who travels the world to integrate various UFO sightings and help the army prepare for the arrival of the aliens. Lacombe’s paternal role is doubled: in the film he is the quiet, assured investigator and guide to the new world; but he is also François Truffaut, director of films about children and innocence, the father of Spielberg’s own imagination.“
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is, in a sense, Spielberg’s Tannhäuser.
But even if it is true that this film is about reordering patriarchy on a cosmic scale, as Kolker claims, it is still about escaping it: as Kehr (2017), p. 151, puts it, “the childish father of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is allowed to become a child again when he is adopted by the aliens”. I also recall reading a discussion with Spielberg pertinent to that, in a book of interviews with various film directors that I have unfortunately misplaced. In it, Spielberg is asked if there is any one thing he wishes he had done differently in his movie career. He replies that his one regret is to have allowed the protagonist in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS to abandon his family in order to join the aliens. This always seemed to me like confirmation that here is a filmmaker who wants desperately to be loved by everybody, and the sense that he may have offended the rules of social convention, even just a little, lingers like a secret fear that he might be exposed as just one more self-centred “artist”. It is as if he has been making up for it ever since.
Mini Review: This is the film in which Spielberg portrays his own inner conflict through the character played by Dreyfuss: fantasising himself as a misunderstood artist, he is in fact a pathological conformist. Hence, after a set of conspiracy-type scenes in which he is pursued by apparently unscrupulous authorities, not only do they turn out to be benign, but Dreyfuss dons a patriotic uniform and becomes a kind of vanguard representative of the government. It is, in a sense, Spielberg's TANNHÄUSER.
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