Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Movie · 1977 · Reviewed on
How on earth is this Spielberg’s second film.
I have to concede, when I first finished this film, I came out of it a bit disappointed. All this seemed to lead up to this encounter that feels like they’re in on something that I am left out of.
I took some time, and thought back to what struck me as seemingly irrelevant at first. The boy crying as his father is lost in manifesting an image. A wife heartbroken over her husband’s obsession. A man who is confused and helpless and can’t help but chase what’s inside his head. The dialogue referring to simpler times, a happy childhood with Pinocchio.
This movie is about art, from the artist’s point of view.
The first encounter blinds him, shakes him to his core… and yet he can’t help but chase it. True creativity is destructive. It shatters everything you hold up as a belief about yourself, and forces you to truly see yourself as you are. It’s isolating to be a creator, and it’s miserable to not be creating something. He forsakes his family, forsakes everything, in the pursuit of an image and a sound. He painstakingly slaves away to build the vision he has in his head, a manifestation of his art, come to life and he does it better than anyone else. Everyone paints, when he chose to sculpt. Everyone is too scared to cross the threshold, to see and feel the real thing, but not him.
This is an allegory for creativity itself. I spent the entirety of the next day mulling over the film, and god… there’s nothing like it.
The communication scene between the aliens and the humans is just wordless mastery. Humanity has learned to create, to interact with and manifest their own vision.
This is a narrow slice of how people see this film, The Fabelmans really changes this from an abstract allegory for art to a very autobiographical piece. There can also exist a reading of absentee parenting or played straight, the horror and simultaneous joy of first contact.
Not an instant classic, but a classic nevertheless. Took me a moment to warm up to it.
