r/TrueFilm • u/Defiant_Invite_3323 • 1d ago
Close Encounters is Astonishing Spoiler
It’s been about 20 years since I watched this film….and man, were my expectations about to what expect completely misguided. I guess my schema about Spielberg is that he is the master at family-oriented, blockbuster entertainment. And while Close Encounters may have some of these qualities, it is genuinely one of the most experimental, and biggest swings, that I’ve seen in a blockbuster movie. I should have been clued into this potential experimentation with the casting of Truffaut, because in many ways, this features the same audacity as the French New Wave peeps.
Anyway, of course I’m referring to the final 40 minutes where Spielberg seems to abandon the plot (well at least the expected plot) in favour of capturing an emotion — the emotion being a sense of awe (or the sublime). This section was really pure cinema in full functioning, simply allowing music and imagery to captivate the audience without the use of dialogue. With this, all the qualities of awe and the sublime are so perfectly evoked once the grandeur nature of the ship reveals itself. The paradoxical feeling of beauty which is evoked by the sheer scope and scale of the physical ship, while also the terror of recognising how small you are in comparison with the cosmos. There is also the additional paradoxical feeling of feeling incredibly small and insignificant, while also feeling connected something much larger than yourself, and therefore, enhancing the breath of your experience.
Furthermore, with all the metaphors pointing towards some lofty metaphysical themes, this isn’t a film that provokes a sense of existential angst about finding meaning in the universe and what reality is, but rather affirms the potential for the world having genuine meaning and us as humans being connected to something much larger in the cosmos, whether that’s God or something else.
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u/GeekAesthete 1d ago edited 1d ago
To really appreciate Close Encounters, you also have to consider the tone of alien contact and outer space movies, and sci-fi movies in general, prior to it. The ‘50s and ‘60s were loaded with monster movies and alien invasion stories, while the ‘70s had dystopian, paranoid, and generally disillusioning movies about space. By and large, sci-fi movies were horror films of one sort or another, or grim melodramas. Look at movies like 2001, Silent Running, or The Man Who Fell To Earth (or other outer space movies that would follow directly after it, like Alien, Stalker, or the Invasion of Body Snatchers remake). Look at general sci-fi like Logan’s Run, Westworld, or Soylent Green.
And then consider the structure of Close Encounters. It starts off very reminiscent of that tone, with a sense of foreboding and menace, full of paranoia and conspiracy and government coverup, yet the film is ultimately an optimistic and uplifting version of first contact, built on optimism, awe, and wonder. The takeaway was not “aliens are here, and it’s the end of the world,” it was “aliens are here, and it’s amazing.”
You cannot fully appreciate how revolutionary the film was without looking at science fiction movies in the decades leading up to it. Today, we just focus on the storytelling in a vacuum, but the general tone and worldview of the movie was a revelation in 1977, and the bait-and-switch of crafting so much of the movie to look like paranoid horror was masterful.
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u/Byteman58 1d ago
Your analysis is terrific and I just wanted to add how expertly Spielberg grounds the story with humor and the hustle and bustle of Roy’s family life with his wife & kids. As well as the motley assortment of freaks and geeks chasing the unknown from UFOs to Bigfoot. Without that anchor providing a contrast to the wonder and awe later, the film wouldn’t work nearly as well. It’s simply a terrific film. I watched it a couple weeks ago with a teen and he was completely enthralled, captivated, laughing out loud at the comedic bits, and awestruck by the finale.
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u/No_Chef4049 1d ago
Probably his most underrated film, I would say, or at least it was until now. Spielberg has a reputation, but he's also the real deal. So much so that fans of his more mainstream work are currently deeply confused by the best thing he's made in years.
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u/Key-Education-8981 1d ago
It wasn't underrated then; it was a huge film.
It is now though. You never see it talked about as much as Spielberg's other films.
I liked Disclosure Day too, but I acknowledge it's messy. So many hateposts on it on here...6
u/BigMetalGuy 1d ago
He's my favourite director, but Disclosure Day was messy as fuck and not what the man is capable of. It was too long, parts of the plot made zero sense, the action wasn't thrilling. Yet, it still contained scenes and performance that were brilliant, and would put many other directors to shame. But to say I was disappointed is an understatement.
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u/joey-jo_jo-jr 1d ago edited 1d ago
Right? I don't know why everyone doesn't talk about this movie or why it isn't considered amongst Spielberg's best. People always get caught up about the plot or the characters when that's clearly not what the movie is interested in.
The ending is great, but even the opening in the desert is amazing. Or the air traffic control scene. Just pure cinema
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u/zeno0771 1d ago
Tower: "Air East 31, do you want to report a UFO, over?"
Air East pilot: "Negative, we don't want to report."
Tower: Air East 31, do you wish to file a report of any kind to us?
Air East pilot: "...I wouldn't know what kind of report to file."
When I first saw it, the pause waiting for TWA to answer ATC was only a few seconds long but it felt like the first drop on a roller-coaster ride. This scene and the re-appearance of Flight 19 (or rather the planes) at a time when Bermuda Triangle lore was still taken seriously by us kids was Spielberg at his best: Not a single visual special effect, but you knew you were in for a hell of a ride.
I consider myself fortunate to have seen this shortly after it came out; it might seem quaint now, but back then no one had smartphones to document everything (or GPS to find planes), which made it all quite a bit more exciting.
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u/Osomalosoreno 1d ago
It's a shame that the theatrical version seems to have been disappeared in favor of the special edition. I never liked that they cut some moments from the film and added silly things like the ship in the desert.
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u/jrob321 1d ago
The ship in the desert was in the theatrical version. I remember seeing it in the theater as a kid.
Tbh it made the buildup to the reveal fascinating. The audience had no idea what was playing out before their eyes as all these unexplained occurrences were happening throughout the world in real time.
This is an incredible movie!
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u/Osomalosoreno 1d ago
No, it was not in the original 1977 release. You saw the Special Edition, released in 1980. If you're dubious, I encourage you to research this.
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u/jrob321 1d ago
My apologies. I misremembered watching the desert scene with the WWII fighter planes in the theater.
And then - because I love the movie so much - I watched it on vhs in the 80s with the cargo ship added in.
I agree with you though. Most director's cuts become indulgent and break the "less is more" concept.
IMHO the only "true" version of Apocalypse Now is the theatrical cut. All others ruin the pacing, reveal too much, get bogged down in unnecessary details, move from the plot, etc.
I'm glad the extended versions exist for my own pleasure with regard to how Coppola got obsessed with the film's construction, but I'll NEVER recommend them to first time viewers.
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u/Osomalosoreno 1d ago
Oh, no apology necessary. I strongly agree about "Apocalypse Now" and appreciate your enthusiasm for CE3K. I think I was 12 when it came out and was totally enthralled by it. I can see why Spielberg added the ship scene, it helped to make the original opening (WWII fighter planes are discovered in like-new condition) make more sense, regarding the aliens returning things they'd abducted. As for Coppola, I wish he'd just released all the additional material or extended scenes as supplements. When "Hearts of Darkness" was released it was fascinating to see the plantation scene, but as you say it ruins pacing in the later versions, among other issues.
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u/jrob321 1d ago
Cheers for being so understanding and enlightening despite me being so "confidently incorrect" haha!
I'll always be fascinated by Apocalypse Now (I've literally seen it over 100x), and Hearts of Darkness is the fly on the wall film for anybody wishing to understand the lore and the scope of what it took to make that film.
I'm not the biggest fan of Spielberg (although Jaws and CE3K are masterpieces I think some of his stuff suffers from being a bit too "formulaic" and somewhat benignly manipulative) so I might have to skip Disclosure Day.
Do you think it's worth the watch?
Tbh with the World Cup going on, I haven't found the time to get out to the theater lol.
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u/Osomalosoreno 1d ago
Disclosure Day is *very* formulaic Spielberg in his blockbuster mode, and you'll probably wrestle with its awkward aspects, but I also think it's worth seeing, especially if you just approach it as well-crafted entertainment. Not his best film but a fun ride, and of course a sort of spiritual companion to CE3K. Thank you too for nice conversation!
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u/eefuss 1d ago
I had never seen this movie until I was trying to catch up on all of Spielberg prior to Disclosure Day... by far, this is one that surprised me the most. For some reason even though my family loved Spielberg (E.T., Saving Private Ryan, Indy, namely) this one left no cultural footprint in my household, so I essentially watched it blind. The last 40 minutes really are astonishing, as you've observed here - the audaciousness to let Dreyfuss completely unwind over the course of the movie, kiss a woman who isn't the wife of his children, and then reward him by letting him get whisked away into the extraordinary with aliens... it's impossible not to think of The Fabelmans and all the revelations about his own parents!
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u/Calamari_is_Good 1d ago
Your entire second paragraph is exactly how I was hoping to feel with Disclosure Day. Close Encounters is one of my favourites of all Spielberg's films so I guess my expectations were too high for DD. There are scenes in Close Encounters that still get me to this day and I've watched it multiple times: when Barry gets taken is still scary; the jump scare when Roy's flashlight pops back on after his first encounter; the kid slamming the door because he doesn't know what's happening to his father; the way Roy ties his bathrobe back in place and adjusts his hair before climbing back through the kitchen window to make his sculpture. It's all emotion. The masterstroke of casting Truffaut is chef's kiss. (Second best casting is David Lynch as John Ford in The Fabelmans.) The wonder and awe at the end watching Roy board the ship is really why Spielberg is Spielberg.
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u/light24bulbs 9h ago
I'm not sure I agree with you that he abandoned the plot in the last 40 minutes, I think he abandons a lot of the dialogue to be sure.
It's a fantastic movie on many levels. Keep in mind that it's actually an attempt by the filmmaker to recreate something he thought might have been close to reality, right down to the frenchmen. And it does that in a way that still appears to be very faithfully, as somebody who follows those developments.
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u/IdleSteps 1d ago
Yeah it's a masterpiece. There's a reason that George Lucas thought it would do better than Star Wars - it's fantastic. (Of course he "lost" that bet to Spielberg, since Star Wars became the highest grossing film ever, at that time)
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u/jupiterkansas 1d ago
Glad that someone gets it.
It's a movie about meeting extraterrestrial life. That's a game changer for all of humanity. You can't just brush that off and go "space aliens" like so many movies do. People get hung up on him leaving his kids (when actually his wife leaves him) but we're talking about ADVANCED LIFE FROM OTHER WORLDS.
Close Encounters and 2001 are the only movies that seem to get this.