I love this film. I first watched it as a young child in the early 1980s, and I was as spellbound then as I am now by its beauty, its mystery, and its questions. And until today I thought that everyone must feel pretty much the same way I do about Close Encounters - it has to be one of those films, like Shawshank or Star Wars, that there is universal love for? Surely no one could actually dislike this masterpiece??
But, oh yes they do! And for the life of me I cannot understand why.
First off, I have to speak to some of the other, mostly more recent, reviews on here that talk about Close Encounters being "slow paced" and "boring" - what on Earth is going on there! This is a story that takes us from the grandest of international conspiracies and cover-ups, into the slowly disintegrating mind of a normal guy who's life falls apart for no apparent reason, via the sheer terror of a mother watching her house come alive to snatch her son out of her arms, to a crash course in Ufology in 90 minutes, all setting up the most dazzling 30 minutes of finale ever filmed. What more do some people want?? Did they want Richard Dreyfuss to have his Close Encounter in his truck, and then five minutes later did they want him turning up at Devil's Tower, bags packed and ready to fly off into space? Or did they want to see what in the Universe could drive him to do this, and rip his young family apart in the process?
Did they want to see the Mother Ship fly in from screen right to hover over Washington DC or London in the opening scene of the movie, or would they prefer to wonder what the hell was going on with oil tankers in the desert and thousands of Indian mystics pointing at the sky, as the story was revealed to them bit by bit, gorgeous scene by gorgeous scene?
Is it that they just couldn't understand what was going on, so they gave up and said "it's rubbish, don't want to" like some toddler desperate for another go on an iPad when they are being taught how to tie their shoelaces?
I just don't get it. They are watching the late 20th century equivalent of Michaleangelo sculpt David, when what they want is 45 minutes of Transformers like explosions, 10 minutes of inane exposition, and then highlights of the scenes at Devil's Tower. It's nuts, and it makes you wonder just what on Earth are people going to make of movies like Casablanca or High Noon when they stumble across them in some horrific future where they think their phone screen has broken because the picture is in black and white.
I guess my incredulity began when I was sent to a Neil DeGrasse Tyson video by the YouTube algorithm, where he was ranking sci-fi films according to his estimation. If you haven't seen the clip in question, then you've got shocks coming. He rates Matrix Reloaded as better (and seemingly more scientifically accurate) than Close Encounters, more or less based on a misplaced revisionism that Spielberg should have included more black scientists in the movie. In 1977. In a story about a white guy from Muncie, Indiana, and an international conspiracy of old white men to keep aliens secret from the public. Now, please don't think this means that I think that movies today shouldn't be representative of society, or that we can't criticise what has come before. But in the same way I once saw a Redditor dismiss the whole of Hill Street Blues because Renko didn't expressly call out a domestic abuser a few minutes into the pilot episode, you can't dismiss something of the majesty of Close Encounters because Spielberg asked Truffant to star in his movie instead of Sidney Poitier. I'm sure if Spielberg was making this today he would cast it appropriately, as he did in 1977.
DeGrasse Tyson doubles down on this later on by praising Contact and other movies for how they show that society might go a little bit nuts if aliens turned up on BBC News or Al Jazeera tomorrow, yet he slates Close Encounters for daring to suggest that our governments might be wanting to keep certain things from us.... At least Mr DeGrasse Tyson deserves his rant, given his sheer output of public good, but that privilege we cannot give to the goofs in these reviews who talk about how a movie made when Jimmy Carter was President "looks dated" - spoiler: it is, the movie was written and produced nearly 50 years ago, and people genuinely did dress like thay!
Yet the storytelling stands up, the cinematography is magnificent, the sound is out of this world, and the film contains some of the greatest special effects ever created - by the greatest of all special effect creators, Douglas Trumbull - and gives us the five most famous notes in all of cinema as not just a motif, but also as one of the best plot points in history. Just look at the people involved in making this movie: Spielberg, Trumbull, Dreyfuss, John Williams, Francois Truffant, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon and Allen J Hynek. It's like Real Madrid brought some Galacticos onto set for us. What more do people want!
For those of you confused who could noy understand the story, the aliens have been watching Earth for generations, if not centuries. They have been snatching humans out of thin air, and in secret, for some unexplained reason, but have now decided to make contact. To do this they randomly choose a one horse town in the Mexican desert, the dusty plains of Northern India, and the skies above Muncie, Indiana, until an international government effort makes contact in return, and everyone heads to Devil's Tower. We never find out what the aliens want, or why they have been abducting people and animals for decades, nor do we find out what our governments are getting in return for the red-suited volunteers they are so willing to give up.
Instead we get to use our imagination, and wonder. Wonder. That is the key word, WONDER. This movie is designed to thrill you, to entertain you, to shock you and scare you, and to make you think, but it's mainly designed to make you sit there with awe in your eyes and take it all in. It's meant to do to the viewer what Pinocchio did to Spielberg when he was a kid, or when he lay back under the night sky and wished upon a star.
Sometimes I just worry for people, for what they are losing by means of appreciation. If you can honestly sit there and not be enthralled when the spaceship takes off at the end, as the credits roll and the score soars, then just give up, just stop watching movies. Go and kill some zombies on your Xbox, or slag off the fans of a pop star you don't like in the comments of a tiktok video. You just don't understand the magic, and you never will.
Or at least stop putting out dumb reviews of movies that you know people are going to find "unhelpful" - just like this.
But, oh yes they do! And for the life of me I cannot understand why.
First off, I have to speak to some of the other, mostly more recent, reviews on here that talk about Close Encounters being "slow paced" and "boring" - what on Earth is going on there! This is a story that takes us from the grandest of international conspiracies and cover-ups, into the slowly disintegrating mind of a normal guy who's life falls apart for no apparent reason, via the sheer terror of a mother watching her house come alive to snatch her son out of her arms, to a crash course in Ufology in 90 minutes, all setting up the most dazzling 30 minutes of finale ever filmed. What more do some people want?? Did they want Richard Dreyfuss to have his Close Encounter in his truck, and then five minutes later did they want him turning up at Devil's Tower, bags packed and ready to fly off into space? Or did they want to see what in the Universe could drive him to do this, and rip his young family apart in the process?
Did they want to see the Mother Ship fly in from screen right to hover over Washington DC or London in the opening scene of the movie, or would they prefer to wonder what the hell was going on with oil tankers in the desert and thousands of Indian mystics pointing at the sky, as the story was revealed to them bit by bit, gorgeous scene by gorgeous scene?
Is it that they just couldn't understand what was going on, so they gave up and said "it's rubbish, don't want to" like some toddler desperate for another go on an iPad when they are being taught how to tie their shoelaces?
I just don't get it. They are watching the late 20th century equivalent of Michaleangelo sculpt David, when what they want is 45 minutes of Transformers like explosions, 10 minutes of inane exposition, and then highlights of the scenes at Devil's Tower. It's nuts, and it makes you wonder just what on Earth are people going to make of movies like Casablanca or High Noon when they stumble across them in some horrific future where they think their phone screen has broken because the picture is in black and white.
I guess my incredulity began when I was sent to a Neil DeGrasse Tyson video by the YouTube algorithm, where he was ranking sci-fi films according to his estimation. If you haven't seen the clip in question, then you've got shocks coming. He rates Matrix Reloaded as better (and seemingly more scientifically accurate) than Close Encounters, more or less based on a misplaced revisionism that Spielberg should have included more black scientists in the movie. In 1977. In a story about a white guy from Muncie, Indiana, and an international conspiracy of old white men to keep aliens secret from the public. Now, please don't think this means that I think that movies today shouldn't be representative of society, or that we can't criticise what has come before. But in the same way I once saw a Redditor dismiss the whole of Hill Street Blues because Renko didn't expressly call out a domestic abuser a few minutes into the pilot episode, you can't dismiss something of the majesty of Close Encounters because Spielberg asked Truffant to star in his movie instead of Sidney Poitier. I'm sure if Spielberg was making this today he would cast it appropriately, as he did in 1977.
DeGrasse Tyson doubles down on this later on by praising Contact and other movies for how they show that society might go a little bit nuts if aliens turned up on BBC News or Al Jazeera tomorrow, yet he slates Close Encounters for daring to suggest that our governments might be wanting to keep certain things from us.... At least Mr DeGrasse Tyson deserves his rant, given his sheer output of public good, but that privilege we cannot give to the goofs in these reviews who talk about how a movie made when Jimmy Carter was President "looks dated" - spoiler: it is, the movie was written and produced nearly 50 years ago, and people genuinely did dress like thay!
Yet the storytelling stands up, the cinematography is magnificent, the sound is out of this world, and the film contains some of the greatest special effects ever created - by the greatest of all special effect creators, Douglas Trumbull - and gives us the five most famous notes in all of cinema as not just a motif, but also as one of the best plot points in history. Just look at the people involved in making this movie: Spielberg, Trumbull, Dreyfuss, John Williams, Francois Truffant, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon and Allen J Hynek. It's like Real Madrid brought some Galacticos onto set for us. What more do people want!
For those of you confused who could noy understand the story, the aliens have been watching Earth for generations, if not centuries. They have been snatching humans out of thin air, and in secret, for some unexplained reason, but have now decided to make contact. To do this they randomly choose a one horse town in the Mexican desert, the dusty plains of Northern India, and the skies above Muncie, Indiana, until an international government effort makes contact in return, and everyone heads to Devil's Tower. We never find out what the aliens want, or why they have been abducting people and animals for decades, nor do we find out what our governments are getting in return for the red-suited volunteers they are so willing to give up.
Instead we get to use our imagination, and wonder. Wonder. That is the key word, WONDER. This movie is designed to thrill you, to entertain you, to shock you and scare you, and to make you think, but it's mainly designed to make you sit there with awe in your eyes and take it all in. It's meant to do to the viewer what Pinocchio did to Spielberg when he was a kid, or when he lay back under the night sky and wished upon a star.
Sometimes I just worry for people, for what they are losing by means of appreciation. If you can honestly sit there and not be enthralled when the spaceship takes off at the end, as the credits roll and the score soars, then just give up, just stop watching movies. Go and kill some zombies on your Xbox, or slag off the fans of a pop star you don't like in the comments of a tiktok video. You just don't understand the magic, and you never will.
Or at least stop putting out dumb reviews of movies that you know people are going to find "unhelpful" - just like this.
