Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Steven Spielberg

Rather, it’s the sanctity of family that Spielberg champions above all else, something that has come to replace Close Encounters’ advocation of cosmic open-mindedness as Spielberg’s project in his later films.Īt the root of Spielberg’s concern lies the fear of the family’s violation by (ultimately) external forces. What Spielberg is sanctioning in the film is not violence per se. The romanticised paternalism of Oskar Schindler ( Liam Neeson) is thus replayed in War of the Worlds with greater reactionary inflection, as Ray locates within himself his capacity for violence as a means of survival for himself and his children.

Survival in Spielberg’s later work becomes less a matter of wider co-operative social endeavour than a need to protect oneself – and, more to the point, one’s family – against a common enemy. Indeed, War of the Worlds (2005) is almost the complete inversion/negation of Close Encounters inasmuch as Spielberg presents the genocide of human beings rather than mankind’s transcendence as the likely outcome of an alien visitation and rather than having the protagonist leave behind his family to discover a world beyond the stars as Close Encounters’ Roy Neary ( Richard Dreyfuss) does, Spielberg, in War of the Worlds, has Ray Ferrier ( Tom Cruise) fight tooth and nail to protect his children from ET. Since Empire of the Sun (1987), Spielberg has become more interested in portraying loss of innocence than (in his words) the “celebration of a kind of naiveté” that Close Encounters represents. (1982), Spielberg hasn’t taken this approach since then (his subsequent futuristic fables have been determinedly dystopian) although he did, of course, return to Close Encounters twice more – the Special Edition (1980) and the Director’s Cut (1998) – indicating that the film might still continue to represent to its director a small ray of light in an otherwise increasingly dark world view. When considered in relation to Spielberg’s later science fiction films and their more conservative attitude to family, their overtly pessimistic view of human nature, their ambivalent presentation of the other, the cosmic outlook and wide-eyed optimism of Close Encounters marks it, alongside 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (one of Spielberg’s primary influences on Close Encounters), as utopian – even transcendent – science fiction. While on first glance it might seem the quintessential Spielberg film, discrepancies place Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) slightly apart. Spoiler warning: this feature gives away the film’s plot.Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind by Steven Spielberg