Before `Spielberg' decided to drown his movies in sweet sugary syrup, he was able to make films with a bit more edge. `Close Encounters of the Third Kind' is one of these successful efforts.
Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) works fixing electricity lines. One turbulent night, while on the job, he has a close encounter, along with some other people. After that he is haunted by a need to be somewhere else, and a strange vision he cannot comprehend. People all across the world see and hear mysterious things and the world stands ready to greet visitors from afar..That's all fairly conventional but thankfully `Spielberg's' script (check out the trivia for that) has a nice global feel. Most of Hollywood's concept of global is having America vs. Some Evil Foreign Country, or Americans running around in Some Silly Foreign Country. Here the script embraces the world - one of the leads is a Frenchman. who even speaks French! Shock! At the same time of feeling that events are shaking the world, Spielberg also allows us to concentrate on the human level. This is most present in Neary's storyline. His visions become a case of OCD, which causes very real family problems. They're refreshingly free of the sentimental twaddle that he sometimes coddles his movies in, and actually have a very believable air to how a family would act given Neary's increasingly odd behaviour after his encounter. The government plot strand, about their own efforts to contact the alien life forms, does not need to have the irritating current trend of paranoia. Thank God for that. And the aliens themselves? Sure, they pander to the generic `glowing-things'. but given the background story its acceptable and portrayed quite well.
Acting wise there's nothing out-standing here. Dreyfuss is the most noticeable, due to his screen-time, and capably gives us the image of an ordinary man caught in (cue Hollywood voice) extraordinary circumstances. As the characters that are being played are all relatively normal, free of the gravitas that films generally imbue in them, there's not as much room to push the limits of character acting. What we have though is typically fine, except for a somewhat mawkish performance by Melinda Dillon (Oscar-nominated or not, I still didn't care for it).
Spielberg does the old `imbue-a-sense-of-wonder' trick here that he does so well, in the likes of `E.T.' and `A.I.' There definitely is a feeling of something fantastical, and wonderful in this movie. One of the key elements is the simple intonations done to signal the aliens - perhaps the most famous musical moment from a movie that isn't actually a soundtrack moment. Simple, but effective, and Spielberg matches it by keeping such scenes pure and uninterrupted. The cinematography is great (it won a deserved Oscar) with a great sense of scale about the whole effort (particularly at the end), as well as some superb lighting moments (the command centre, for example, really does feel like it's in a hollow from the way the light falls). Kudos to Spielberg for doing a polished effort again.
`Close Encounters of the Third Kind' deserves respect for being a more polished and intelligent movie than the majority of its peers. It has wonder that is sorely lacking in the flash-bang quick-edit of today, and a finale that, as a result, ultimately works and makes you look up above. It may lack in a on-the-edge-of-seat tension, but it should be seen. 8/10.
Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) works fixing electricity lines. One turbulent night, while on the job, he has a close encounter, along with some other people. After that he is haunted by a need to be somewhere else, and a strange vision he cannot comprehend. People all across the world see and hear mysterious things and the world stands ready to greet visitors from afar..That's all fairly conventional but thankfully `Spielberg's' script (check out the trivia for that) has a nice global feel. Most of Hollywood's concept of global is having America vs. Some Evil Foreign Country, or Americans running around in Some Silly Foreign Country. Here the script embraces the world - one of the leads is a Frenchman. who even speaks French! Shock! At the same time of feeling that events are shaking the world, Spielberg also allows us to concentrate on the human level. This is most present in Neary's storyline. His visions become a case of OCD, which causes very real family problems. They're refreshingly free of the sentimental twaddle that he sometimes coddles his movies in, and actually have a very believable air to how a family would act given Neary's increasingly odd behaviour after his encounter. The government plot strand, about their own efforts to contact the alien life forms, does not need to have the irritating current trend of paranoia. Thank God for that. And the aliens themselves? Sure, they pander to the generic `glowing-things'. but given the background story its acceptable and portrayed quite well.
Acting wise there's nothing out-standing here. Dreyfuss is the most noticeable, due to his screen-time, and capably gives us the image of an ordinary man caught in (cue Hollywood voice) extraordinary circumstances. As the characters that are being played are all relatively normal, free of the gravitas that films generally imbue in them, there's not as much room to push the limits of character acting. What we have though is typically fine, except for a somewhat mawkish performance by Melinda Dillon (Oscar-nominated or not, I still didn't care for it).
Spielberg does the old `imbue-a-sense-of-wonder' trick here that he does so well, in the likes of `E.T.' and `A.I.' There definitely is a feeling of something fantastical, and wonderful in this movie. One of the key elements is the simple intonations done to signal the aliens - perhaps the most famous musical moment from a movie that isn't actually a soundtrack moment. Simple, but effective, and Spielberg matches it by keeping such scenes pure and uninterrupted. The cinematography is great (it won a deserved Oscar) with a great sense of scale about the whole effort (particularly at the end), as well as some superb lighting moments (the command centre, for example, really does feel like it's in a hollow from the way the light falls). Kudos to Spielberg for doing a polished effort again.
`Close Encounters of the Third Kind' deserves respect for being a more polished and intelligent movie than the majority of its peers. It has wonder that is sorely lacking in the flash-bang quick-edit of today, and a finale that, as a result, ultimately works and makes you look up above. It may lack in a on-the-edge-of-seat tension, but it should be seen. 8/10.