"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" re-release

I have a different interpretation of the film (which is one of my favorites and one of Speilberg's best efforts) than Rod.

When I was younger, I always felt that Dreyfuss decided to board the ship because it offered him a definitive escape from a life that clearly made him unhappy.

As I got older, that perspective changed somewhat. I felt that if you could examine the entire fictional life the Dreyfuss character, you would see a guy who had big dreams, but, for one reason or another, always settled for less. Perhaps he wanted to write the great American Novel or travel the world, but he ended up with a job he hated. He had a family he lived with, but never seemed to be a part of.

Then one night something amazing happens, and he is finally transformed. Of the million obsessions he had, then let go in life, this one sticks. And over the course of nuturing this obsession, he destroys everyone and everything around him.

Speilberg created a story of a family that basically destroys itself. But I also think he was saying something about how dreams and ambitions can take over everything around you. Everyone thinks Dreyfuss is crazy and throwing his life away for something no one but him can see. (Just as was said about every artists, explorer or entrepreneuer who created something indelible). Of course, Dreyfuss was right, as the film shows. And deep inside, he knows that in order to realize the totality of his obsession, he had to shed his old life.

Maybe I am reading too much into it. But the dinner scene when he shaped the Devil's Tower out of mashed potatoes I always feel a weird sense of exhiliration and sadness, because it is at that point where he knows that he has reached that same fork in the road he has reached all his life. Will he follow his dream? Or will he continue to simmer in a life he doesn't want to live?

Just what I was going to say, Nick. I've always found it interesting that scifi movies have a very strong tendency to make the aliens either god-like or demon-like. 2001 on the one hand, Independence Day on the other. Displaced religious impulse, it would appear.

Sci-fiction is not so much this way. Nor tv, possibly because if you're going to tell a different story every week you need a little more room to maneuver.

I think it would be fun to remake "The Day the Earth Stood Still" with a slight change--earth weapons having reached a point where Earth is the dominant military power and responds to the threat by blowing up the galaxy.

Off Topic: I've finished Part 1 (Childhood) of Frank Schaeffer's CRAZY FOR GOD (i.e., more than 1/3 of the book). I'm starting to think that those who said Frank was wrong to write what he has written about his parents (e.g., susan in the thread here about this book) may be right. I also think my earlier defense of him, based on only skimming parts of the book and reading what he has said about it on blogs and interviews, may have been too generous.

To correct/clarify my earlier statements about his siblings reading the manuscript: Frank's 3 sisters each sent him a letter with their comments, which he includes in the book. The concluding paragraph of the letter from Debby (his youngest sister, though older than Frank) is possibly more caustic and damning of Edith Schaeffer than what Frank himself has written. (It's on pp. 40-43, and should have been indented on pp. 41-43, because this is still Debby's letter and not Frank's writing.) His wife and daughter-in-law read the book several times, and his daughter, his brother-in-law, and some others also read the manuscript, and he read several chapters to his sister Susan, his son Frank, and his granddaughter Amanda. Frank says that all these people helped and encouraged him with what he wrote. Maybe writing the book was a form of Schaeffer Family therapy.

Does the book tell us too much about Frank and his family and other people? E.g.:

And this was the same chapel that the Billy Graham family sometimes dropped by to worship in, along with their Swiss-Armenian, multimillionaire in-laws, after Billy - like some Middle Eastern potentate - arranged for his seventeen-year-old daughter's marriage to the son of a particularly wealthy donor who lived up the road from us in the ski resort of Villars.

Did the followers of Billy know that he'd plucked his seventeen-year-old daughter out of her first semester at Wheaton College to marry a man almost twenty years older than her whom she had never met until Billy introduced them? Would they have cared?" (pp. 99-100)

I guess that depends on what one thinks we should or should not know about influential public figures. The book (so far) seems to be showing us a dark side of Protestant Evangelicalism and/or certain Protestant Evangelicals. Is this a portrait of a dysfunctional family or just a portrait of real people - or both? The Schaeffers do indeed come across as real people, and not as some fairytale ideal family, though some of the "real people" details (e.g., Frank describing his masturbation) might be instances of "too much information."

Rod: Are you going to open a thread on the book again for those who have read it?

That's an excellent point, CTB. And now that you mention it, Klaatu's speech has a very dark side, as well: a pre-emptive planetary holocaust if we get out of line.

Even when I saw the original movie (as a single, university-age student), I would have classified Richard Dreyfuss' character's choice as nothing short of selfish. Simply put, he ran out on his wife and children. We refer to such men as dead-beat dads.

At the 20th anniversary of the movie (or the 25th) I recall seeing an interview with Steven Speilberg in which he commented on how the ending scene (with Dreyfuss' character leaving) reflected his (Speilberg's) naive notions at the time. Speilberg noted that, were he to have made the movie after he had a wife and children, he would never have had the Dreyfuss character simply leave his family behind.

5 notes, isn't it, Alicia? Hmmm. Been a long time since I've seen that movie.

Re: religious themes in science fiction--well, of course. Much of science fiction began, at least, as an attempt to tell stories of human triumph in consciously post-Christian settings; however, since the early writers were surrounded by (and therefore at least somewhat influenced by) the Christian West I think many of the thematic elements end up being a rehashing of old religious notions. E.g., time travel= quest for redemption, FTL travel=Jonah/futility of escape from one's destiny, first contact stories=the Fall, aliens=gods/demons/really screwed-up aspects of humanity, and even something like Dreyfuss' character's final moments=quasi-immortality/resurrection without the pain of death or the belief in a non-material afterlife.

It's not all that pat, or anything, and I'm not doing it justice, but its amazing how many religious ideas are recast in science fiction.

Benign or not, the aliens look great in Blu-Ray High Definition. I know this kind of HDTV consumerism isn't very crunchy but the Blu-Ray Ultimate Edition, which contains all three versions of the film released, looks and sounds great; the extras are great; I'm as happy with this one as a non-crunchy purchase can make me.

For me, I found Terri Garr's character far scarier than anything the aliens -- she may have been the most unsympathetic non-villain I can recall seeing in the movies.

They're never shown, Mike, just implied. But they're pulling all the strings--created the monoliths etc., all (apparently) for the purpose of nurturing intelligent life on earth. 2001 describes the move to the next level, so to speak.

OK, evidently me and science fiction just do not click...

Junior High -- I went with a bunch of friends to see Star Wars when it came out.

I fell asleep during the movie.

High School -- When Close Encounters premiered here, I told my (same) friends I had no interest whatsoever in it, and wasn't going.

After being promised free tickets and all the junk food I could handle (lots at that time), I went with them and spent the entire time writing out an outline for a book report I had due that Monday (this was Friday night) on some napkins I got from the concession stand. I never even paid attention to the film.

Good memories :-)

I think I was 13 when CE3K came out. I was intrigued by the notion of space aliens, but by then a buddy had introduced me to Star Trek, which already had a fairly benign view of aliens.....well, sort of.

ET, on the other hand, was an entirely different story. I think I was the last person on the planet to see it, and all I remember when leaving the theater was "this squat alien waddles through the entire flick, falling down on his face, and HE CAN FLY!!!

Either way, I think both of these stories (yes, stories), gave a vision to all those folks who want to believe in UFO's, but can produce no evidence whatsoever, other then clinging to the notion that there is plenty o' evidence, the feds are just hiding it. Laughable.
Cheers...Phil