Spielberg: Close Encounters of the Third Kind part three

As Act III of Close Encounters begins, we have what I’ve come to recognize as a common Spielberg forte: a scene of a mass crowd mobilization, displayed as an American carnival. These scenes are in all his theatrically-released movies up to this point, and always link together mass mania with old-fashioned American hucksterism. In Sugarland Express the residents of small towns across Texas come out to support fugitives Lou Jean and her husband, but their enthusiastic support quickly turns into desperate celebrity worship. In Jaws the massive influx of tourists into Amity’s harbor is laced with the commerce of turning tragedy into profits with the sales of shark souvenirs and video games. Here, Spielberg cannot let a scene of mass exodus pass without having a barker right out of a Mark Twain story selling gas masks to the panicked crowd. (I note that the salesman’s dog wears a gas mask, but he himself does not bother.)

Roy Neary has broken through a number of psychological and administrative barriers to get where he’s gotten, but in Act III of Close Encounters he breaks through a number of literal barriers as well, crashing his car through fences and roadblocks to keep his appointment. This is good screenwriting, to find ways of making the mental physical, and is of course another of Spielberg’s fortes.

As the Light in the first two acts of the movie stood as a stand-in for the extra-terrestrial, here Spielberg uses Devil’s Tower as a stand-in its own self. Devil’s Tower may be interesting to look at, but let’s face it, it’s just an unusual rock formation, it’s not the throne of God (or the Devil’s Tower, for that matter). But Spielberg shoots it with such awe and majesty and mystery, he imbues it with a primal, almost mystical power unto itself, so that every time we see it in a shot we’re sure that something profound is going to happen there. Very much the same way he gave Water itself the power to make us jump out of our seats in Jaws.

Royfinds Gillian in the crowd and they, literally, head for the hills on a monomaniacal tear toward their appointment with God. Something tells me that there was once, in an earlier draft of the script or even in longer cuts of the movie, something of a romantic nature to their adventure. Roy finding a soulmate in Gillian would explain Ronnie’s jealousy of his obsession, and they give each other more than a friendly pat on the back after they’ve achieved their common goal. If there were romantic sparks between them once, they’re gone now, and it’s probably just as well. It’s one thing for Roy to abandon his family in order to meet God, it’s something else again for him to shack up with the local lonely single mother while on the road to Damascus.

Even though Spielberg has already told us that the nerve-gas in Wyoming is a hoax, he still makes it look like maybe it isn’t, and we still buy that maybe it isn’t. The US government, it seems, is willing to stage a positively enormous hoax in order to keep proof of the existence of God a government secret. (Although given the size of the military operation on display, not to mention the hundreds of scientists involved, I find it hard to believe that the government could keep quiet every single participant in the eventual proceedings. They just can’t all be getting paid enough.)

Roy and Gillian are caught and captured by some Governmental thugs and detained, leading to the Act III centerpiece of Roy talking to Lacombe and Laughlin. The movie’s two primary plot strands come together for the first time and the electricity in the scene is palpable as the two approaches to God, the artistic and the scientific, come head to head. Roy is as inarticulate as ever, sputtering with anxiety, cynicism and rage as he’s interrogated by the calm, unflappable Lacombe and Laughlin. And yet Roy, despite his confusion, already “knows” more about the message and its meaning than Lacombe and his army of scientists (not to mention his army of army guys). And of course, Lacombe senses this, which puts him in conflict with Major Walsh, the head of the military part of the operation. And in some ways they’re both right — the aliens in Close Encounters are happy to appear to all kinds of people, but Roy and only Roy is selected to join them in their spaceship.

I sometimes wonder what Lacombe’s Monday Morning plan is, and Walsh’s too. They have unapologetically assumed that the existence of God (or aliens, if you will) should be protected as a state secret — an international state secret at that. Why? Lacombe doesn’t seem like a bad guy, why isn’t he inviting everyone in the world to come to Devil’s Tower and meet God? Maj. Walsh I understand is an army guy and so is naturally secretive, paranoid and elitist, but why Lacombe? Aliens are coming, they’ve clearly stated that they want to meet everyone, and Lacombe knows that — why does he keep it a secret? Is there some part of him that is also an elitist, that feels that a thing this profoundly significant can only be known to a select few? Or is he worried that maybe the aliens aren’t friendly?

The audience of Close Encounters, of course, totally buys that the US government will be secretive and elitist because that’s just how the US government is. But Lacombe is shown heading up a UN force of scientists — why is he playing by the rules of the US government? The short answer, of course, is that it makes for better drama — Lacombe, nice guy though he may be, must have a point of view in direct opposition to that of the protagonist — if the protagonist has a vision that God is available to everyone, his antagonist must be of the point of view that God should only be available to the select few — in spite of God’s emphatic demonstration to the contrary.

The audience, of course, is also not sure the aliens arefriendly, because they abducted Barry Guiler and, let’s face it, they haven’t been exactly forthcoming about their intentions. Spielberg uses our natural fear of The Other, and our built-in understanding of science-fiction movies, to help keep us in suspense as to the aliens’ intent. He balances Wonder and Terror right up to the closing moments of the movie, keeping us on the edge of our seats, ready for things to turn ugly at any moment.

Now then: here’s an interesting flaw in the screenplay of Close Encounters: Roy and Gillian have an overwhelming desire to get to Devil’s Tower. What do they think is going to happen when they get there? Roy emphatically states that he has no clear idea of what to expect, he just knows that he has to get there, just as Major Walsh emphatically states that it’s his job to keep Roy and his tribe of artists off the mountain. Neither of them really know what’s going to happen there, and that goes for Lacombe as well. Here’s the thing: where does it say the aliens are coming to visit tonight? Roy pursues his goal with great urgency, the army defends their goal with great efficiency, the stakes are high and climb higher as night falls. Who says the aliens are coming tonight? What if they don’t? All we’ve heard about is a set of map coordinates, there was never any date mentioned, the numbers that Laughlin interprets never say “And you guys better get your ass in gear, because we’re going to be there in less than two weeks.” Indeed, if the aliens are contacting people all over the world about their arrival, why are they giving us such a short time frame to meet them? Don’t they know we have lives? We have to book airplane flights, arrange for babysitting, rent cars. Come to think of it, they’ve got seemingly unlimited resources, why can’t they have a number of different meet-n-greets in different locations around the world? I get there’s only one mothership, but surely if they can drop off a freighter in the Gobi desert they can have representatives drop by to say hi in more than one place — what kind of organization are they running?

In any case, Roy keeps pushing, determined that nothing is going to stop him from keeping his appointment with God (even though God thoughtlessly has forgotten to put a meeting time on his invitation — which is, after all, typically God-like. When he invited the Jews to the promised land, he had them wander around in the desert for forty years before finally getting around to keeping his promise. I have this image of the Old Testament God sitting around in Heaven watching TV and eating pork rinds, then suddenly jumping up and saying “Oh shit! I forgot to lead my chosen people to the promised land!”). He succeeds in leading Gillian and Larry to the mountain, but only he and Gillian make it to the other side. Larry seems to be there as a suspense device, to show that even at this late date, not everyone who is called is worthy to receive the message.

Anyway, Roy and Gillian make it over the mountain (who told Roy the big event was going to happen on the other side of the mountain?) and Act IV begins. And the curious thing about Act IV of Close Encounters is that there is very little actual drama to it. The conflicts have all been cleared away, the protagonist has made it to his appointment, and the rest of the movie is, largely, a list of increasingly cool things that happen. It’s like: “Okay, some UFOs have shown up. That’s cool, right? Well what if a whole bunch of UFOs showed up? Now how much would you pay? But wait, before you answer, what if we told you a gigantic, quarter-mile-wide UFO was going to show up? And if you act now, little aliens will come out of the big UFO!“

Here’s a serious screenwriting question: what to the aliens in Close Encounters want?

This is what they do:

1. They drop off all the stuff they borrowed
2. They leave a message about where they’re going to be when they drop off the people they’ve borrowed
3. They encourage ordinary people to please come and meet them
4. They show up at the meeting place, drop off the people they’ve borrowed, then pick one guy to go off with them

Was this their plan all along? Did they only plan on taking one guy? If Gillian had accompanied Roy down to the landing strip, would she have been accepted along with him? It’s clear that the aliens turn their noses up at the “professionals” offered by Lacombe, but would they have taken the rest of the artists on the helicopter as well?

Little Barry Guiler is among the folks returned, of course, and there are few images more sacred in the Spielberg canon than a parent and child reunited — unless of course the parent is Roy and he’s abandoned his family to pursue God.

(A family reunited forms the climactic moment of so many Spielberg movies, which is why the moment in the second half of Schindler’s List where Schindler sees the body of the girl in the red coat is so shattering — there will be no reunion for this parent and child and Schindler lives in a world that doesn’t recognize Spielberg’s priorities as a storyteller. Which is one reason why Schindler’s List is such an important movie in Spielberg’s list, but we’re a long way from there yet.)

The returning of belongings and the dropping off of people implies to me that the aliens are breaking up with us, like they’ve had all they can take of our bullshit and they just want our crap out of their spaceship. They’re going home, but if we can give them one reason to think we’re nice people, maybe they’ll think we’re okay after all. That one reason, of course, turns out to be Roy.

Another thought occurs to me: maybe the aliens aren’t God after all. Maybe they’re an inter-dimensional art school looking for commercial artists to do work for posters and brochures and whatnot, and their message to the people of earth is “DRAW DEVIL’S TOWER! YOU MAY HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A PROFESSIONAL ARTIST!” And Roy wins first prize. Or maybe he didn’t win first prize, maybe they take him because he’s the only entrant to show up to the prize ceremony.

(Up on the ledge with Barry by her side, Gillian takes photos of the little aliens. Spielberg here is saying, I think, “don’t forget, film is an artform too, and the movie you’re watching is my own attempt to capture the divine impulse in art.”)

The obvious point is that Roy, not Lacombe, not the scientists, not the Army or Air Force or US government, not the UN or any other official body, only Roy is worthy. God chooses Roy out of everyone else to ascend into Heaven, to make it to the promised land. This is an emotional point, not a rational one, which is why Close Encounters is obviously such a personal story for Spielberg. His philosophy is that through hard work, devotion to craft, constant artistic struggle and relentless opposition to obstacles, one can make it. Roy’s devotion to building his sculpture, his intent need to “get it right,” is a corollary to Spielberg’s attention to hiscraft, and Roy’s obstinate refusal to follow orders and sneak through barriers is a corollary to Spielberg’s sneaking onto the Universal lot, pretending to be a director. Close Encounters‘s message is that through hard work, devotion to craft, insistent pursuit and a little bit of stealth, one can overcome any obstacle and be lifted up from the masses to achieve something like godhood. It’s Spielberg’s self-fulfilling prophecy, which is why Close Encounters will always be the cornerstone of his singular achievement.