Persistence and Hope in Science Fiction Films Pt. 4 (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)

In 1978 no one knew what to expect next from Steven Spielberg. His first feature, Jaws had smashed records and changed the way movies were marketed and perceived, inaugurating the era of the “Summer Blockbuster.” Another member of his circle of friends had the year before changed the way people thought of Science Fiction with the space faring melodrama Star Wars. A lot was expected of Spielberg, and Science Fiction was in the air.

Up until this point the mythology built around aliens was largely fearful. In post-WWII America the existence of UFOs stood in for dark forebodings about government misuse of power and people’s fears about their basic vulnerability in the face of a world of exploding technological growth. Alien abductions and UFO sightings resonated with people living in a world that felt strange, unstable, and liable at any moment to escalate from cold war to smoking crater.

It took someone of Spielberg’s prodigiously genteel imagination to picture a universe not only larger than we could conceive but also kinder than we were willing to suppose.
               
          Any catastrophe movie that unfolds around three-dimensional characters sets its self up as unique. Even though Close Encounters of the Third Kind does not feature an imminent threat to large populations it still qualifies as a catastrophe movie since people’s lives are disrupted en-masse by a single large-scale event that dominates the entire plot.

In most catastrophe films the event is all-pervasive, it crowds out character with continuous peril. In Close Encounters the characters are continuously revealed through their reactions to events and their interactions with one another. This is the result both of good writing and a lack of cynicism about people. Spielberg’s attitude about the universe is represented by a race of aliens more interested in communication than domination, motivated by curiosity rather than malevolence. And his attitude about humanity is revealed in the depth of sympathy we feel for his characters.