Steven Spielberg: Boy (full of) Wonder- Alien-nation

Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.- the Extra-Terrestrial

Fresh from his massive success with Jaws (1975), Steven Spielberg, wunderkind, had a bit of sway for his next picture. Although he had missed a Best Director nomination, the blockbuster status of Jaws drew a lot of eyes to him. He was ready to make something more personal, something that had inspired him many years before.

A well-circulated story about Spielberg tells of his father, Arnold, waking him up one night when he was 5 to go watch a meteor shower in the middle of the night. The awe young Steven felt that night never left him, and now embarking on a new film, he would have the chance to draw the audience into a similar sense of wonder. In fact, Firelight, the first feature film he ever directed (at 16!) but now disavows, had many similarities to what Close Encounters of the Third Kind became. There is a scientific investigation into missing aircraft and apparent spacecraft(s), a straight couple having issues, a husband & father whose curiosity and search for knowledge pushes him away. Spielberg's desire to move away from Firelight made room for another film on the subject.

Also well known about Spielberg is the impact his parents' divorce had on how he saw the world, and how he put a lot of those emotions into his films. After Close Encounters, he still wanted to tell a story of such a family separation, but through the eyes of the children. The genesis for E.T.- the Extra-Terrestrial came from that desire, as well as seeking a gentler encounter with aliens than ones in other prominent science fiction.

E.T. has its own shifting trajectory. Writer/director John Sayles, hired by Spielberg's producing partner Kathleen Kennedy, wrote a script for what was then called Night Skies (Bousquet et al, 2023, 133). Wanting to create a 'softer' film in part because of the intensity of filming Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg ultimately rejected Sayles' story of a fearful encounter. Lucky for the director that he met Melissa Mathison when he did, or the beloved movie about a boy named Elliott and his tender friendship with an alien may not exist. Something did transfer though, according to Sayles himself (I heard him discuss it at a Q&A for Brother from Another Planet), from the final scene of his film. An alien within a group that has been terrorizing a family forms a bond with one of the children and doesn't want to harm this Earth family any longer, so the aliens he is with leave him behind. ET's abandonment isn't intentional, but according to Sayles, that is effectively what became the opening of the 1982 film as ET cannot get back to his ship and takes shelter at Elliott's house.

The opening of Close Encounters sets out an interesting puzzle. 16 years before the tv series The X-Files, we get scenes that could serve as a cold open to an episode: the desert setting, the multiple languages spoken, the strangely strong wind, discovering planes completely intact that disappeared decades prior. It is also eerie to see Barry's toys come to life and later, the magnetic reactions in Roy Neary's (Richard Dreyfus) car. That Spielberg then whisks us on an adventure to meet and connect with these creatures flying overhead against the backdrop of a suburban family's all-too-human difficulty staying connected to each other *while* paying attention to the effect these close encounters had across the world is the mastery of his storytelling.

Dreyfus and Melinda Dillon (in an Oscar-nominated performance) both palpably play their characters' surprise, fear, and overwhelming desire to understand what they've experienced. Dillon's Jillian has the added drive of a mother seeking her son after 4-year-old Barry disappears, enraptured by a second encounter. Facing the confusion of his children and the anger & pain of his wife Ronnie (an excellent Teri Garr), Roy is like a lost child, though his journey also feels spiritual. There's a fulfillment that may be found if he makes it to Devil's Mountain, and we feel & relate to his urge to pursue it even at the risk of shattering his family. It's interesting that Spielberg has subsequently said he wouldn't write the movie the same way now that he has children of his own; he didn't have any in 1976 when the movie was shot. Roy's need to find those answers is central to the film's success and is, in a way, a beautiful glimpse at someone finding something they did not know they were missing. 

Connection in E.T. is more metaphysical than spiritual. It grows between Elliott (Henry Thomas) and the alien, whom he and his siblings (Robert MacNaughton and a darling Drew Barrymore) name ET as the movie progresses. A psychic link also helps Elliott recognize the danger of the faceless government men, and men in general, Spielberg peppers his film with. I was fascinated by how the director uses the absence of Elliott's father as the groundwork for the unreliability of men, and builds that not only into his disrupting a class by freeing frogs from dissection, but into his plots to elude the mysterious Keys (Peter Coyote) and his uniformed gang to keep them from harming ET.

As suggested by Michael Le Gall and Charles Taliaferro, in the absence of their father, Michael (MacNaughton) and Elliott must take on the role (Kowalski, 2008, 44-45). Michael is the initial protector, grabbing a knife when Elliott is scared by a noise outside. Elliott takes on the bulk of that role once ET comes into their lives: he is teacher, playmate, gentle disciplinarian. He also must be protector when ET is endangered by the forceful and suspicious government men. It's also a role that switches as ET uses his power to take over their escape, provides Elliott with important wisdom on loss & memory, and then reverts again as ET must separate from Elliott one final time. 

E.T. can be seen as a continuation of Close Encounters. We get aliens with benign, or at least non-violent, purpose, a family overshadowed by patriarchal departure, and Spielberg's long-held sense of wonder at the skies above. Moving away from the earlier film, Spielberg shoots most of E.T.  "kid height." We not only are treated to authority figures from the back or in shadow, but the camera is frequently low to give us the world as Elliott (and ET) would see it. Our first view of ET also quickly determines how we see him: he's terrified when caught hiding, not territorial or violent. Spielberg also uses light beautifully to express this. The gubmint men and their flashlights are harsh and determined, while Elliott's use of the same device is enticing. The lamps in Elliott's room soften the unfamiliar space for ET. The light under Keys's face keeping his eyes in shadow is an excellent touch. And of course, there's the most famous shot in the film, in which a bicycle flies by the light of the moon.

Both Close Encounters and E.T. can seem childlike. The latter literally takes place through the eyes of a child, and the former features both a boy caught up in the magic and a man with 3 kids who is determined they see Pinocchio and also is distant from them because of his own overwhelming sense of wonder. In both, the aliens are gentle in their communication and seek to build a shared understanding with the humans they meet.

Is Spielberg unwilling to see the possible danger in such otherworldly contact? Well, we get plenty of human fear of the Other in both. Jillian is appropriately terrified of where they took her son and what they might be doing with/to him. There is era-appropriate paranoia in the opening of Close Encounters, and of the PPE-clad men who examine ET once they track him down. Just because they're wrong doesn't mean their precautions are unwarranted. And, when they *are* examining ET, Spielberg at last gives them some humanity--- we see their faces and hear their concerns. Given that the U.S. was emerging from Watergate and Vietnam, and a corresponding loss of belief in authority and collectivity, Spielberg overhanging both films with an absent or distant father feels appropriate. As he makes one of his many cases that our shared humanity is our best way forward, he is not afraid of the messy and harmful behaviours that get us into such messes to begin with. Such images and choices complicate the notion that these films are ignorant of the America in which they take place offering different outcomes, but not a lack of understanding.