Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon

For those of us who don’t bow down to any big, bearded spirits in the sky, the discovery of alien life might be the closest we’ll ever come to having a religious experience. And if that’s the case, then ‘Close Encounters’ might be our Old Testament.

Steven Spielberg’s film manages to get its point across without resorting to intimidation or cheap scare tactics. This is one of the few movies in history to appeal almost exclusively to what Abraham Lincoln called, ‘the better angels of our nature’: creativity, community, discovery and the capacity for wonder.

With the arguable exception of ‘ET’, this tale of benevolent alien contact is Spielberg’s most personal statement. It’s the heartfelt cry of a boyish 31-year-old who can’t rationalise his own self-centred ambitions with the demands of family and responsibility.

Possessed by a creative compulsion he can’t understand, everyman hero Roy Neary (Dreyfuss) alienates his wife and comes close to mental breakdown before discovering the source of the visions in his head. Spielberg has said that if he made the film today he wouldn’t allow Roy to abandon his loved ones at the end – and yet this final, painfully human act of selfishness is what gives the film its aching power.

Well, that and the breathtaking special effects. The appearance of the mothership over the mountain is one of the great visual punches in cinema. And the gloriously unflashy performances – Truffaut and Bob Balaban make a perfect nerdy double-act. Oh, and let’s not forget John Williams’s pounding, experimental soundtrack. How many non-musicals feature their score so prominently? The result is pure joy distilled onto celluloid. Maybe God does have a beard, after all. TH

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