Close Encounters Ultimate Edition

[Fairweather Pure]

Wow. What a gorgeous box set. It contains all 3 versions of the film (theatrical, SE, and Dircetor's Cut), as well as the soundtrack (cd is walmart exclusive). The box set itself is very nice. I would rank it as one of the best in my sizable collection. It also has a 2 sided fold out of the movie poster, with a timeline of the film, outlining the difference in all 3 versions. Yet another nice touch is a photo book that fits in the case along with the films and other goodies.

The movie itself is fantastic. I've almost bought the SE on several occasions but haven't been able to locate a copy because it's been oop for awhile now. You snooze, you lose! I'm very happy I waited for this release. I would rank this as Spielberg's best movie, with Jaws a very close second. I rank it higher because of the complexity of the subject matter and how he chose to convey it.

If you love movies, don't pass up this set. It retails for 30$, but I got mine onsale for 22$. It was a steal for that price IMO.

[Fairweather Pure]

I found this wonderful review, of all places, on the Amazon page for Cloce Encounters. This reader has a way with words and articulates his thoughts better than I, even though we're thinking on the same level when it comes to this film. I just thought I would share what a real movie review is like. It makes you realize how shallow most Hollywood reviewers actually are.

'aw, who wants to see some dumb cartoon rated G for kids', October 20, 2007
Well, me for one. The main character of this movie, for another. But for some reason, not the main character's wife and kids.

Some people see this movie as the escape of the main character from the drudgery of life on earth. But I think they have missed the film completely.

The theme of this movie is about seeing the ordinary as extraordinary. It might also be called: "Man, Machine and the Northern lights." Or even, "Pinnochio for Physics Majors." Though "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" suits it well enough. First kind: sighting. Second kind: physical evidence. Third kind: contact. These terms were coined by Hynek to categorize reports of UFO's. Spielberg applies them in a way more down to earth. The ordinary things seen as extraordinary: technology, seen as part of nature, like the northern lights; human beings and relationships, seen as remarkable and unusual as alien encounters--or as wooden puppets become real boys.

The hero portrays an ordinary man who is childlike and single hearted. In terms of categorization, the movie might best be characterized as a visual-musical fantasy, though strictly speaking it is of course science fiction. It is quite ingeniously directed and very beautifully choreographed. Superficially, it is about alien contact, but at a deeper level, it is a beautiful depiction of the limits (and limited validity) of a mechanical approach to life. In the end, it's more about human contact, than about alien contact.

The film consists of several sub-plots which gradually dovetail together. At the summit: The hero, Roy Neary, and a young boy, Barry Guiler, having kindred spirits, are, through many trials and despite themselves, eventually brought together as family-one might even say providentially so. This family is contrasted to some vivid scenes of domestic life lived in narrow and petty way; the new family feels at home with itself while welcoming the most distant strangers: visitors from the stars. This openness is conveyed on the level of a child who is too innocent to even know the difference between an alien and a human; I would say, precisely, that it was Spielberg's main accomplishment in this film to convey it. Here Barry, a toddler, even steals the show--reportedly nicknamed by Spielberg as the "one take" kid! Though outwardly a movie about aliens, the visitors ultimately have, in this sense, the simple role of introducing the boy--and his widowed mom, Jillian--to the man-and very much from the point of view of the kid. It is, as it were, the antithesis of the premise for "Lost in Space," of a family huddled together in an alien and hostile universe. If the child in you is dead, don't waste your time watching this film. If the adult in you is alive, be willing to see the film multiple times. It hangs together very well, but it takes multiple viewings to fully appreciate it and see why.

The flip-side of this summit is a marriage break-up of Neary. Neary was already married, but his wife, Ronnie, eventually abandons him, valuing life in the suburbs more than him. This all unfolds as Neary is led more and more into alien encounters-and out on a limb. Ronnie, in the end, is a humorous, sensitive and sympathetic portrayal of someone who is, push come to shove (i.e., in its worst form) mechanical; she is Pinnochio in reverse, flesh and blood become wooden marionette. Kindred in spirit to neither Neary nor Barry, she characteristically hides newspaper clippings from her husband--not to mention nearly runs him over with the car--rather than herself face the truth. This places her in contrast even with the character Claude Lacombe, a French speaking, professional UFO investigator, who is also mechanical in his approach to things (including his greatest love), but with the redeeming feature of being able to recognize something good when he sees it. Ronnie is mechanical in the worst sense. The mechanical itself is seen as extraordinary in this film, as I mentioned; Ronnie simply opts out, wanting nothing to do with anything special.

Spielberg over the years has expressed second thoughts about this aspect of the film (the marriage break-up), but personally I don't think he has anything to worry about. I don't see how it amounts to a promotion of marital infidelity, nor an equating of "fidelity in marriage" with "being mechanical." Neary once expressly says of the UFOs, "I didn't want to see this," and the viewer is given every good reason to believe him. He wanted to see Pinnochio with his kids. They weren't interested. He saw some UFOs. He wanted to bring his wife and kids to see that. He was sure he had them now! Again they didn't seem interested, but he couldn't believe it. So he tried and tried. I'd worry more about the language in the film, which a few times seems gratuitous; I wouldn't worry about the film containing a promotion of marital infidelity, least of all "for anyone who is bored," which is simply not its message. If anything, the message is the opposite. If Ronnie so much as cared about her husband, the marriage could well have been saved. Personally, I believe in marital fidelity, but to seriously say that this film promotes the opposite, would perhaps have as the next step to say that the "Pauline Privilege" compromises marriage in Christianity (where St. Paul admits of an "exception" in marriage, where a newly baptized convert can remarry after and if his unbaptized spouse--whom he married before his conversion--deserts him--1 Cor 7:15). On the one hand, Neither Jillian nor Neary were looking for each other; they are simply friends who were brought together by the toddler and a chain of events which involve him (and of course, by the common experience of seeing strange colored things fly around and by them). On the other, Neary wanted very much to take his own family on the adventure, but his wife didn't care if he was crazy or if he really was seeing aliens; all she cared about was that he was no longer playing the "let's have a perfect house in the suburbs together game," so she left him. He begged her on the phone to reconsider, but he had already crossed her bottom line, and she hung up on him. And although all that his kids cared about was playing goofy golf instead of going to see Pinnochio with him, that no one yelled too loud--and that there were no dead flies in their mashed potatoes--he loved them enough to cry over them at the mere thought of the possibility of losing them. But as he had acted so visibly strange, even in front of the neighbors, there was no question of him getting custody after Ronnie left--and this came down without his expecting it, before he knew what hit him. It seems to me that an infamous scene where he recklessly builds a large scale mountain out of whatever he can find was driven by his desire to share what was inside of him with his family as much as it was to gain clarity about his own experience. Other people were content to make small sketches and oil paintings--and he had already successfully made a small clay model (even if by accident). Neary, a kid at heart, was very much a family man.

Neary and Barry do have the common failing of not being notably articulate. Neary even once quotes Barry in trying to describe the UFOs as "like an ice-cream cone"--adding only that its flavor was "orange" (and this being an improvement over his first attempt: "there was a red whoosh..."). He does improve considerably in comparing them to the aurora borealis, the northern lights-but only mispronouncing "borealis." Jillian, more sensitive to the interpersonal side of things, does a better job too-and betraying herself a kindred spirit--when she spontaneously calls the visits in the sky "Halloween for grownups." Eventually standing at the end of a line of volunteer astronauts arranged by Lacombe (and the only one not carrying a large duffle-bag), Neary is singled out and playfully caressed by the playmate friends which Barry had already made, solidifying, confirming and celebrating the new family bonds (the most moving moment of the film, with music from Neary's favorite movie, Pinnochio, playing spaced-style ala John Williams). On the whole a remarkable accomplishment, and Spielberg's masterpiece (produced, written and directed by him). Taking nothing away from "alien contact," it still in its own way trumps it with a "family reunion." This theme was to recur in E.T., but there alien contact becomes tongue-in-cheek and all-too-familiar; one might even say that E.T. is "CE3K for dummies." Barry was no less interesting or precious than any alien; at one scene it is even made obvious that he looks a bit like his alien friends. The deep, personal contact of the kindred souls, even if visceral and inarticulate, is the real "encounter." It was this simultaneous solidifying of earthly and extraterrestrial bonds which was really the most striking thing about the film.

At the "Pinnochio moment" Neary was preparing for an ultimate adventure, yet just here Neary and Barry gaze directly at each other, and then each turn up to Barry's mom-followed by Neary and Jillian sharing a meaningful glance. At the sky-port, Barry's mom had "stayed back" and taken her son off to the side, as she wasn't quite ready to go for any rides and didn't want Barry to wander off again. At this Pinnochio moment she overcomes all fear; now she decides to stay back simply because she is perfectly happy to stay on earth, "at home." Here Neary in a sense returns a favor, for it was she who had made possible his perseverance though their common ordeals-including a run around by quite a number of mechanical people fearful of truth. Even though Barry's alien playmates are about to leave, Barry as well, this time, does not cry when he sees the ship (and now Neary) "getting ready" to leave! When Barry merely thought the aliens were leaving (without Neary, before Neary was ready--hadn't yet met them face to face), Barry and (thus) Jillian cried (and cried). Now Jillian has tears of joy! And Barry finds peace; more, Barry, who had before gleefully ran after the UFOs through the tall grass and under the night sky, delightfully giggling, is no longer afraid of being an "orphan." The tagline of the film is "we are not alone." Barry, while an orphan, is now no longer alone; he has a new father: A family at home with itself and expansively open; at home in the cosmos, simultaneously on earth and among the stars.

"To the child the tree and the lamp post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural, for both are splendid and unexplained. The flower with which God crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamplighter crowns the other, are equally of the gold of Fairy Tales[...]In the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, ten to one, playing at steam engines. And the only spiritual or philosophical objection to steam engines is not that men pay for them or work at them or make them very ugly or even that men are killed by them, but merely that men do not play at them[...]The evil is that the childish poetry of clockwork does not remain[...]The wrong is not that engines are too much admired, but that they are not admired enough[...]The sin is not that engines are mechanical, but that men are mechanical." -G. K. Chesterton

CE3K is this passage put to film.

[Canelek]

Oddly enough, I can't stand this movie.