Film Nerd 2.0: 'Close Encounters' marks the boys deeply in unexpected ways
A classic makes a huge impression on first viewing and not necessarily a good one
It's amazing how one image can evoke both wonder and terror, but this one from 'Close Encounters Of The Third Kind' has always managed the trick.
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"Why?"
There is no bigger question for kids as they watch a film, particularly one that exposes them to an adult world they have no personal experience of so far. And once they start asking "Why?", it opens up a potential snowstorm of follow-ups. One of the most important things in any screening I have for the kids is the conversations that show me what they've taken from what they've just watched.
My oldest son, Toshiro, just recently turned seven. I know that when I think back to childhood, everything before seven is fuzzy, select images or impressions, but starting at the age of seven, I have a distinct recollection of things. I can tell you details about things that happened to me that year, places where I saw certain films, events that happened to me or to my friends. It feels in hindsight like seven was the age where everything clicked and turned on and I became a "real" person.
And in the summer of 1977, I was all about "Star Wars."
There were two films that were earning repeat business from my family that summer. "Star Wars" became a habit for me, and every time I heard that anyone we knew was considering a trip to the theater to see the film, I would invite myself along. For my parents, "Smokey and the Bandit" was the film that demanded more than one viewing. Remember, this was in the age before home video, when your only option was seeing something enough times to memorize it. Those two films were a major part of the background noise of that year for me. There were other films, other milestones, other family events, but from May to September, both of those movies were still in theaters, still drawing audiences, still drawing return visits from us, still a major part of my pop culture experience.
I couldn't even imagine a film that would do the same thing to me that "Star Wars" did, but I started getting voracious about new movies. I started actively reading the newspaper and the magazines we had in the house, becoming aware of things that were in release or coming soon. While I had not seen "Jaws" yet, I was aware of it because my best friend next door had older brothers, and they swore by the film. Because of them, I was vaguely aware of Steven Spielberg's name.
Then I saw the cover for the paperback adaptation of "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" on the newsstand one day, and that passing interest immediately intensified into pointed curiosity. The thing that jumped out at me about it is that, like George Lucas, it appeared that Steven Spielberg had written his own tie-in novel, something I found really fascinating. It felt like reading someone's feelings about the movie. I had no idea Alan Dean Foster ghost-wrote both of those books at the time. I just believed what the covers said completely.
I bought the book and read it, and by the time the film opened, I was rabid to see it. It felt like the next thing perfectly tailored for me, and the experience did not disappoint. I saw it at a drive-in the first time, and that was magical, seeing the film with a big bright starfield as a backdrop. I kept thinking the edges of the screen would simply fade away and the various ships would come racing out at us. I saw it again two more times while it was in theaters, and it felt like one of those movies I was almost too young for, something I had to work to decode. It was a totally different flavor of film than "Star Wars," and it helped expand my palette.
The Blu-ray edition of the film has the same cover as that paperback book did in the fall of 1977, and Toshi's spent at least six months slowly but surely working his way up to asking me to play it for him. I can tell when he's interested because he starts just by asking the most important question: "Is this for kids?"
Once he determines that it is indeed a film that is appropriate for him, the next step of his campaign begins, and he starts to ask for story details. He'll ask me a million questions. I must frustrate him enormously because I don't always answer those questions. I tell him that most of his questions will be answered by the movie, and that he doesn't want to know everything before he sees it. Admittedly, I read the novelization before I saw the film, but I was a voracious reader in a way that really hasn't kicked in for Toshi yet. He likes to read with me, and he likes me to read things to him, but reading for pleasure is not yet on his list of ways to spend an afternoon.
With "Close Encounters," though, I went out of my way to tell him nothing besides explaining what the three kinds of close encounters are. Once he and his younger brother Allen realized that this was a movie about aliens, they were impossible to manage. They pestered me for five straight days while we tried to find the right time to sit down and watch the entire thing, start to finish, without interruption. That's harder to do than it sounds, but on a late Sunday afternoon, we finally managed to finish everything that needed to be done, shut out the rest of the world, and settle in for what remains one of my favorite Spielberg movies.
The big difference between Toshi and Allen and myself when I first saw it is that they are well aware of who Spielberg is. They haven't seen the movies yet, but they know Indiana Jones by sight. They both adore "The Adventures Of Tintin" and "E.T." And, of course, we did an earlier Film Nerd 2.0 screening of "Jurassic Park," which has proven to be one of the biggest series of films for my kids so far. So sitting down to this film, they already had a different relationship with him as a filmmaker than I did as a seven-year-old. They were primed for something special.
It worked, too. Toshi is just now starting to come around to the particular pleasures of getting scared silly by a movie, while Allen's been primed for that since day one. "Close Encounters" is a very scary movie for kids, at least for the first 2/3 of it, and watching it with the boys, I was struck by the specific things that scared them. There's that great early scene where Cary Guffey wakes up in the middle of the night and he's walking around his house as everything turns on around him. The most magical shot in the entire sequence features Duffy standing in the doorway of his kitchen, everything scattered, smashed, and spilled, and as he watches something off-camera, he reacts with delight and fear and wonder. It's one of those moments where you realize Steven Spielberg has an acute sense of how to direct young actors and capture something special with that. I remember in the theater when I was a kid watching that sequence and wondering intensely about what it was that Guffey was looking at, and I created the most elaborate images in my imagination. Even as I watched the film the first time, I began to fill in the stories about what these things were, about what they might want, and about why they were in the house or the sky or at Devil's Tower.
Watching Roy Neary descend into madness over the course of the film is a harrowing experience for his family. It's an equally harrowing experience for young audiences because Roy is so clearly established as a decent father at the beginning of the film. Spielberg paints a frantic, noisy picture of family life, but Roy is a funny, engaged dad in those early moments. As my boys watched the movie, I noticed that they slowly but surely moved towards me over the course of the film, something that happens when a film particularly disturbs or provokes or scares them.
They like to start each movie in their special places in the office. They each have a chair, they each have a way they like to sit, and there's a sense at this point that there's a bit of a ritual about how we start each movie. When a film really works on them, they start to move towards me because they want some sort of reassurance that these terrifying, amazing, unusual, extravagant things happening onscreen are only on the screen and that they are safe while they watch. I love that they can be so wrapped up in what's happening onscreen that they feel personally involved. Of course I want to let my kids thrill in these vicarious thrills, and I'm very aware of watching that line as we watch movies, making sure that the thrills they are having are fun and not traumatic.
When I saw "Close Encounters" for the first time, it was an exciting experience and that I primarily walked away with the thrill of that third act reveal. As much as I like to think of myself as a sophisticated viewer at age seven, I think I was more of a reader at that point. Toshi is very sharp about reading a film already, and he's really starting to take movies apart at this point, and I think he is perhaps a more sophisticated film viewer then I was at his age. I even think Alan is starting to develop a relationship with movies that I didn't have at his age. I think the availability of them and the way we engage with them so far has started the kids thinking about a film as something more than just background noise to keep them busy during the afternoon.
As Roy Neary drove his family away, the boys got quiet. The early scenes with the spaceships were exhilarating, and we had spirited conversations about the nature of the lights and the ships and their behavior. But the stuff with Roy in his house gradually destroying it as he builds these elaborate models of whatever it is that's driving him nuts, that actually seemed to bother the boys. The big blowout between Roy and his wife, played so so well by Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr in her prime '70s frazzled sexy suburban housewife years, is staged with a startlingly realistic eye by Spielberg. When they're gone, they're gone. She takes the kids, she takes off, and Roy moves on with his life, as crazy and as strange as it is. That's one of the reasons it's so important when he finally finds Melinda Dillon at the train station in the middle of all of that chaos. It proves to him that somebody else is going through this, that someone else can understand what it is, and it makes him feel a little less crazy and alone and afraid. Roy doesn't choose to leave his family. Roy doesn't choose to have the dreams about Devil's Tower. The movie is a tragedy for Roy for most of its running time.
It's only in the very end of the film that Roy finds what it is that he needs to complete himself. When he gets on the ship at the end of the film, it is a triumph for him. We want Roy to get on that ship. We want him to get the answers to the questions that he has. He was chosen for something, it seems, so why shouldn't he go on that ship? When I saw the film the first time, I was glad he left. I was happy for him.
But watching the film with my boys, they both turned on Roy in that final moment. They were both upset by his decision. They both had the same question for me when it was over.
“Would you leave us?”
There is probably no scarier question for both parent and child. I didn't hesitate when telling the boys that I would never leave them, but I know there's no guarantee that my wife and I will always be together. We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary, and those are ten hard-won years. I hope my boys grow up in a loving united house. I think every parent hopes that. You want to give them something to model their lives after. You want to do well so they see what it looks like. I married my wife precisely because I want to grow old with her. I hope we see our children happy and healthy as adults, and I hope we see grandchildren who are every bit as beautiful as these kids we share. My boys know that several times per year I leave for extended visits to film festivals, film sets, or press events. Separation is part of our routine. In some ways, it seems to be the trade-off for getting to work at home most of the time. I get to be around my children for breakfast, lunch, and bedtime, more often than many fathers who work out of the house. I know I'm fortunate. I try not to complain about the travel I do for work. I love the festivals I go to, and I love the way they shape my year. I love being able to go to Cannes. I love knowing several trips to Austin are on my permanent annual schedule. Those are things that are important to me. So I work overtime to make sure my kids understand that I always plan to come back from those events. Those are temporary pleasures. I make sure to reassure the boys each time that they are my greatest pleasure.
Roy Neary, though, gets on that spaceship. He never looks back. He can't wait to leave this planet behind, and he knows whatever is next, it will be better. Seeing Roy so happy to be leaving the planet upset my kids. There's no other way to put it. The ending upset them and we spent a long time talking after the film. It was clear that it wasn't the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence that most excited them about the movie, or that marked them most deeply. Toshi needed to understand why Roy had the dream he had, and what had set off Roy in his madness. The more we talked, the more it became clear that the thing Toshi feared in the movie was the loss of one's mind. The concept of “crazy” is just starting to really get hold of him, and it has become his primary fear. He talks about Mr. Hyde as something that scares him, and he told me that it was because "you could have Mr. Hyde in you and not know it." Even with Roy's joy at the end of the film, so much of it seemed so dark to Toshi that he wasn't able to enjoy the ending. As the closing credits began to play, Toshi turned to me, scowling, and said, "Daddy, I hope they made another one called 'Close Encounters: What Happened To That Guy?', because that is a really bad ending for the movie."
It's the first Spielberg movie that they have not asked to see again, and while they both told me since the screening that they liked the movie, I think it is one of the first times they were left genuinely off-balance at the end of a film. Up till now, movies have happy endings. That's the way movies work. That's what they were being taught. And now, thanks to the way they read this particular film, that's not true any more.
Now they know that sometimes, things don't end happy. Sometimes, dads leave.
Just knowing that I introduced that fear into their world, just knowing that they've got a crack in the trust that is innate among children for the first few years of life, just knowing that this thing I shared with them hurt them in some way made this the single hardest Film Nerd 2.0 that I've written so far. I don't think I made a misstep. I shared it with them in the same way I've shared everything with them, and I feel like we've had good discussions about it that were productive. Even so, the film touched them in a way that rewired them permanently, and I realized that part of the process of letting our kids experience culture is that we have to let them have experiences that they find unpleasant or that they struggle with or that they are upset by, and maybe the real value of a relationship like the boys and I have is that I know that they're going to look to me to help them process things, and they're going to actively think about the questions raised by the film. Even if some small piece of their innocence was chipped away here by this anti-"Mary Poppins" in science-fiction form, at least we were able to talk about it afterwards so that they weren't just struggling with it on their own.
Next time out, I think it's time we have some fun. In fact, the next few Film Nerd 2.0 columns are going to be about some pure popcorn, and those should be coming sooner rather than later. This one particular column took a while to write, but we've been screening in the meantime, and we've got a bit of catching up to do including the appearance of our very first Film Nerd 2.0 guest professor.
"Film Nerd 2.0" remains, in every sense of the word, an irregular column:
"The Last Starfighter" on Blu-ray (9.7.09)
"Popeye," empathy, and David Bowie's codpiece (9.21.09)
Talking Heads, 'Astro Boy,' and "Willy Wonka" on Blu-ray (10.26.09)
"The Dark Crystal," featuring a guest appearance by Toshi's little brother (12.2.09)
"Help!", in which Toshi discovers the Beatles, especially Ringo (1.4.10)
'Last Action Hero" introduces Toshi to Armer Shirtzganoma (1.18.10)
A Tale Of Two Zorros (2.23.10)
"Clash Of The Titans" on Blu-ray (4.2.10)
"Jason And The Argonauts" on Blu-ray and Harryhausen at AMPAS (8.9.10)
"Time Bandits," "Mars Attacks," and letting go (9.7.10)
"Toshi and Allen encounter high adventure with 'The Goonies'" (3.6.11)
"'Tron' vs 'Babe' on Blu-ray" (4.19.11)
"Toshi and Allen head to Asgard for 'Thor'" (5.4.11)
"Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA dazzles and disturbs" (6.6.11)
"We kick off a special series with a first viewing of 'Star Wars' on Blu-ray" (9.22.11)
"We finally reach The Moment with 'Empire Strikes Back' on Blu-ray" (10.3.11)
"We flashback to 'The Phantom Menace' as the 'Star Wars' series continues" (10.10.11)
"Yoda seals the deal for 'Attack Of The Clones' on Blu-ray" (10.18.11)
"'Revenge Of The Sith' devastates the kids as Anakin falls from grace (10.23.11)
"We scare the crap out of the kids with 'Jurassic Park' on Blu-ray" (10.26.2011)
"The hero's journey ends with 'Return Of The Jedi' on Blu-ray" (11.6.2011)
"Toshi and Kermit and Miss Piggy in the first ever Film Nerd 2.0 interview" (11.16.2011)
"We wrap up 2011 with 'The Muppet Movie' and pick our slate for 2012" (1.10.2012)
"The boys hit the road for 'Pee Wee's Big Adventure'" (1.16.2012)
"Film Nerd 2.0 gets a sneak peek at 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace' in 3D" (2.8.2012)
"Film Nerd 2.0 heads to Skywalker Ranch for a weekend of 'Star Wars'" (2.9.2012)
"Lightsaber battles, model making, and the return of Darth Maul" (2.9.2012)
"Sneaky stormtroopers and breakfast with R2 in the last Film Nerd 'Star Wars' diary" (2.10.2012)
"A screening of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' uplifts, enlightens, and even terrifies" (2.15.2012)
"What happens when I realize I hate a film the boys love?" (3.20.2012)
"An evening of '20,000 Leagues' and Mickey Mouse cartoons" (4.1.2012)
"'Mary Poppins' thrills the kids and destroys Dad" (4.28.2012)
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July 23, 2012 at 8:15AM EST Reply to CommentI'm going to side with your boys on this one Drew. I remember watching this when I was a kid and thinking the same thing when Roy boards the ship at the end. I always thought it was such a selfish decision and always left me feeling empty. I look at the film differently now, but back then it made me sad to think a father could just abandon his family.
safariben
July 23, 2012 at 8:18AM EST Reply to CommentWow Drew! Thank you for this! You've been a favorite film writer of mine for many years and it's articles like this that are the reason why!
Close Encounters is my favorite film, a deeply personal film to me. You and I were about the same age when we first saw it. I've always looked at it as a hopeful film with a happy ending. But recently I watched it with my girlfriend, the girl I know I want to spend the rest of my life with, and my perspective of the film has changed! She asked similar questions that your kids did about the ending. I tried to tell her, "No, honey, it's actually a wonderful, beautiful life affirming movie!" But then I realize that it's actually just the young film geek in me saying that! I was six years old when I saw it in 1977 and I had a distant father, so maybe part of me understood Roy wanting to leave, maybe I too wanted to get away, to see what else is out there! I have a wonderful relationship with my father now, but back then when my father wasn't around so much I guess I needed more. I'm sure that's why I connected with the film the way I did!
I guess that's what great art does once your life experiences change or grow...it itself changes. I think back to how Spielberg said after having kids he could never make the same film. When I first heard him say that I thought, how dare you say that about a film I love, a film I consider perfect. But ya know, now I get it! Now with my girlfriend in my life there is no way I would ever think of leaving the way Roy does.
Close Encounters will always be my favorite film and now I welcome seeing how it will change as I grow!
Thank you for sharing Drew!
Mark The Distant Father aspect is spot on. I was much older when I saw CE, about 10 or 11 years old and I was enthralled with it. Not once did I ever think of the ending as something sad or tragic or selfish until I was an adult. And like you, I had a father who was distant. I was much closer to my Mom, and therefore, the scenes of Barry being literally pulled out of his Mother's arms were unsettling because I was old enough to know the horror she was going through in that moment. My Dad frequently did things that perplexed and angered me as a child, so when Roy begins to lose his mind, I actually felt anger towards him. I was roughly the same age as the oldest son in the Neary family and my feelings towards Roy mirrored his. By the end, I was just relieved to see that Roy found peace. But it's interesting that I never gave a second thought about what he was leaving behind.
July 23, 2012 at 11:32AM ESTJoeK
July 23, 2012 at 8:28AM EST Reply to CommentWe are about the same age and when I saw Close Encounters my reaction was similar to Toshi's. It was also about the same time my parent's divorced so it was very difficult to reconcile. We were all Star Wars crazy and that whole sci-fi thing is what drew me/us to this movie in some ways. It was tough to process. My most vivid memory of the summer that movie came out is poring over trading cards from it. I distinctly remember getting a couple of packs (alongside some Star Wars packs) at the old corner drug store in my hometown and riding my bike home with them all in tow. I'm pretty sure there was a card from the scene discussed that I spent a long time looking at...trying to comprehend it (i.e. the look on Dreyfus' face - trying to process his mindset, etc.).
Of course my appreciation for this side of the movie has grown with maturity and I think it's telling how Spielberg himself has said he couldn't make that ending now being a father and I understand why completely being one myself. Even so I think it's as clear an example as any of the way that movies didn't used to pander in ways they might now. Many movies that defined our generation of movie nerds were downright scary, if not intentionally ambiguous or hard for young minds to penetrate. It's to their credit that they were still embraced so strongly and it's also why they endure.
Dave I
July 23, 2012 at 11:10AM EST Reply to CommentInteresting viewing choice.
I agree with your kids. O.k., I cheated, I read something about this not long ago how it's kind of tragic that Roy leave his family and all humanity behind. To rephrase that, he is overjoyed to leave behind his wife and children without a second thought, essentially abandoning them in search for some selfish answers. Thinking about it, it seems incredibly selfish, shallow, and a choice that virtually nobody with anything to live for would make had they given any thought on the consequences.
I am not saying it is not a great movie, and I am totally fine with sad or ambiguous endings. I am saying that it is a bit strange and shallow for somebody to turn their back on their wife and children in a Faustian quest for answers. What is more important, the aliens in the cool spaceships alongside the answers they will answer, or the family you built with actual human interactions, emotions, and the ties that bind us? Not to mention any of the previous abductees. They are dumped in a future time where they would be disorientated by the jump in time and all their friends a/o family dead or having moved on. That reads more like a sad (maybe even chilling or horror) movie than an awe-inspiring adventure. You would lose everything you had worked your whole life for. I have to wonder if that exact sentiment did not play a part in why the protagonists in these alien movies end up NOT going home with the aliens (if/when they have a choice), since every filmmaker saw this ending and pretty much thought to themselves how selfish that was and how it would totally destroy the lives as they know it of everyone involved.
-Cheers
Jeffmc2000
July 23, 2012 at 11:12AM EST Reply to CommentI saw this when I was around 10, and I always remember identifying with Richard Dreyfuss more than the kids. That household always seemed so chaotic and annoying that I was always happy when they were finally out of the picture. Although I probably would have rather played goofy golf than gone to see Pinocchio, too.
Mark It was no accident that the Neary family was portrayed as being so disjointed and that Ronnie wasn't a particular sympathetic wife. It implies on some level that that Spielberg knew the decision to leave Earth would be a morally questionable one for Roy (at least in the audience's eyes) so he portrayed the home life as being something chaotic, scattered and lacking in empathy. It's telling that when given the chance to move closer to the Mother Ship, Jillian chooses to keep her distance. Her quest was to be reunited with her child and she has no desire to leave her life behind. The subtext and the moral question is certainly there in the way those two characters react to the alien visitation, even if Spielberg wasn't fully conscious of it at the time.
July 23, 2012 at 11:45AM ESTEarl Doom
July 23, 2012 at 12:13PM EST Reply to CommentI saw this as an adult because the popularity of CEO3K had been eclipsed by the Star Wars sequels and other 80s sci-fi-stravaganzas (added to which, it didn't play frequently on TV) when I was a kid. I didn't even know of it until I read a Cracked magazine reprint of it in the mid-90s.
I think even as a kid, I would have sided with Roy. The guy was being driven insane by a vision he couldn't purge, and if he stayed on Earth, he would've eventually done so. I was an obsessive kid, so I knew the frustration of a nagging thought that wouldn't leave and the ecstasy of having it answered. While I admit that not being a father taints my perspective, I would have always been aware that Roy's life would have been hell had he stayed on Earth, and that leaving was the only thing he could do because only the aliens were the ones who could take the thought out of his mind.
This only re-affirms my previous conviction that Toshi is a neurological moralist while Allen seems to be a more relativistic thinker. The fact that Toshi fears instability to the point of being incapable of analyzing relative perspective makes me think he'll develop contempt for art in general later in life while Allen might actually seek out directors like Bergman, Von Trier or Haneke as he ages.
freesnowcones That's some creepy analysis there, buddy. Framing a child's discomfort at a father leaving earth as a handicap of being able to "analyze relative perspective" leading inexorably (of course) to "contempt for art"? Wow.
August 1, 2012 at 1:47PM ESTFastbak
July 23, 2012 at 12:40PM EST Reply to CommentPutting all the Roy leaving his family for aliens stuff aside, CE3K has so many great Spielberg touches. I love when Roy drives out to check a power line and he sees the lights of a car behind him and waves it on to pass him. Then he sees another pair of lights behind him and waves it on and while he looks down the lights rise! Another great moment is when Truffaut and his team are in India and a huge crowd who saw the aliens the night before and chanting the five note motif they heard. The leader asks the crowd where the sounds came from and all these fingers point straight up!
KevinS
July 23, 2012 at 1:58PM EST Reply to CommentDrew, On the old mega-set Criterion laserdisc, Spielberg reveals what Cary Guffey saw on that kitchen set that got the reaction he (SS) wanted: a guy in an Easter Bunny costume.
Biddle
July 23, 2012 at 2:12PM EST Reply to CommentI saw Close Encounters when it was in the theatres and I came out of it pretty pissed off. Our dad abandoned our family when I was quite young, so at that time I was unable to see it from Roy's point of view. I thought I was seeing a movie about aliens and adventure so I went in unprepared.
Like you as my daugther grew up I introduced her to films that I loved as a kid and now that she's 17 I'm realizing there's movies that we still need to watch together. She saw "Heart and Souls" on the netflix list with Robert Down Jr's name on it and went "Dude! What's that?" last weekend. I couldn't believe I hadn't shown it to her, I love that movie. So we had a pretty good movie watching session with that one.
Close Encounters is a movie I never,ever considered showing her, mostly because of my initial reaction as a kid. I watched it again as a young adult and was able to appreciate it for the amazing film it is and for Richard Dreyfuss' performance. However, as a kid from a broken home watching a family fall apart because of the father's action and then him leaving for good... man that wrecked me. By the time that movie came out I'd been fatherless for quite a long time and was used to it, but watching the movie and suddely confronting all of the complicated emotions that I didn't even know I had was pretty hard, especially because I strolled in expecting a fun alien flick. lol.
So when I started reading your article I was surprised that you were screening this movie with your boys, but I also recognize that this was my own personal experience. I'm pretty hypersensitive to the subject so when going through a list of movies for my kid to watch when she was young, I always put that one aside because I never wanted her to worry that I'd ever leave her.
I'm not questioning your choice of course, just sharing my own expeience as a father who has spent the last decade or so his child to movies that I love.
Now that she's 17 though I should get around to watching that move with her.
Biddle Oh I negected to list my age when I was it, I was around 13 I think.
July 23, 2012 at 2:13PM ESTFranklynStreet
July 23, 2012 at 3:10PM EST Reply to CommentThanks, Drew. This column is one of my favorite online things to read, and I appreciate the way you've chosen to share these experiences with your boys. I remember seeing the film as a child on television. The first Spielberg films I saw in the theatre were E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and those were both tough on me in different parts-- the face-melting in Raiders, and subsequently the search through the woods with the flashlights in E.T., because the Spielberg style was so consistent in those days and I was ready for something scary to happen with the aliens or the government agents from the director who had scarred my psyche with the melting faces the year previous. At the time I would have been 8 for Raiders and 9 for E.T., which means I hadn't seen Close Encounters theatrically at age 4. I must have seen it around the same time as E.T. on a television (re)broadcast.
Anyway, my point is this. I remember being split on Roy leaving the planet. It did bother me to some degree that he would go to the extreme of leaving the planet-- that there was absolutely nothing left for him that he would leave all of humanity behind. I had the spirit of an artist and a dreamer at that age, so a part of me identified with Roy and his journey in the film, and I wasn't as obsessed with him leaving his family behind. I guess to me, it seemed like his family had already left him, and in that sense, that he was the victim. I identified with him as the protagonist, and didn't have an adult's perspective to think that he could or should fight for his family, or that he had a particular responsibility to hold his childrens' psyches together. A part of me assumed that his wife leaving was initially a temporary thing, and that Roy would be able to return to his life with them once he worked through what he was going through. I always felt like, at the conclusion of the film, Roy had the answers he needed, and could have made the choice at that point to return to his family, his obsessions sated. But Roy's extreme decision to actually leave the planet, to live on some cold alien spacecraft without proper food, clothing, shelter, amenities, etc., to communicate with some creatures he couldn't have a regular conversation with seemed to be to be incredibly existentially bleak. It wasn't so much that he was leaving his family behind at that point, although that was part of it, but that he was leaving all of humanity behind. I think that at the time, I had an inherent understanding of Roy's "madness," of the way a person can be obsessed by something, as I always had a similar relationship with my own creativity. I could get lost in story ideas and storytelling-- I was a voracious reader reading full novels by the age of 3, and I wanted to be a writer and then a film director from a very young age. So I chalked up Roy's choice to the fact that he had been temporarily blinded by the depth of his obsession, and that this was not something that he had any control over. It's almost like his curiosity had become a disease, and until he cured the disease by seeing it through to its end, there were no other choice he could make. Yet still, no matter how much his decision to leave Earth behind was made with or without full conscious choice, the extremity that decision still bothered me... because I felt, even then, that if you completely divorce yourself from all of humanity, that does it even matter what the answers are? And that while I could allow him his earlier smaller choices to indulge himself and follow his quest through to its end, this decision to leave everything behind was pure selfishness to the point that he was choosing to destroy his own identity, and destroy himself. But I think that in the 70s and the 80s, our media wasn't afraid to at least subconsciously ask these big questions, and I feel like there was a discourse and a growth and an evolution happening in the general subconscious because of it. Now everything seems so aimed at being pure entertainment, with a team of executives writing and approving everything by committee, so intent on filtering out anything that goes beyond satiating the masses and having an actual point to it. Ironically, it does feel like the last big questions of the pop culture zeitgeist were posed with the first Matrix film, and since then we have become the Matrix. But back to my point.
As for the boys, it does seem like there is a knee-jerk reaction in them to worry about the fracturing of family or the loss of their Dad right now. And with Toshi and his Mr. Hyde stuff, this is advancing beyond his worry about something causing you to leave them behind, but also something in himself. Earl Doom calls him a neurological moralist, but I would simply call it a developing understanding of choices and consequences, and quite the opposite. He's simply at an age where he's beginning to be able to ponder the questions. Children often don't want boundaries, but need them. And good parents understand the role of authority and its necessity. It's all a part of how we define our existence, capabilities, and desires. Sometimes it can be scary to think that we can make choices that we may desire in some part, but that may be harmful or hurtful to us in other ways, particularly emotionally. Maybe it would help Toshi to watch something that reaffirms that those choices existing don't have to be the makings of tragedy or lead to bleak existentialism-- that we still have the ability to MAKE the choices, and that we empower ourselves by making the choice that is the most helpful and nurturing for us (or whatever we seek from the result). Just because you realize that a choice CAN be made, doesn't mean that you have to make it. But the realization that you have the power to make it, that you COULD jump off of that building in the moment you're standing next to the edge, can be a powerful and scary realization. So might I suggest some things where the main character has this realization, and struggles with it, and learns to empower himself with the making of the choice. Unbreakable could be interesting, because that's a character who has suffered by NOT making a choice, and who's family has suffered. And finally he finds the strength to make it, to save himself and come into his own power. I think ultimately you may have opened a door with the whole second Star Wars trilogy and the storyline that Vader chose to become evil. Perhaps it's time to balance it out with characters not ascending into a hero role, but consciously CHOOSING the hero role. Obviously there are a lot of instances of this in comic books, although those particular takes on the character may not have been the priority in a lot of film adaptations. Maybe Donner's original Superman?
Earl Doom Donner's SUPERMAN? Damn, sir that is a GOOD choice. They're EXACTLY the right age for that one.
July 23, 2012 at 3:42PM EST
July 23, 2012 at 4:22PM ESTAnd as for the Superman thing, I think some of what I'm thinking of comes more into play in Superman II (that's where Superman gave up his powers, right?)... so maybe a double feature, or considering how hard it can be for you to carve out blocks of time, the two films seen separately but subsequently within a week or two? I think they'd also work as the pure popcorn films you're looking for, too.
KlarkKent
July 23, 2012 at 5:15PM EST Reply to CommentSadly it was a rare experience for me to get to go to the movies as a kid. When I was very young the theaters (both a moviehouse and a drive-in) in my hometown of a couple thousand closed down and didn't reopen until I was nearly in junior high school. I didn't see any of the Star Wars films in the theater. Or E.T. (Though I didn't end up liking it anyway.) I still haven't seen Close Encounters, though I do plan to rectify that. Nearly every movie I have a memory of seeing on the big screen in my youth was a Disney or Bluth film. Robin Hood at the drive-in, Song of the South during it's final theatrical run, An American Tale, Land Before Time... Perhaps that's why I enjoyed taking my nephews to the movies when I lived nearby, even when the movies weren't great. If I ever do have kids, I have to imagine getting to share all this great stuff with them will be one of the highlights of it. In the meantime, this is pretty much my favorite series of articles on films and I thank you for sharing it.
psychedelicMF
July 23, 2012 at 7:20PM EST Reply to CommentClose Encounters is one of a fair number of movies that I don’t remember exactly when I first saw them in their entirety from beginning to end. I saw pieces of them on television, cable, or because somebody happened to be watching them, but not as a whole until sometime later. I imagine I was 9 or 10 when I saw CE as a whole, but it might have been a couple years later. I was 3 when CE was released. My Mom greatly disliked it because the scenes of the boy being kidnapped scared her seeing how I was only a little tyke. But both parents saw it as a great film that was a testament to Spielberg’s genius.
As a young teen, I think I saw the ending as happy, filled with hope, and inspiring awe because We, the human race, had contacted another intelligent life form, it was a positive experience, and our world and universe became a less lonely and better place. Roy Neary was beside the point. I suppose my feelings reflected Truffaut’s character. Also, my parents divorced when I was 9 so Neary going away wouldn’t have upset me as much.
Suggestion for next Film Nerd 2.0 movie: the original The Day The Earth Stood Still. The threat and friendliness of aliens are also nebulous but to a much greater degree, especially when the entire story is revealed. Children also play a big role. There’s a awesome robot and it’s a heck of a yarn.
David D.
July 23, 2012 at 8:26PM EST Reply to CommentDrew, I suspect that this will make an extraordinary book when you compile these columns. Have you given any thought to this, and how old the boys will have to be before you attempt it?
Tennyson
July 23, 2012 at 9:40PM EST Reply to CommentThat was a fantastic piece, Drew. I was that age when my Mom got aggressive with me at the video store, for sure.
If they're able to engage Close Encounters so handily, is it time for The Little Tramp? I LOVED The Great Dictator when I was young, and City Lights. Just a thought!
drew Funny you'd say that. Yesterday Toshi decided he wanted to see "Modern Times" just because he liked the Blu-ray cover. They both watched it, and at the end, they asked me for more Chaplin. This is on their own, without any prompting.
July 24, 2012 at 7:21PM ESTConspiracy
July 25, 2012 at 1:20PM EST Reply to CommentMyself..I remember being happy as hell he got away from that miserable family. Rotten kids, wife more concerned with what the neighbors think and her meal ticket than about him, and a house kept like a pig pen. Nope...I was happy he got on with ET...still am...and I imagine lots of guys would make that same choice.
Danielsan
January 15, 2013 at 4:32PM EST Reply to CommentUm, you spell your younger son's name differently throughout the article.
Your son's name, dude. Wtf.