Nov 29 2008
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Yesterday, I was watching television when I came across Close Encounters of the Third Kind on AMC. It was being shown as part of their Thanksgiving marathon. For those that don’t know what a close encounter of the third kind is, it is contact with an extraterrestrial. This movie from 1977 is from Steven Spielberg, and it stars Richard Dreyfuss. It follows a man’s journey when he becomes obsessed with unidentified flying objects. People think he has lost it. His wife leaves him and takes his children with her.
By the end of the movie, we see that he isn’t crazy. Several small space crafts communicate with human kind before a larger craft comes down to communicate. After a long moment of time doing this, the ship finally opens and out walks several humans that had been abducted over the years. Abduction is a close encounter of the fourth kind. Some of the people being returned had been missing for years. Some were from the mysterious Flight 19, which I plan to talk about at another time. The movie ends with Dreyfuss’ character being taken into the spaceship by the alien beings.
Until I watched the movie last night, I hadn’t seen it in years. I forgot what an amazing movie it actually is. It is a classic science fiction film from one of the best. The last half hour of the film with the communication and the eventual landing of the space craft is really some of the best scenes in cinematic history. The fact that musical tones are used to communicate shows us that music is universal. The first sighing of the alien had me completely engaged with the movie. It is definitely one of the best, and it makes us think about that we are not alone. We really can’t be alone.
