Close Encounters

I watched Close Encounters of The Third Kind for the very first time only a few days ago. For someone who loves cinema and has watched a fair bit, this is a strange and inexplicable miss but now that is resolved. There is a benefit to watching something this iconic almost fifty years after it was made. There is a certain innocence and naiveté about the storyline but for me it did not take away from the quality of the visually stunning experience. I particularly liked the sequence of scenes where Roy is slipping out of control because the close encounter has taken such a strong hold of his mind. He gathers supplies from his and his neighbor's yards to put together a model of the mountain he has seen in in mind - he believes it is important and he must know what is really happening. The lady next door is watching in awe but continues to blow dry her hair as the wild scene plays out. The wife in stupefied by all this and decides to gather the kids up in her car and leave - she just can't take his descent into madness anymore. That line between what is crazy versus perceived as crazy is a precarious one. 

Without context it is hard to tell where something should fall. Maybe if the wife and kids had had the same experience as Roy, they would feel more solidarity with him, things might end up differently but they did not. The idea of a friendly alien society trying to make musical contact with humanity is a comforting one. Like E.T, this is a kid's movie I think but a great one. I remember watching E.T when I was young and having liked it but having an entirely different experience watching with J when she was a child and seeing it through her eyes, the magic and wonderment that she saw. It would have been a miss for me to not have watched with her because I was able to enjoy the movie in a very different way. I felt the same way about Close Encounters - this is something an adult should watch with young children.