Mysterious Ways

More than one critic has written that Close Encounters is a seriously religious film rather than a deeply humanist one. (Source) The aliens are the stand-in for gods or God, and Roy is the chosen one who hears God's call and is saved. Here's some of the evidence these critics cite:

• The aliens come from the heavens.
• Roy's blinding vision looks a lot like the apostle Paul's on the road to Damascus.
• Roy's kids are watching The Ten Commandments on television. This prefigures Roy as a Moses who's going to have to lead the people to freedom and enlightenment. Well, he leads Jillian at least.
• We see a Budweiser commercial on TV during the news broadcast. Sample lyric: "The King is coming, let's hear the call."
• Barry's abduction represents the Rapture, a Christian belief that believers will be physically taken up to Heaven just before the end of the world. Think "The Leftovers."
• All-knowing beings show up to save our terribly misguided world.
• The returned pilots represent the resurrection of the dead.
• Roy can leave his wife and kids because it's part of God's plan, like in the New Testament's Luke 14:26: "If you come to me but will not leave your family, you cannot be my follower. You must love me more than your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters—even more than your own life!
• Roy's ascent into the mother ship also symbolizes the Rapture.

Whatever you believe about this theological interpretation of the film, there's definitely a spiritual vibe throughout. Wonder and awe are important aspects of religious experience, and the film's got that in abundance. But it's way above Shmoop's pay grade to speculate about whether it's a movie about God or if Spielberg's suggesting that God is really a super-intelligent alien who holds humanity's fate in his or her hands.

Other Worldly

If you've been playing video games as long as we have, chances are you've killed your fair share of aliens. Since the early days of Space Invaders—yes, some of us remember Space Invaders, what of it?—to the HD murder fest of the Halo series, aliens have been the go-to cannon fodder for the games industry since the late 70s (and even longer in Hollywood). No doubt the name "Player 1" echoes through the nightmares of many a distant planet.

But in all that digital destruction, did you ever stop and wonder, "Hey, what are these guys about? Like really about?"

Close Encounters provides us an opportunity to consider that question. By not taking a single shot at the extraterrestrials, the movie gives us time to ponder what they represent to us, both in this film and in others. And the best answer we found is the Other.

Other from Another Mother

Yes, that's "Other," not "other." When capitalized, the word becomes a philosophical term that dates back to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. (Don't worry, it won't be on the exam.) It means "an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way." (Source)

Groups can perceive Otherness based on pretty much anything; religion, race, political affiliation, favorite sports teams, even different high school cliques.

The extraterrestrials represent the ultimate Other. Their skin color is as inhuman as their body shapes, they have unexplainable technology, we don't know their language. While the film doesn't tell us anything about their politics or religion, we're guessing neither the Democratic party nor Christianity have taken root on their home planet. (They're probably Yankee fans, though—we can't imagine that George Steinbrenner wasn't broadcasting games intergalactically.)

This Otherness is scary at first. Since the aliens lack the ability to communicate with us in ways we'd understand, they have no way to inform us of their intentions. Borrowing Flight 19 and the Cotopaxi was a menacing move, and their advanced technology is frightening; it implies we'd have no recourse if they turn violent.

But hey, it's all just a huge misunderstanding. Consider the scene where the aliens abduct Barry for a, er, sleepover. Unfamiliar with the human custom of knocking on the door, the aliens invade Jillian's house. They shine light through the windows, they attempt to crawl through the chimney, and their technology goes absolutely haywire on Jillian's home appliances. It's terrifying because we don't know what they're really about.

Communication Nation

When the mother ship arrives at the alien landing site, it's no Death Star. We see the humans and aliens begin to communicate. Computers do it at first, but later Lacombe personally teaches an alien the hand signs for the five-tonal phrase. The alien responses in kind, and each shares a smile of understanding.

With each advance in communication, the aliens become less threatening, less Other. The mother ship feels imposing as the massive structure bears down upon the landing site, but as it begins to talk with the synthesizer player, our fear quickly fades, giving way to fascination and even fondness. When the aliens finally appear, they look, well, alien. But when that final alien smiles at Lacombe, we see its human qualities as well. Those are the qualities we can relate to.

The film proposes that if we can learn to communicate with the Other, we will learn to not fear it. For its 1970s American audience, this was an important message. As Spielberg told an interviewer in the TBS documentary Spielberg on Spielberg, "If we can talk to aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, why not with the Reds in the Cold War?" (Source).

If we look at the aliens themselves, we can see the film doubling down on this message. These extraterrestrials aren't a uniform species. (Of course, we know that already from watching the Star Wars cantina scene.) One species of CE3K alien sports a spindly body and arms, looking almost arachnid as it walks. Others look like the classic Roswell alien spliced with ten-year-old girls. And the final alien looks like E.T. In other words, they're each other's Other. But they have learned to work together toward a common goal, likely because they've learned to communicate.

The movie suggests that if we can just learn to connect somehow, we can live in harmony with other life forms. (For an opposing viewpoint, see Mars Attacks!)