Spielberg Blogathon: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

"I don't think he was left here intentionally, but his being here is a miracle, Elliot. It's a miracle and you did the best that anybody could do. I'm glad he met you first."

- E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

The biggest movie of the great year 1982 was a modest little story about the unexpected friendship between a gentle little boy...and a lost alien.

Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial shattered box office records on its release and became the highest-grossing film of all time, even beating out George Lucas's powerhouse Star Wars (1977). 

On a personal note, I remember trying to see the Spielberg film three times, and being confronted each time with lines that stretched around the movie theater, and beyond that, around a city block.  Finally, I nudged, bumped and pushed my way into an overcrowded, tiny multiplex auditorium, and there were literally people camped out in the aisles, seated on the floor.  I've never again been in such a crowded, uncomfortable viewing environment, but when the movie started, that questionable environment just drifted away.  The crowded house fell silent as Spielberg's story captured the imagination.

The summer of 1982 was the summer, no doubt, of E.T.

Yet even thirty years after its blockbuster theatrical debut, the emotional miracle of Steven Spielberg's E.T. remains the film's steadfast ability to make a viewer feel young again; to make the audience sympathize with the world and viewpoint of a child, in particularly the world of lonely Elliott (Henry Thomas).  Spielberg accomplishes this miracle in several deliberate and intelligent ways. 

First, Spielberg's film persistently adopts the physical viewpoint of a child, his camera approximating a level roughly, at the mid-riff of an adult.  His camera stays at a child's eye level, in other words, for the majority of the picture.   And yes, the world looks quite different from down there.

Secondly, the screenplay by Melissa Mathison routinely and persistently makes allusion to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, a well-known fairy tale of perpetual childhood and youth.  Spielberg has often been accused of suffering from the "Peter Pan Syndrome" in terms of his personal fascination with "fantasy" and so-called "childish" material. But here, the story of Peter Pan functions ably on a thematic level, and furthers the director's conceit of making a movie that expresses a child's viewpoint.

And thirdly, E.T. highlights a canny production design that assiduously stresses the importance of friendly "monsters" lurking in modern American pop culture. Spielberg builds a case that a child's "open" mind is the one that can best accept the idea of aliens or the out-of-the-ordinary, or the wondrous.  After all, children are by nature imaginative and trusting, and so can readily accept the notion that what is ugly, or what appears menacing (like the Incredible Hulk, for instance...) can actually be good or heroic.  Spielberg here pioneers the cliche or convention I term "This Boy's Bedroom" (seen also in Tobe Hooper's Invaders from Mars [1986] and recently in J.J. Abrams' Super 8 [2011]) in which a child's internal, emotional, imaginative life is reflected by the toys/memorabilia/hobbies he showcases/displays in his room.

In short, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial -- through this accumulation of carefully wielded film techniques --lands willing viewers back in the bodies and minds of their younger selves, and then depicts a magical, almost timeless tale of cosmic friendship that appeals to our most basic and pure emotions.  It sounds ridiculous, of course, to make such proclamations about "the child within," but in large part, Spielberg's technical choices and selections encourage the idea of awakening that inner kid.

Specifically, in asking us to set aside cynicism and "turn on" our heart lights, Spielberg -- with less sentimentality than he would demonstrate in the later stages of his career -- speaks powerfully in E.T. to the lonely kid inside us all.

"I'm keeping him."

In E.T., an alien spacecraft peopled by pint-sized botanist aliens is forced to leave behind one of the crew on Earth as curious humans approach the forested landing site.

The stranded and frightened alien escapes from several human pursuers, and makes its way to a small suburban community in California.  There, E.T. befriends a boy named Elliott (Henry Thomas), his brother Michael (Robert McNaughton) and his sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore).

E.T. moves into Elliott's house, evading the attention of Elliott's newly separated mother (Dee Wallace).  Soon, E.T. and Elliott develop a symbiotic relationship, experiencing each other's emotions. As the days pass, E.T. plots to construct a communicator so he can contact his alien ship, and arrange for a rescue.  "E.T. Phone Home."

Unfortunately, agents of the government move in to capture and study E.T., even as the alien begins to succumb to an illness associated with his time spent on Earth.  Under the watchful eyes of scientists, E.T. and Elliott are studied, and then E.T. seems to die.

After his apparent death, however, E.T. is unexpectedly resurrected, and Elliott, Michael and Gertie race him to the forest, where his spaceship is returning. 

There, in the woods, two friends must say farewell...

"I'll believe in you all my life, everyday. E.T... I love you."

As the insightful  film scholar Phil Hardy wrote in The Film Encyclopedia, Science Fiction (William Morrow and Co., New York, 1984; page 374), E.T.'s "evocation of childhood is masterful." 

As Hardy also observed: "the film is virtually completely shot from hip height, a literalization of a child's perspective" as is the way Spielberg effortlessly moves from terror through comedy and death..." 

Indeed, Spielberg goes to dramatic lengths to present the world in E.T. as a child might view it, both as wondrous and occasionally terrifying.  As far as the terrifying part goes, E.T.'s pursuers are visually characterized as silhouettes, with swirling flashlights, and jangling keys (hooked to a belt).  These pursuers are designed and visualized to be feared as a monstrous "others" but not recognized as individuals....at least starting out.  They are, as kids would note, "bad guys."

These pursuers are visualized by Spielberg as shadows, mostly, because their motives and personalities are in some way opaque or incomprehensible to children.  These men are symbols of an adult world that Elliott and the others do not understand, and so that's how Spielberg physically represents them: amorphous threats lacking faces. 

Also, one can't fail to note that these figures or darkness and shadow -- with their blinding flashlights and jangling, cacophonous keys -- somehow represent the mysterious nature of science and technology; mysteries somehow antithetical to the organic nature of gentle E.T, a friend the audience is asked to countenance emotionally, not in terms of "what he represents" to men and women in white coats, or in the annals of human history.

Many of Steven Spielberg's films involve broken homes, or the ways that adult lives negatively impact those of children (Close Encounters of the Third Kind [1978], Jurassic Park [1993], and War of the Worlds [2005]), and E.T. follows along the same lines.  Elliott is a sensitive, lonely boy who is having a difficult time because his Mom and Dad "separated recently" and it hasn't "been easy."  When confronted with a mystery in the garden shed, Elliott seeks someone to trust, and notes that his absent Dad -- were he present -- would surely believe his story of a monster/goblin/coyote in the back yard.

Clearly then, Elliott is seeking to find his way in the world alone, and not having much luck with his family connections.  When he befriends E.T., that connection is instant for Elliott.  He and E.T. develop an empathic link, and suddenly know one another totally and thoroughly.   No more mysteries.  No more confusion.  No more capriciousness.  As a kid, don't we all wish for this?  For someone who 'gets' us?

When Elliott (whose give name begins in E. and ends in T., by the way), first speaks to E.T. he suddenly becomes a motor mouth, speaking literally a mile-a-minute.  It's as though he's had to keep his own counsel and feelings to himself for so long that he just can't keep the words from spilling out now.  E.T. is like the (imaginary?) friend who wants to listen, wants to understand, and will never, ever let you down.   Again, he is the kind of friend that kids, especially lonely ones, might dream about.  Discovering E.T. is, in some sense, about wish-fulfillment.

All of this information about Elliott and his isolation from the adult world is sensitively presented in terms of dialogue, but Spielberg's decision to shoot the film from the visual perspective of a child makes the movie all the more heart-breaking and affecting.  We all know remember how, as children, we sometimes felt alone, or small, or confused by our parents' seemingly mercurial behavior.  This movie plays around in that world beautifully and often humorously.  Why exactly can't we call our big brother "Penis Breath" again?

It's quite significant that the one adult man we eventually get to know as a person and not as merely a menacing silhouette, Keys (Peter Coyote), lauds Elliott and his behavior.  He even mentions his own dream from childhood.  "I've been wishing for this since I was ten years old," he says.  He is thus the adult who wishes to be young again.  Peter Pan, all grown up.  Discovering E.T. and Elliott has awakened that child in Keys.  And suddenly, Elliott receives the approbation of the heretofore missing father figure.

That world of children is also excavated in the film by numerous references and allusions to Peter Pan, the story of a boy who refuses to grow up and wants to dwell forever as a child in Never Land.  At first in E.T., Elliott notes that "only little kids can see," E.T., a development which suggests the populace and precise nature of Never Land: only children can get there.  Later in the film, Gertie and her Mother are depicted actually reading Peter Pan, and again there is a discussion about a being/person that only children can see or believe in.

Thus E.T. himself is an embodiment of Peter Pan's child-like milieu.  Like Peter, he can (magically) fly.  And like Tinker Bell, E.T. can come back from the dead if only children wish it to be so.  As Elliott's Mom meaningfully notes, Tinker Bell "thinks she could get well if children believed in fairies."   Here, E.T. comes back to life because Elliott will always believe in him.

What Spielberg gives audiences here is a newfangled Peter Pan story for the 1980s, one in which aliens will come to Earth, perhaps, if we believe in them.  This is the film's ultimate, optimistic destination.  In a beautiful and expressive image, Elliott finds a spaceship at the end of the rainbow.  At the end of childhood and belief (as visualized by the rainbow), there are wonders if only we open our eyes to them, the film seems to state.

One thing I didn't rationally understand (though perhaps intuited or felt...) when I saw this film as a twelve-year old in 1982, is that Steven Spielberg makes his case for cosmic friendship and acceptance by threading pop culture images of friendly monsters and aliens into the film. 

On the TV, This Island Earth (1951) plays in the background, and of course, that's the story of friendly Exeter (Jeff Morrow) and the doomed Metalunans. 

While out trick-or-treating, E.T. encounters Yoda, the Jedi guru of The Empire Strikes Back (1980). 

In Elliott's bedroom, we see quilts and light switches featuring imagery of Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, a "monster" with good intentions and a fearsome physicality. 

In short order, we are also introduced to Lando Calrissian, Hammerhead, Snaggletooth, Walrus Man and other "beings" from the Star Wars (1977) cantina.  There is also much discussion of the Dungeons and Dragons world, where goblins, elves, and other magical creatures exist in the imagination, and act alongside (and against) heroes.

Cumlatively, the idea roiling under the surface of E.T. is that these pop culture influences actually lead children towards an acceptance of what is different, of what might seem terrifying on first blush, but which is actually merely strange in appearance.  Aliens, goblins, and monsters are people too, and to understand them we must look past their two-fingered "sucker"-type hands (another visual reference, perhaps to 1953's War of the Worlds, minus one digit...).  

E.T. purposefully asks audiences to accept that which is alternative or seem different, and judge it not by how it looks.  On the contrary, E.T. and Elliott develop a symbiosis, and so come to understand the feelings of one another.  No matter how different or alien someone may seem, they possess the same feelings that you do.  That too is E.T.'s message.

Some industrious film critics have also compared E.T. to Jesus Christ, and it's easy to see why.  Like Jesus, E.T. is resurrected and ascends to the Heavens, if not Heaven itself.  Like Jesus, E.T. can perform all brands of miracles.  And from both characters (and their respective mythologies) we glean the idea "judge not lest ye be judged."

Despite such a parallel, E.T. gleans its emotional power not from such intellectual comparisons, but from its understanding of friendship, and of the give-and-take, ebb-and-flow that all great relationships must endure.  The end of the film is heartbreaking because it very succinctly understands the simple emotional resonance of having to say "goodbye."

E.T. asks Elliott to return to his home world with him.  Elliott asks E.T. to "stay."  In the end, neither can give up their lives to be with the other, and the friends have no choice but to part.    I remember there was not a dry eye in the house when Elliott spoke his farewell to E .T., and said "I love you."

"We could grow up together, E.T,"  suggests Elliott, filled with hope, and that's the dream of all children.  Life is always easier with a buddy at your side.  I remember, during my own childhood, having to say goodbye to a dear friend who lived next door to me.  He had lived there for three years or so (from 1979 to 1982, just about) and we had become best friends.  And then one day it was all over because his parents wanted to move.  The difficulty of saying goodbye is one I haven't forgotten.

If you've ever seen E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, images from the film will certainly resonate in your memory.  There are  movies out there about cleverer aliens, or more spectacular ones.  But there have rarely been films about aliens that feel as intimate as E.T. does; or that take us back to that vulnerable passage to adulthood. 

E.T. is a movie about an alien who meets a human kid.  But the secret is the kid already feels like an alien, himself.

And, unless you're very, very lucky, you've probably felt that way about yourself at some point too.

Given that you "don't win in life," as Michael says vis-a-vis Dungeon and Dragons, the closest thing we have to winning on Earth is discovering friends we cherish, and spending time with them.  The enduring magic of Spielberg's E.T. remains that -- in this one instance -- not only "little kids" get to see E.T.

We all get to see him, and in doing so, we remember a special time in our own lives when his brand of magic seemed possible.

“This post is part of the SPIELBERG BLOGATHON hosted by Outspoken and Freckled, It Rains… You Get Wet, and Once Upon A Screen taking place August 23-24. Please visit these host blogs for a full list of participating blogs.”

Spielberg Blogathon: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.

But if adventure movies could have three names, they would be Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) remains one of the most brilliantly-crafted action blockbusters of the last several decades, and is a testament to the collaborative efforts of those talents name-checked above. As Richard Schickel noted in his original Time Magazine review: “The simple craftsmanship evident throughout [the film], the attention to detail, which, as the special-effects people like to say, "sells the shot," puts the viewer in mind of an almost vanished habit of meticulous movie-making.”

Like Star Wars (1977) before it, Raiders of the Lost Ark is more than a simple adventure film, however. It is also a pastiche, a descriptor meaning that the film meaningfully draws its inspiration from other, historical works of art. 

In this case, Lucas and Spielberg knowingly style their 1981 adventure film after the serials or chapter-plays of the 1930s and early 1940s.  Nearly every aspect of the picture -- including character “types,” contextual backdrop, and even choice of wardrobe -- emerges from the movie serials of this span. 

But intriguingly, such elements are re-purposed for modern audiences as symbols or signifiers of “innocence” during an epoch of what could fairly be described as cynical, technological movie-making. 

Legendarily, Raiders of the Lost Ark was devised by an exhausted and depleted George Lucas following the difficult production of Star Wars.  The project also appealed to a post-Jaws (1975) and post-1941 (1979) Steven Spielberg on the basis that it would prove a deliberate step-away from -- and rebuke of -- the “mechanical” effects and challenges of those pictures; the worlds of matte-paintings, blue-screens, motion-control cameras, and other cutting edge hardware.

Yet Raiders of the Lost Ark serves as more than mere romantic response to modern, technological filmmaking. It also shares a crucial creative element or conceit with such 1930s films as King Kong (1933).  

In particular, the film serves as both a critique of  a morally rudderless, secular Modernity and as an invitation for contemporary movie audiences to imagine a “larger” world outside the confines of “The West” or “Western Thought.”  

Thus, Raiders of the Lost Ark escorts viewers to a world where not every mystery is resolved, where not every miracle is quantified, and where not every problem is diagnosable.  It showcases a world, quite simply, where you can still believe in magic…and still feel wonder -- and yes, fear -- at facets of life beyond the boundaries of human understanding.

Raiders of the Lost Ark also explicitly concerns the First World’s whole-sale plundering of the Third World for its treasures.  And this plundering -- particularly for golden artifacts -- is no doubt a metaphor for the oil trade, and also for western imperialism or colonialism in general terms.

But intriguingly, the Lucas/Spielberg film also acknowledges that in “excavating” the resource-rich Third World, some heretofore dismissed mystical or mythological aspect of those cultures may find new relevance or meaning in the glittering and advanced -- but ultimately spirit-sapped -- Age of Reason.  

In other words, in the process of strip-mining Africa, the Far East, Peru, or the Middle East for its treasures, the denizens of the First World also discover some lost connection to their own history, or even their diminished sense of spirituality and humanity. 

Beyond the “fortune and glory” of avaricious, individual aspiration stands the possibility of renewing one’s faith, and buttressing lost or faltering belief.  This very notion is the thematic undercurrent not only for Raiders of the Lost Ark, but for all the Indiana Jones films. A world-weary and at times dissolute man of Modernity finds in buried or forgotten Antiquity the magic that is lacking in his life, and in his "new age" of science.  Indiana Jones may claim that Archaeology is the search for facts, not "truth" (the purview of Philosophy, he states), but in terms of the films, this is not strictly the case.

This overriding theme of rediscovered faith in re-discovered articles of Antiquity is powerfully visualized in Raiders of the Lost Ark, especially in regards to the unearthly, dreadful power of the Ark.  The film is rife with literal “Wrath of God”-type visuals which suggest a power outside human comprehension. This unseen, gathering force grows in strength (and anger…) as Nazis and Indiana Jones himself threaten to “disturb” the Ark from it sanctuary and long slumber.

The discovery of this priceless religious artifact in Raiders of the Lost Ark by two figures who have “fallen from faith” -- Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman) -- also pulsates at the heart of the picture.

Both men unexpectedly see their lapsed faith renewed -- though in drastically differing fashions -- during the film’s explosive denouement.  Importantly, however, this new-found sense of faith or belief arises from their reckoning with an ancient Holy Object, one totally outside their respective allegiances during the technological but inhumane World War II era.

To depict a hero who has lost faith and then finds it again, Spielberg frequently crafts visuals (with DP Douglas Slocombe) that diagram remarkable depth and detail, ones heavy on dark and light.  These are the film’s compositions of “shadow,” and they pinpoint a morally uncertain Indiana Jones perched half-way between good and evil.  

He could, it seems, go either way at this juncture, and Raiders of the Lost Ark is his story of, finally, of redemption…of emergence from the shadows of doubt, guilt, and existential angst.

Girded with thrill-a-minute fight sequences and exhilarating chases, Raiders of the Lost Ark thrives even today not only because it is jaunty, good-humored nature, but because it seeks to excavate in its audience a well-spring of authentic wonder, a belief that those things that seem buried in our past --whether a holy relic, the tradition of the 1930s movie serial, or even an individual sense of spirituality -- can find relevance and new meaning in an age of cynicism and calculation.

“Inside the Ark are treasures beyond your wildest aspirations.”

After returning empty-handed from a hazardous trip to Peru, archaeologist and professor Indiana Jones (Ford) is contacted at his university by two officers from U.S. Army Intelligence.

These officers inform Indy that Adolf Hitler is “obsessed with the occult” and that he has sent his armies across the globe to recover any relics or treasures relating to it.  Within Hitler’s reach now is the Ark of the Covenant, the mysterious container which is believed to have once housed the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. 

Mankind has searched for the Ark for three thousand years, and now Hitler wants it because it can “level mountains” and render any army which carries it “invincible.”

During their world-wide hunt for the Ark, the Nazis have also revealed an unusual interest in Abner Ravenwood, Indy’s American mentor, with whom he had a falling out some time ago. Ravenwood possesses the head-piece of the “Staff of Ra,” a ceremonial object that can locate the precise location of the Ark inside the long-buried city of Tanis. 

Army Intelligence wants Jones to acquire the head-piece first, and also recover the Ark before the Nazis can do so.

Indy’s first stop on this journey is Nepal.  There, he learns that Ravenwood is dead, and that Marion (Karen Allen), Abner’s beautiful daughter, is in possession of the head-piece.  Marion is also Indy’s former lover -- and a spurned one at that -- and is reluctant to part with the jeweled head-piece because of the bad blood between them. 

When Nazi agents, led by the sinister Toht (Ronald Lacey), burn down Marion’s bar in pursuit of the same artifact, however, she agrees to partner with Jones on his quest.

Indy and Marion head to Cairo next, where they work with Indy’s old friend and an expert digger, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) to locate the Tanis Map Room.   Sallah reports that the Nazis are digging in the wrong place, and that there is still time to excavate and recover the Ark from the Well of Souls.

After several hazardous brushes with the Nazis and his French rival, Belloq (Freeman), Indy and Marion finally retrieve the Ark...and then once more lose the prized artifact to them.

In the end, Indiana Jones and Marion must stand witness to the mysterious and fearsome powers of the Ark of the Covenant, as Belloq does the unthinkable, and opens it…

“The Ark…it is something that man was not meant to disturb. Death has always surrounded it. It is not of this Earth.” 

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hollywood studios such as Republic, Universal, Mascot, and Columbia succeeded at the box office by producing a steady diet of serials, or chapter plays.  These adventure films highlighted weekly cliff-hangers and stories of derring-do.  Audiences watched these chapter-plays (usually about twenty-minutes in duration per segment…) and then returned to the theater the following ten weeks or so to see how their heroes fared following apparently-impossible-to-escape perils.

These 1930s-1940s serials arrived in a variety of modes or genres, but can nonetheless be organized by four categories, broadly-speaking.  There were space-based serials (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers), superhero serials (Batman, Captain America, Captain Marvel), western serials (The Lone Ranger) and, last but not least, “adventure” serials often featuring a larger-than-life hero engaged in a dangerous quest (usually in a jungle or other "uncivilized" territory by Modernity's standards). 

Indeed, “the adventurer” in the fourth sub-type of serial would often travel to some lost kingdom, country, island, or village (Darkest Africa [1936], The Secret of Treasure Island [1938], The Valley of the Vanishing Men [1942], Raiders of Ghost City [1944]) in search of lost treasure.  The adventurer/hero was sometimes an agent for the U.S. government too, and might end up battling forces of the Axis Powers -- Germany and Japan -- in efforts such as Don Winslow of the Coast Guard (1943), The Adventures of Smiling Jack (1943), and Secret Service in Darkest Africa (1943). 

Virtually all of the 1930s-1940s serials featured a hero with a memorable name, such as Ace Drummond, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Frank Merriwell, Kit Carson, Don Winslow, Red Barry, or Red Ryder.  And many of these protagonists frequently wore a hat so that it was easy to stunt-double the lead actor during fight scenes. 

Clearly, Indiana Jones fits easily into this serial tradition, right down to his trademark fedora. The cliffhangers are present in the 1981 film too, and Raiders’ boasts an episodic structure that hinges on extreme danger, and then sudden resolution of that danger.

The conventional serial format imitated by Raiders also often features a sidekick of a comic nature, a role that Sallah happily conforms to in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Short Round plays in Temple of Doom, and Marcus Brody fills in The Last Crusade.  These characters not only back-up the protagonist and provide levity to alleviate tension, they provide someone for the hero to rescue so more derring-do is possible.

The backdrop for such tales, as noted above, is often explicitly World War II, and involves evil foreign agents, with names like “The Scorpion.” These agents often infiltrate non-aligned countries so as to procure their resources and/or loyalties in the conflict.  The villains generally fall into the comic-book general villain/soldier-villain dichotomy, which again one can detect clearly in terms of Belloq and Toht in Raiders. Belloq is the brains and cunning, whereas Toht is the muscle or enforcer.

Straight-forward and patriotic, the 1930s-1940s movie serials mostly eschewed nuance or subtlety in storytelling, and succeeded as pure entertainment; as roller-coaster or thrill ride. They were literally “black and white" in format and theme.   

Raiders knowingly absorbs all the creative ingredients of such serials, as noted above, but the game it plays is a bit more complex.  The film harks back to a more innocent time not only in terms of movie narratives, but in terms of movie-making itself; what Spielberg described as a “James Bond movie without hardware” in an interview with Janet Maslin.  The black-and-white aesthetic remains virtually intact, only updated for color cinema. Visually-speaking, the film's black-and-white presentation actually involve shades of light and dark, and menacing, obfuscating shadows.

Upon re-watching Raiders of the Lost Ark for this review, I was reminded how beautiful and textured the cinematography remains.  Spielberg conveys a great deal of information about character and plot through visual means, and via compositions that stress shadows, or the interplay of light and dark.  

In particular, Indiana Jones himself is often visualized as being half-in and half-out of the shadows.  When he is acting as a “grave-robber” in Peru for instance, at the commencement of the film, we see him emerge from the shadows, but not completely.  The shadows still cloak and obscure parts of his visage, in part because he is an unknown quantity to the audience.  Is he a mercenary, a grave-robber, an historian or a scientist?  It's not entirely clear at this juncture.

Similarly, when Indy attempts to procure from Marion the head-piece to the Staff of Ra -- and not entirely honestly at that -- even darker shadows fall across his face.  We see nothing of Indy's face save for his furtive, cunning eyes, and the imagery suggests that he is hiding much.  Here, Indy seems truly in danger of becoming like Belloq...a man without faith, and more than that, without goodness.

When Marion first spies Indy in the film, in her saloon in Nepal, he is visualized by Spielberg entirely as a shadow on the wall, at least at first.  Again, consider the details of their personal relationship. Indy romanced Marion when she was very young (and likely made love to her…), and then went about his way, with hardly a look back.  Marion has never forgiven or forgotten him, and this memory of a failed romance has driven her to the ends of the Earth, literally.  

Indiana Jones is thus, literally, a colossal shadow looming over Marion's life, and her decisions.  When she first sees him again, after all these years, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, that’s precisely as Indy appears in the frame, as an over-sized shadow dwarfing her body.  He is as large and imposing as she has made him in her memory.

Finally, another trenchant example: when Belloq speaks to a heart-broken Indy at a Cairo restaurant, Indy is seen in the foreground of the frame, under a cloak of shadows that echoes his cloak of mourning (at Marion’s apparent demise). But there’s more going on in this scene than meets the eye.  It is here that Belloq refers to Indy as his “mirror,” and he discusses with him how they are both men without faith, and thus very much alike.  

Indy slips into shadow in this composition because he very much fears that Belloq's words are accurate.  His obsession -- his desire to reclaim various treasures of Antiquity for fortune and glory --  has caused him to cut corners, and to endanger those whom he loves. Indy believes Marion is dead, and that, furthermore he caused her death.  All we need to understand this state-of-mind is the prominent image of his face beneath the shroud of shadows. He is a man whose soul is in a precarious condition.

Man of Shadows: Grave robber or archaelogist?

Motives: Pure or shadowy?

The Shadow that looms over Marion's li fe.

The Shadows of Guilt is like a shroud over Indy.

If light and dark, shadow and light, play a crucial role in the visual aspects of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the film features another significant visual leitmotif: the wrath of God as a tangible force in the real world; though one unnoticed…until it is too late.  

Several times through-out the film, an “ill-wind” blows -- without apparent “rational” or scientific cause -- and this wind is the unseen breath of God, gaining in power as both Indiana Jones and the Nazis grow closer to recovering the Ark of the Covenant. 

The old wise man who translates the head-piece of the Staff of Ra reads a warning to Indy not to disturb the Ark of the Covenant, and that ultimatum is the key to this “ill-wind” motif.  Brody similarly warns Indy about the dangers of the Ark, and the fact that it holds secrets "no man can know." 

But meanwhile, Belloq is not afraid of this possibility, and contextualizes the Ark as something “not of this Earth.”  He calls it  “a transmitter…a radio for speaking to God,” but is so vain and arrogant that he does not fear trespass against the Divine (or, perhaps, the alien...).

The strange, unnatural -- or supernatural? -- ill-wind blows for the first time in Raiders of the Lost Ark immediately before the fight scene in Nepal.  Marion sits alone in her bar, before a single candle, and the flame flutters in the wind suddenly as she regards the head-piece of the Staff of Ra, and determines to be Jones’ partner in the recovery of the Ark.  

The wind does not blow because Indiana Jones has left the saloon and let in the freezing air, or because Toht has entered the building, mind you.  The wind -- for no Earthly reason -- threatens the candle’s life, and the flame quivers uncertainly.   This is the first warning, the first exhale of God's wrath, perhaps.

The next time the Wrath of God is suggested in terms of visuals, the wind is much stronger, perhaps because the end of the quest is nearer, and the Ark is that much closer to excavation.  The old man in Cairo reads the warning on the head-piece to Indy, and suddenly the hanging lamps in the old man’s home begin to sway, and a cloud of dust gusts up from the floor.  Again, the wind seems to have come from nowhere. The Wrath of God is nearer.

This ill-wind next becomes a storm, when, by night, Sallah and Indy crack the seal of the Well of Souls, and access to the Ark is revealed at last. Overhead, in the impenetrable night, a strange, unearthly storm gathers, thunder roars, and lightning crackles. This atmospheric disturbance represents the most significant warning yet not to trespass in God’s domain, not to attempt to possess that which man is not yet meant to “know.”

After the Ark is recovered and stored in a Nazi crate, the most indisputable sign yet of God’s anger is seen. A rat near the crate starts to go crazy -- as if hearing or processing some kind of unearthly signal -- and the Nazi symbol on the crate’s side burns up…as if Evil cannot stand firm, or even exist at all, in the face of Pure Good.

Finally, of course, when the Ark is opened, all Hell breaks loose.  

The ill-wind finally manifests…first as blue-tinged wind (like the blue sky of the thunder storm over Tanis..), and then as vengeful, flying angels.  The wind becomes fire (and remember the flickering of the candle in Marion’s saloon…), and it immediately melts and destroys the Nazis.  Then, a supernatural windstorm of shocking ferocity blows through the temple, and back up to Heaven, as the sky opens up to receive it.  

The Wrath of God -- hinted at and warned about throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark -- has delivered its final judgment.  

It starts with a candle's flicker...

Then a wind from nowhere shakes the hanging lamps (in the background)...

When the Ark is found, the sky opens up, and storm clouds roll in.

Sacrilege is punished.

And punished....

...and punished.

The candle flicker is now an all-consuming fire.

And the Heavens open up at last, to receive the Power of God.

There is much more to Raiders of the Lost Ark than these subtle and meaningful visual leitmotifs, but taken together they tell a story about modern man and his arrogance...and his spiritual emptiness.  One "obtainer of rare antiquities" in the film pursues fame and fortune -- or perhaps self-glorification -- and dies.  The other re-discovers faith, and survives, his belief in wonder restored.

There are so many other great and downright remarkable aspects to this film, but in passing, I must also mention the desert truck chase, which remains a model of dazzling stunt-work and rapid editing.  This stunning set-piece moves with certainty, confidence and momentum, and never lets up, even for a second.  It must certainly qualify as one of the top five action sequences in the modern cinema.

I also appreciate and admire Harrison Ford's performance as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He is never afraid to reveal vulnerability, or the fact that Indiana Jones is a a bit of an unscrupulous scoundrel. This character, unlike the revised Han Solo, shoots first (against the Cairo Swordsman), is likely an alcoholic, and is an unrepentant womanizer. 

Later films in the Indiana Jones cycle (namely Last Crusade and Crystal Kingdom) attempt to lionize and sterilize the character, and ret-con him into a stolid, "it belongs in a museum!" fuddy-duddy, but for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy is a real man, with real desires, and real foibles.  In my opinion, that makes him seem all the more heroic.

Finally, I love the film's last sequence.  It's the perfect capper visually to the narrative, and also in terms of the film's thematic material.  The Ark -- a symbol of a wondrous, lost age, and powers behind human comprehension -- is sealed up, locked away, and forgotten.  Humdrum Modernity can't parse, categorize or understand it, and so it relegates the Ark to a warehouse of "mysteries," all forgotten...perhaps to be excavated once more in another three thousand years.

“This post is part of the SPIELBERG BLOGATHON hosted by Outspoken and Freckled, It Rains… You Get Wet, and Once Upon A Screen taking place August 23-24. Please visit these host blogs for a full list of participating blogs.”

Spielberg Blogathon: When You Wish Upon a Star: Spirituality and Humanity in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

The second-highest grossing film of 1977 (right behind George Lucas’s Star Wars) was Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of The Third Kind, a science fiction film concerning mankind’s first official contact with alien life-forms.

Close Encounter’s narrative also involves the mystery behind alien abductions and the truth regarding a government conspiracy to keep the existence of UFOs a secret.

Throughout the film Spielberg cross-cuts between two major plot-lines: a scientist’s (Francois Truffaut’s) efforts to develop a language so as to communicate with the visiting aliens, and one blue-collar worker’s (Richard Dreyfuss) personal journey to better understand their uncomfortable -- but growing -- presence in his daily life…and inside his very head.

Importantly, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) was described by Science Digest as a film that is “tantamount to faith.”

The same publication noted too that Close Encounters’ sense of faith, so “wondrous and thoroughly spiritual – is registered in nearly every frame, reaching a climax in its messianic ending.”(Joy Boyom, Feb 1978, p.17).

Similarly, Gregory Richards’ monograph, Science Fiction Movies (Gallery Books, 1984, p.61) contextualizes Spielberg’s disco-decade UFO epic “as more of a religious film than a science fiction one.”

So the primary question that viewers must reckon with regarding this cult classic is: why have so many reviewers contextualized the Spielberg film as one of an overtly religious nature? Does an understanding of the religious allegory open up new avenues for understanding this work of art?

Or contrarily, does the religious explanation of Close Encounters only serve to cloud the secular, humanist message beating at the movie’s heart?

Close Encounters as Religious Allegory

In part, the categorization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a film about spirituality and faith arises because Steven Spielberg’s movie so abundantly features what David A Cook, author of Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970 – 1979, calls “an aura of religious mystery.” (University of California Press, 2000, p.47).

Roy Neary -- much like the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus according to Paul Flesher and Robert Torry in Film and Religion: An Introduction -- experiences a kind of spiritual dawning or awakening.

In particular, Neary sees a UFO and hears the call of the aliens (transmitted via a telepathically implanted, subconscious “message” or “vision.”)

At first he does not understand the alien message. What is the meaning of the strange thoughts in his head? Why does he feel compelled to undertake a pilgrimage -- a journey to a location of great importance to one’s faith -- to some mountain he has witnessed seen only in his mind?

Eventually, however, Neary surrenders to the vision, to his faith. He forsakes all his worldly belongings and connections -- including his family -- in a devoted (and perhaps mad…) attempt to understand why he has been “chosen” to hear this call from a (literally) Higher Power.

Clearly, Neary seeks communion with the message’s sender…with a stand-in for God. His quest in Close Encounters thus reflects Scripture and Romans in particular. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Here, Neary has heard and honored that word, but it is the words of the aliens.

Neary’s hardship and trials are eventually vindicated. At last, he meets the aliens at the mountain of his vision (ironically at a place called Devil’s Tower), and then watches as a version of the second coming of Christ is re-enacted before his eyes.

According to Flesher and Torry (Abindgon Press, 2007, p.200), the returned abductees whom the aliens release from their landed mother ship symbolically represent the dead rising, or the resurrection of the dead as foretold in Scripture. And furthermore, the ascent of the alien craft to outer space with one of the faithful (Neary) ensconced aboard it similarly represents the Christian rapture, the trip to Heaven, essentially.

Even the physical appearance of the aliens in Close Encounter might be readily interpreted as strongly reflecting Christian apotheosis.

In form, the extra-terrestrial bodies “have no clear blemishes or gender, suggesting that superior beings transcend the normal categories of physical existence and approach the ethereal qualities associated with spirits and angels,” notes scholar Eric Michael Mazur, (Encyclopedia of Religion and Faith (ABLC-CLIO, LLC 2011, page 388).

In his final ascent to the stars, to Heaven, Roy Neary is wholly affirmed in his unyielding faith and belief in the vision he received, over his wife’s cynicism and stubborn skepticism, and over the U.S. Government’s attempt to “control” the meeting of man and alien.

In some sense, Close Encounters is all about taking a leap of faith, and that very idea finds resonance in one of Spielberg’s compositions. Confronted with the government lie about a deadly and toxic nerve gas spill in Wyoming (near Devil’s Tower), Neary chooses to “believe” his own narrative instead. He rips off his protective gas mask and breaths the purportedly contaminated air. But he is proven right…he survives, and his faith is replenished.

Given the alien angels, the metaphor for the Second Coming and even this leap of faith, the overall effect, therefore, of this cinematic journey is indeed, well, rapturous.

Strangely, however, there is a dark aspect to this story of religious awakening that one must also weigh.

While it is true that Roy Neary transitions from an unhappy and spiritually bereft life to one of faith and purpose, the cost of such knowledge of God (or God surrogate, in this case) is his very family. In the act of proving his faith and his worthiness of being “born again” in the stars, Roy abandons his family on Earth. This abandonment is literal, not metaphorical.

The non-believers -- including his children -- get “left behind” to toil in the world without his guidance or even presence. And again, the message could be interpreted as strongly religious.

If you don’t “believe,” you don’t get saved.

Close Encounters as a Humanist Film

An alternate reading of Close Encounters suggests this cinematic work of art from Spielberg is actually a humanist film, the secular tale of a man who chooses to no longer be enslaved to society’s destructive constructs (including government, career, and family), and to follow his own individual path instead.

The story, again, is of Neary breaking free of constraints, but the breaking free in this reading is from a society that lies, cover-ups, and demands his perpetual unhappiness for its continuance.

The fact that Spielberg plays the song “When You Wish Upon a Star” at the conclusion of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the primary support for this reading. 

One lyric in that composition suggests a direct rebuke of faith, or religious identification. When you wish upon a star it “makes no difference who you are,” the song goes. In other words, you need not be affiliated with any particular group or belief system if you hope to achieve your dreams. You need not believe in God or a higher power. Instead, if you must merely “wish” and voice your “dreams,” you will be rewarded for following the best angels of your -- human -- nature.

In terms of history, Close Encounters of the Third Kind followed closely on many frissons in American politics, and this context, likewise, suggests a more humanist reading. 

President Richard Nixon had been toppled in the Watergate Scandal in 1974, for example. His resignation and culpability in illegal activity suggested that “faith” or “belief” in the pillar of leadership was not such a good idea.

Similarly, the Vietnam War had ended in ignominy for the U.S. in 1975. The cause that so many Americans fought for (and died for…) was lost, and this very idea seems reflected in Close Encounters’ final scene.

There, a line of carefully vetted and approved government officials (surrogates for soldiers in Vietnam?) are overlooked by the aliens in favor of the “Everyman,” Roy Neary.

By contrast to these seemingly emotionless, expressionless, thoughtless drones, he is a man who chose explicitly not to believe the fairy tales his government was peddling. He has thus established his independence and his resourcefulness outside of Earthly and national considerations.

In this reading, the “leap of faith” of taking off the gas mask is actually the dawning awareness that -- because of Watergate and Vietnam -- the U.S. Government could no longer be trusted, or be considered an agent for honesty.

But again, in this reading of Close Encounters, one must reckon with Neary’s pure selfishness, his very questionable decision to leave his children and wife behind for his own individual “self-fulfillment.” And again, one must note that very idea of “sweet fulfillment” is explicitly voiced in the lyrics to the song “When You Wish Upon a Star.”

Yet I would suggest that Neary’s act of leaving his family (and his government, and his job…) behind in 1977 would not have been looked at by many audience members as purely a bad thing.

One must recall that the 1970s was determinedly the decade of the “self,” a fact reflected in the hedonism of disco music, and the blazing ascent in popularity of the “self-help” book genre. Popular buzz-words of the day included “self-realization” and -- sound familiar? -- “self-fulfillment.”

Yet as the movement of “self” grew in the late 1970s, many people were concerned that the new ethos was merely one of “self-involvement. The consumption-oriented life-style of immediate gratification soon gave rise to President Carter’s notorious 1979 “Crisis of Confidence” speech, which warned against judging success on material wealth rather than intrinsic human qualities of character and morality.

Meanwhile, the nation kept building more shopping malls, and imagined worlds futuristic (Logan’s Run) and apocalyptic (Dawn of the Dead) set at these new shrines to materialism.  he 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake deals explicitly with this notion too, of the idea of people “moving in and out of relationships too fast” because they wanted to be happy and fulfilled, all the time.

But in a way, this is what Close Encounters concerns as well. Roy Neary helps himself, finally, to achieve his “dream,” even if his family can’t share in that dream. He gets what he wants -- to go with the benevolent aliens to the stars -- and in the late 1970s, this result is what qualified as a happy ending

In his text How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity (Three Rivers Press, 1997, page 291) author Bruce Bawer wrote of Close Encounters of the Third Kind that “salvation, meaning, and transcendence come down from the Heavens in a spaceship.”  The question to ponder today involves the brand of salvation and transcendence. 

Is it a spiritual reckoning, or a secular one that the alien spaceship brings with it?

It is a testament to Spielberg’s skill, perhaps, as a filmmaker and storyteller, that Close Encounters can be interpreted through two such opposite lenses or world-views.

“This post is part of the SPIELBERG BLOGATHON hosted by Outspoken and Freckled, It Rains… You Get Wet, and Once Upon A Screen taking place August 23-24. Please visit these host blogs for a full list of participating blogs.”