Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Part 2

So, did the aliens anticipate the obstacles that established authority would place in the path of the common, everyday people whom they chose to infuse with their message? Did they use those obstacles as a screening process to select the perfect candidate? Of course, young Barry Guiler would have made an excellent student, his toddler's mind so totally open to the wonder that he can literally speak directly to them. But he is, after all, a child, and it is an adult mind the visitors need-an adult mind with that same openness and wonder. Roy Neary is childlike in his enthusiasm for life-more so even than his own children. It's not the least bit surprising that he makes the final cut.

There are many questions left unresolved as Neary climbs aboard the mother ship. What effect will their abduction have on those who return? Will Barry Guiler get to see his newfound friends again or will he and Jillian disappear as so many vocal advocates of alien arrivals allegedly done, spirited away from those mysterious Men In Black?

But, for me, the most intriguing mystery is how to interpret the look the last alien exchanges with Lacombe. They converse with the Kodaly hand signals and smile at each other. Then, however, the alien's smile fades, and it looks at Lacombe with infinite sadness. It seems as though it is saying that, despite our efforts, we came short of what we could have achieved. Given an opportunity to explore a new path, we instead clung arrogantly to the old, as if we were somehow the equals of those for whom the stars are just another superhighway.

It's that kind of mystery, those sorts of unanswered questions, however, that are the difference between a good movie and a great one. Close Encounters of the Third Kind may not stimulate blatant intellectual discussion, but it does challenge our habitual ways of thought and demands that we at least consider whether what we think is real, really is. There is no better definition of "classic" than that.

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