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| Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, François
Truffaut, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Roy
Neary (Richard Dreyfuss): What the hell is going on around here?
WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!
A
series of intimidating UFO sightings culminates in contact with benevolent
aliens.
 Spielberg
does for aliens what Cecil B. DeMille did for God several decades ago:
he has created an immense picture filled with awesome spectacle that
follows an ordinary man on his arduous yet wonder-filled journey towards
final enlightenment. Spielberg gracefully acknowledges his debt by having
DeMille's The Ten Commandments playing on a TV set in an early
scene, and he proves himself both as technically accomplished and as
narratively confusing throughout this impressive but muddled film.
Closer to a religious epic than a familiar type of science-fiction film,
the first two thirds have the aliens raising hell among the humans Poltergeist-style
(or, if you will, like the Old Testament God), only to reveal themselves
ultimately as benevolent New Age space mystics with even more obliquely
mystifying purposes than those in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most
major characters spend much of the movie either scrambling frantically
from one location to another or gazing in religious awe at the increasingly
impressive alien manifestations. If this is a religion, it is certainly
one without much more content than being impressed by colorful pretty
lights in the sky.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is however a film best experienced,
not analyzed too much. As an audiovisual spectacle, its still-impressive
optical effects, superb staging and memorable score clearly elevate
it to classic status. And making this film clearly taught Spielberg
that less is usually more when it comes to actual emotional impact,
as his later project E.T. did a much better job at bringing across
a similar story while resonating more fully on the emotional scale.
But as a simple spectacle, Close Encounters is still hard to
beat. |
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Identical
2-disc sets first appeared for Region 1 and Region 2, though the packaging
was different. More recently, a three-disc 'Anniversary Edition' has appeared, which includes all three versions of the film. The three-disc release served as the basis for this review.
The
anamorphic widescreen image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx.
2.35:1. The video elements for all three versions have been remastered and restored in Hi-Def, resulting in a dramatic improvement over the previous DVD release. Sharpness, color and detail levels are now well and beyond expectation, making CE3K the experience it should be on home video.
Like the video transfer, the soundtrack has been impressively restored, marking an even more noticeable improvement over the disappointing audio mix on the earlier two-disc version. Both the Dolby Digital and the DTS 5.1 mixes are of superb quality.
The
main item on the disc of extras in this set is the 100-minute documentary
'The Making of Close Encounters', produced by Spielberg expert Laurent
Bouzereau for the 1997 VHS and Laserdisc release of this final director's
cut of the film. It covers all major aspects of the film, including
casting, pre-production, the extensive special effects and the additional
footage produced for the 1980 'Special Edition' re-release. It's a fascinating
piece of work that offers nothing less than a comprehensive overview
of the film and is simply unmissable for any fan of the film. On this release, it has been divided into three parts and spread across the three discs in the set.The original 1977 featurette
'Watch the Skies' is also on board, and provides a fun split-screen
promotional segment totalling around six minutes in length. The theatrical
trailers for the original release (which is nearly identical to
the 1977 featurette) and the Special Edition are also available, as
are some basic biographical note. In the only new addition to this anniversary edition release, Steven Spielberg looks back at the experience of making CE3K from today's perspective.
The gorgeous, oversized fold-out box holds a convenient poster that charts the differences between the three versions of the film (with the film poster on the flipside), and a collector's booklet with plenty of photographs and some interviews.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed: December 22, 2007
Click
here for IMDB info on Close
Encounters of the Third Kind.
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to return to the front page.
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