During the Star Wars frenzy of 1978 I became enamoured with an entirely different film. One no less successful but one that spoke to me more with its intelligent themes, craftsmanship and ambiguity. Although still in short trousers, I was fascinated that such a weird, meandering but ultimately beautiful film could be audacious enough to market itself as a commercial feature – and yet still succeed. Whilst George Lucas’ epics have remained for me shallowly juvenile, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third kind has stayed in my memory reel for reel. Discovering it again thirty years on, I’ve found its impact no less dimmed than when I first saw it.
On its release Star Wars brought science fiction back into the mainstream, although over the next few years I was already savouring things more cerebral. Re-released in the late 70s, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey took my imagination to task. But whilst this has remained another enduring favourite the film has dated quite considerably, mostly in its obviously 60s ethos. 2001 is barely 10 years older than Close Encounters but it belongs to a different era entirely, left behind by Spielberg’s film as much as the fighting apemen were by HAL. Perhaps Kubrick’s mistake was in attempting to create a future that is no longer futuristic because it’s already passing us by; Spielberg settles with examining the present. Where sci fi usually suffers by the effect of time, Close Encounters manages to bypass this failing.
Richard Dreyfuss is the star of Close Encounters and delivers one of the all time 70s lead roles. Allegedly Dreyfuss actively pursued Spielberg for the part, and it is unlikely that the original actors courted for the role (who included Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson) would have been as good. Hoffman would have been too offbeat, Jack too crazy and McQueen I can’t imagine playing a character with any failings at all. Richard Dreyfuss is driven, manic and, for his family, terrifyingly obsessed after a UFO sighting. However he reigns in his performance enough to keep it subtle and compelling.
Dreyfuss plays Roy Neary, an ordinary guy who, for reasons remaining mostly obscure, becomes a chosen one. His mounting mania is focused on a mountain-shaped object he cannot erase from his consciousness, manifested in every day objects and eventually engulfing him and isolating him from his family forever. François Truffaut plays Claude Lacombe, a French scientist also preoccupied with the UFO phenomenon. Whilst an odd choice for a major role in a Hollywood movie, Truffaut’s casting speaks volumes for a film exploring the failings of human communication.
The communication theme is one that works on a subtle level, giving this film a very literary quality. Close Encounters forever invites the viewer to make a connection between its various threads. The need for Lacombe to use a translator as he slips between English and French, Neary’s inability to communicate or be communicated with (his employers call to relay the message that he has lost his job, although they don’t want to speak to him directly), and the long journey to the solution of using music instead of language to talk to the aliens. Many of these ideas suggest that Man might need to get to grips with talking to himself before he turns to alien life.
Technology has an odd place in this film too. Neary unsuccessfully attempts to help his son with his homework by demonstrating with a train set (neatly foreshadowing the train wreck the authorities later use as a cover up), and toys play a big part throughout; in a key scene a five year old child is memorably mesmerised by his toys coming alive at night. But whilst they toy with it, the aliens often eschew technology, attempting to arrange a rendezvous by relying largely on good old fashioned map coordinates and the even more impressive technique of thought transference.
Spielberg’s genius, however, is not too make this incredibly deep film too taxing for the younger audience. The scene where the child is abducted is one of the best sequences he has ever directed, which simply and perfectly contrasts the awe, excitement and wonder of an extra terrestrial encounter with the equally tangible fear of what it might bring. As young Barry (Cary Guffey) wants to open every door and stare at the bright lights outside, his mother is desperate to slam them and lock them both tight inside the house. Neary’s first encounter with the aliens is also memorable, which builds up perfectly to a police car chase. The special effects haven’t aged in the slightest, and the famous end sequence with the alien “mothership” has lost none of its brilliance and, like most of the film, is effective on an emotional as well as intellectual level.
Close Encounters is full of Spielberg motifs. Neary is the driven man who isolates his wife (played by Teri Garr) from his world, recalling the similarly narrowly focused Chief Brody in Jaws. Noisy families compete to be heard amongst the domestic chaos, explored even more fully in the later ET; as always Spielberg proves to be an excellent director of children. There’s also a couple of subtle visual nods to George Pal’s War of the Worlds throughout the film, and years later he couldn’t resist going the whole hog and remaking the whole thing entirely. But Close Encounters remains one of Spielberg’s most personal and accomplished films.
Footnote: Steven Spielberg messed around with his masterpiece somewhat. A few years later he released a Special Edition showing the interior of the alien “mothership”. He later decided this was a mistake, and removed the new scenes for a later definitive Collector’s Edition. This is very much the director’s cut that Spielberg now wants us to enjoy.
Last Sunday I dashed home from a weekend away in order to catch the end of the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage. To be honest I didn’t really have high hopes about the closing set by Blur. Although a big fan in their heyday, I never thought they managed to recapture the brilliance of the Parklife album, and I eventually lost interest in them after the departure of Graham Coxon. However, with Coxon back in their ranks the reunion was something of an event and I confess that Sunday evening did become rather special. No new material, and I counted at least seven songs in the set from Parklife (including the inevitable walk on from Phil Daniels). But they were on fine form, and Damon Albarn, garbed in his black Fred Perry, worked the crowd with aplomb. The sense of occasion was further heightened by some enthusiastic Blur related activity on Twitter. In fact whatever the event, be it Blur or Wimbledon, I find I can’t resist the Twitter allure. But that’s for a different post.
It was good to see Blur again. Although, despite my continued enthusiasm for 80s and 90s bands, I try not to wallow in nostalgia too much. I’ve followed the post-Blur careers of both Albarn and Coxon and think they have produced their best work in this later period. Perhaps their best is still to come. There’s a new Gorillaz album on its way from Damon and Graham recently released his The Spinning Top album. This is easily the best thing he’s done to date, a folksy record that recalls Syd Barrett and Nick Drake with a nod to Coxon’s pal Paul Weller. It’s a mature piece that shows how far he’s travelled since the days of Girls and Boys, Tracy Jacks and Badhead (although I must point out that this last song is one of my all time favourites).
People tell me that I’m the age now where I ought to be listening to Radio 2. Actually, I’ve been tuning in for years although I’m becoming increasingly despondent with the music they play. It’s the nostalgia thing again, and I wonder how long they can continue to play Blondie and Abba records and expect people to happily accept it. It isn’t that there is a case against the current crop of pop stars. Actually I think the opposite.
Recently I have enjoyed three recent releases that stand up to all of the pop music before them. Ladyhawke, which came out last year, are a New Zealand band who surpass the likes of Blondie with good pop music. It’s retro stuff, recalling the 80s and in parts the sound of Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac, but a highly infectious album. My two other recent discoveries can also be described as 80s retro. Both have been hyped quite a lot; easily justified although I hope it doesn’t harm their careers at this early stage. This is the weird thing I can’t resolve; although I am bored with nostalgia my current favourites all recall the period when I was young and started getting into music. It’s a paradox, but a pleasant one.
Hands by Little Boots is a very commercial album, so much so that it has invited criticism, although commercial pop is no bad thing when the songs are so good. There’s also an excellent guest appearance from Phil Oakey, which is worth the price of admission alone. Little Boots has often been lumped together with La Roux. I can see why; their self titled debut has many similarities although I think it has a harder edge and is slightly less accessible. It recalls the weirder side of Soft Cell and, again, The Human League. In the old days, I would imagine Janice Long playing Little Boots with John Peel going for La Roux. Little Boots or La Roux? I can’t recommend either enough. So I suggest buying both.
Whatever your tastes, and if you agree with mine or not, I’m content to be discovering new music in 2009. Especially being the same advanced age as Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon. Rock on.
But the thing in her hand was not quite silent, after all. As she raised the cup to her ear she could hear, coming from it, a faint, moist susurration – as if wet silk, or something fine like that, were being slowly and haltingly drawn through the tube. The sound, she realised with a shock, was that of a laboured breath, which kept catching and bubbling as if in a narrow, constricted throat. In an instant she was transported back, twenty-eight years, to her first child’s sickbed. She whispered her daughter’s name – ‘Susan?’ – and the breathing quickened and grew more liquid. A voice began to emerge from the bubbling mess of sound: a child’s voice, she took it to be, high and pitiful, attempting, as if with tremendous effort, to form words.
The Little Stranger was my introduction to Sarah Waters, and I have come away very impressed. Her latest novel is a brilliantly written study of the shifting changes in the English post-war class system. It is beautifully paced, full of subtle observations and quite simply a pleasure to read. It is also one of the most effective, chilling and original ghost stories I have read for some time. I finished The Little Stranger a few days ago but, still thinking it through, I have been unable to start a new book.
Hundreds Hall is a crumbling mansion and we find it in disrepair just after the war. The Ayers family, mother son and daughter, are struggling to keep alive the dusty rooms and prevent their home sinking more and more into decay. The middle aged Doctor Faraday narrates the story, which begins when he is called to attend to one of the few servants the Ayers can cling onto. Their maid, feigning sickness, claims to Faraday that the house is haunted. Whilst he dismisses this belief, Faraday is slowly drawn into the Ayers world and the family are indeed revealed to be haunted, although Waters is clever enough not to reveal the true cause of their resulting anguish and tragedy.
And being a very intelligent and clever novel makes The Little Stranger such an achievement. Waters creates an intriguing narrator in Faraday, a middle aged man who at first appears to be dull, lifeless and set in his ways who begins to slowly reveal a deep resentment for his working class origins and a fascination with the Ayers family that grows more uneasy with every page. The book has received few criticisms but one of them is its lack of likeable characters. The Ayers family are indeed odd; the eccentric and nervous brother who eventually loses his mind, the plain and frumpy sister who Faraday slowly begins to fall for. Faraday himself is almost a misfit, a tense and unimaginiative loner, but I found them all fascinating. And fascination, and obsession, is something that makes this novel tick.
The Thirteenth Tale has been cited as a comparison to this novel and I can see why; The Little Stranger is certainly as good. I also thought of Ann Radcliffe’s novels, which constantly taunt the reader with seemingly supernatural events then only to wring out the fantastic and reveal the rational reasoning behind them. The Little Stranger taunts in similar ways, with many spooky scenes that Faraday urges the reader to dismiss as thinking the work of ghosts. They are still chilling though; the sudden fire in the house, creeping irrational madness, strange childlike writing on the walls, mysteriously locked doors, footsteps forever out of sight. It’s all so well crafted you begin to secretly hope that there is a ghost at work, although Waters ultimately delivers something far more subtle and imaginitive.
The Little Stranger kept me gripped right to the end of its 500 pages. The ending, which I was expecting to reveal a twist, was far from the conclusion I was expecting. But on reflection I think that Sarah Waters delivered a masterly ending, and one that had me rereading it several times, along with the novel’s opening and several other key scenes. This is an ambiguous book, where the reader cannot firmly conclude on the role of the supernatural or if there really was one at all, but for this reason I found the almost uncomfortable outcome all the more unsettling. And it’s one I’m still deciding about. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.
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