January 20, 2011

"Close Encounters of a Third Kind" is an extended metaphor about the metaphysical spiritual journey. In the movie, just as in life itself, a clarion call to humanity only reaches a few. They find themselves obsessing over it, in a sense meditating upon the self. The world sees a man building a mountain of earth in his living room--it makes no sense, except to those who have been smitten. The pilgrim's progress is fraught with obstacles and danger. It requires resolute faith and earnest action. Finally we recognize the world as it really is: a facade, a staged play of dead cows and armed soldiers defending or attacking they know not what. The connection with the ultimate reality is beyond words, in this case a simple sequence of musical notes. And then? Transcendence. The boundless cosmos and the infinite unknown, the manifest and the unmanifest. You know, I prefer "The Godfather" as a great, epic movie, but I've got to admit that hands down "Close Encounters" may be the ballsiest movie of the 20th century.