By Owen Quinn author Photos copyright Columbia Pictures
Every good ufologist knows the story about Flight 19. They were flying over the Bermuda Triangle on a training exercise on December 5th, 1945, when they disappeared without trace. There was no wreckage, nothing. There was a radio contact saying they could not see land and that we don’t even know where west is. And that was it.
Speculation have been rife from UFOS to holes in reality to undersea aliens. Humanity loves nothing more than a mystery and especially a potentially supernatural mystery. These men had friends and families. Their leader was a decorated officer with much experience. And nothing on Earth could simply swallow five bomber planes but what if something bigger than those planes and not from this Earth?
The wonderful thing about being a writer is that you look at all the strange things that happen in history and come up with an explanation or weave a story around it. I’ve done this with the Wolves of Chernobyl and the Voalox Horror to name a couple and it’s the thrill of maybe offering something new on a legend.
So, as we open Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Spielberg uses as much UFO lore as he can as did Willow Creek use all Bigfoot related lore. When done right, it is magical and the opening of this movie certainly qualifies as that.
We open on a sandstorm where two men pull up in a jeep. They ask some guards are they the first to arrive. There is a language barrier so a cartographer, David Laughlin, who arrives with even more men, is suddenly promoted to translator. The sandstorm is a great idea as it hides the locale. We hear various languages so you’re not sure which is the native one. You get the impression these are government employees/scientists, A French man arrives whom we learn of Claude Lacombe, an eminent scientist. but the French did very well at a Montsoreau conference.
A man in camouflage gear comes up and says they’re all there, all of them. They rush off after him. we see one plane which has American insignia on it along with four others. They appear to be American bombers but with storm, we as an audience are not sure. Everyone is talking excitedly and the audience are not given subtitles.
The French scientist asks for the chassis numbers off the planes. They confirm they are the missing Flight 19 that disappeared 32 years earlier. Laughlin is amazed as they look brand new and asks who would fly these crates these days. He is told they vanished years ago after taking off from Fort Lauderdale. Upon further inspection, they find fuel in the tanks, instruments working perfectly, photo as new as the day they were taken.
They find an old man who witnessed what happened. he says the sun came out the night before and sang to him.
What a great hook to begin a movie. immediately, we are hit with a mystery of planes as new as the day they were flown appear out of nowhere decades later. There are no pilots so where are they? Is it time travel? What does the old man mean the sun sang to him during the night before the planes appeared? There are various nationalities present but mainly American and French. Was the Montsoreau conference mentioned have a bigger meaning as it went very well for the French? Laughlin asks all the questions the audience does.
The information is fed to the audience layer at a time and sometimes without dialogue as to this mystery as opposed to a massive info dump. Just like the characters in the movie we are asking questions too.
Lacombe stands and looks out over the land amid the sandstorm. This is a great, metaphor for the movie itself. We can see what is around us but there is another reality going on, hidden from us. We know there’s something, but our limited capabilities prevent us from interacting with it. it’s all just there behind the sandstorm of life. Just as we know the missing planes arrived out of nowhere in a sandstorm of mystery that only one man saw and believes the sun sang. it’s a nice commentary on us as people; the scientist and the every man whose mind interprets the truth as something from the legends of primitives.
Every book should start with a great hook. And Close Encounters certainly does that and what a journey it is. One for the Blu-ray list.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 