“I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road I’ve been seeing this shape. Shaving cream, pillows…Dammit! I know this.  I know what this is!  This means something.  This is important.”

The key to Spielberg’s most personal film fits not with the spaceships, aliens, and government conspiracies. Those elements work, to be sure, but what Close Encounters of the Third Kind expresses better than any of his other films is how marginalizing and lonely it is for others to doubt us, and how powerful it is when that doubt transforms into astonishing affirmation.

At some point in our lives we learn a Truth that no one else around us understands, and we want to share it, shout it, and maybe even shake just one person into understanding it. Later the Truth might seem less important, even ridiculous, but in the moment there is nothing more vital.

Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) understands how it is to know such a Truth, and how it is to be doubted by everyone around him. He is an electrical line worker for a township near the Indiana/Ohio state line.  One night, while responding to an endless number of power emergencies, he experiences a close encounter (of the second kind, just to be clear).  A light from an apparent UFO shines upon Roy and his truck so brightly that Roy gets sunburn on one half of his face (“He looks like a 50-50 bar!”).  The truck’s fuel gauge goes crazy, items float freely, and a mild hum permeates the air.

He also receives a vision. An image of something he does not know, but absolutely believes is real, records itself upon his mind.  The image becomes his obsession and the key motivation for his subsequent behavior.  He can neither erase it nor ignore it, all while absolutely needing to learn what it is.  Roy imagines the object everywhere:  in shaving cream, in pillow cases, and (most famously) in the shape of his mashed potatoes.

He absolutely knows that both his vision and his close encounter were real and even when his wife (Teri Garr) begins to think him crazy he cannot lie about it, though he almost stops discussing it ever again. Only after he nearly abandons his dream do we finally get to share the moment when his belief receives undeniable affirmation.  It’s a moment I will not describe, but it’s in this moment that Spielberg’s film achieves its greatness.

The movie could have ended with Roy’s epiphany and it would’ve been just fine.  But Spielberg never aims for just fine and he leads us forward beyond epiphany into revelation.  And when the mothership soars from behind Devil’s Tower we know we will not, we cannot, forget such images.  It is a ballet of light requiring no dialogue but only music to move us through to the story’s miraculous conclusion.

About that music, John Williams’ score is one of his very best. His famous five-note leitmotif for the mothership acts as the aliens’ collective voice.  And what audacity!  The film builds an entire conversation between the humans and the visitors with an escalating series of notes.  My very basic comprehension of the close relationship between music and math helps me understand this sequence, but regardless it feels like real dialogue (better even than can be found in most other movies).

It’s no spoiler to tell you the aliens in this film do not come to Earth to conquer, but rather to learn and share. Exactly as I imagine our ideal selves, the visitors apparently wish to exchange knowledge and experience for mutual betterment. Like Roy they have a Truth to show us but more than that they wish to learn some Truth from us.

Every actor is on mark. Dreyfuss is the Spielberg Everyman here and his choices are exactly right.  When detained by the authorities in Montana, carefully listen to how he builds his long list of questions.  His transition from anger to assertive demands is so simple but so correct for that moment.  Melinda Dillon (as Jillian Guiler), who provides her wonderfully loving and thoughtful delivery, has probably the most difficult role as a woman who receives the same vision as Roy but whose obsessive motives are far more personal.

There are hundreds of motion pictures that give us the ancient, archetypal story of “the person no one will believe.” Many of them are good; some even great, but no other film so completely engages our emotions of fear, confusion, and awe while leading us to an uplifting catharsis.

Because, in the end, we too have had a close encounter. We not only witness Roy’s triumph, but we experience our own as well.