That one inescapable question.
“The Three Bears” is a fairy tale from 1837 in which a little girl finds a house owned by three bears. Each bear has its own preference for food and beds. After testing all the three sets of both the items she determines that one of them is always too much in one extreme (too hot or too large), one is too much in the opposite extreme (too cold or too small), and one is “just right”. Her name was Goldilocks.
Thus in astrobiology, Goldilocks zone refers to the habitable zone around a star. The rare earth hypothesis uses this principle in the argument that a planet must neither be too far away from nor too close to a star and galactic center to support life. Earth is habitable because it is neither too close nor too far away from the sun. Such a planet is colloquially called as a “Goldilocks Planet”.
Over the past several decades, the humans have struggled and still searching to find if there is another such planet in a place far away. And literature and films are no exceptions. Many science fiction authors and filmmakers have lent their imagination for us to experience something that we can never be sure of.
And the man who had just turned out to be legendary after his movie “Jaws” (what most people consider as the first blockbuster), wouldn’t want to call his next movie a “science fiction”. As a person who believed in and fascinated by something other-worldly, Spielberg called it as a “science speculation” movie instead.
Close encounters of the first kind — UFO sightings
Close encounters of the second kind — Physical evidence
Close encounters of the third kind — The actual contact.
I don’t know how a 10 yeard old would feel in 2017 when he sees Dennis’ Arrival. But in the 90s, when I saw this little gem, I was blown away by my introduction to this genre. It was not a dark science fiction; it was not a mind-bending space movie; it was an absolute light hearted fun movie that made a vivid impression in the mind of a 10-year-old.
Unlike the other movies in the genre, this was like “Calm down, it’s ok. They are friendly.” kind of movie. And that makes it not just cinematically but culturally a very important movie exploring the extraterrestrial possibilities.
There are excellent movies that transport the viewers into a different world. Then there is Spielberg. Just like the visitors in the movie those who come closer to our homes, the cinema itself comes closer to us and coerces into our world. Telling the story from the perspectives of common people makes the characters so easy to identify ourselves with and turns the whole movie into one big personal experience. And I think that is why I loved it as a kid even though I didn’t quite know then why I loved it that much.
The way the lights and the colors were used; the way the saucers moved; the tension that gets created by government vehicles chasing them like “a dog chasing cars” which wouldn’t know what to do when it has caught one; the government men trying the conspire the whole happenings; multiple point of view scenes for different “common men” characters looking up the skies to spectate a life time event. With all this happening, one can instantly start to feel something very fresh and so relatable.
Everybody should make their kids watch this movie. When they have grown up, they will thank you for this. This is a very nostalgic film that tries to answer that one inescapable question.
“Are we alone in this universe?”
