I was at a party one night, which was more of a casual get-together of a few friends, and there was a natural flow of conversation of the ordinary sort: speculation as to which teams would be in the Super Bowl, recommendations of a couple of movies showing at the theaters, and disagreements about who would win the next election.  Then, for some reason that escapes me now, someone made an offhand remark about haunted houses.  At that point, the conversation took a turn from which there was no coming back.  Topics seemingly unrelated were enthusiastically discussed by several members of the party in rapid succession:  among others, they brought up exorcism, levitation, Oak Island, the Loch Ness Monster, the Flying Dutchman, and, of course, UFOs.

Not everyone participated. A few of us sat there in silence, feeling overwhelmed. Basically, we just listened, somewhat perplexed.  Logically, there was no reason to think any of these things were related, why, for instance, one person’s mentioning Nostradamus would lead another to start talking about the Lost City of Atlantis.  Somehow, these topics formed a Constellation of the Weird.  I concluded that most of the time, those who embrace such ideas keep them to themselves, but once one person touches on one weird item, it gives someone else permission to bring up another.

Steven Spielberg, who directed and helped write the script for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is of that sort, except that he would have many of these things be related under the unifying concept of UFOs.  But not all.  There is a point in the movie when ordinary citizens claiming to have seen a UFO are in a discussion with government officials who, of course, make light of their observations. Suddenly, some guy looking like a hippie leftover stands up and says that he saw Bigfoot once, thereby making him and the others look like a bunch of fruitcakes.  Nevertheless, this illustrates how one element in the Constellation of the Weird can suggest another, even though the one is logically unrelated to the other.

One weird category that Spielberg does want to fall within the scope of UFO phenomena is mysterious disappearances.  When the movie begins, we see several different groups of men gathering in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico on account of the sudden appearance of bombers from Flight 19, a squadron that disappeared in 1945.  The planes appear to be in perfect condition.

David Laughlin (Bob Balaban) asks, “Where’s the pilot? I don’t understand! Where’s the crew?! How the hell did it get here?!”

We will eventually get an answer as to “where” and “how.”  A flying saucer has the crew, and it put the planes there in the desert.  What we never get an answer to is “why.”  And that leads to the question, “Why don’t we get to know the why?”

Also present at the site is Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut), a French scientist who specializes in UFOs. It is brought to his attention that there is a witness, a local who saw what happened the previous night. When asked, he says that the sun came out and sang to him.  He is an old man and clearly simpleminded.

Later in the movie, the SS Cotopaxi, a ship that disappeared along with its crew in 1925, is found sitting in the middle of a desert in Mongolia.

Later still in the movie, we are taken to India, where hundreds of Indians are getting themselves all worked up religion-wise because they heard five notes coming from the sky.  Claude Lacombe is there, and he subsequently gives a lecture about the notes to his colleagues.  The aliens have had plenty of time to learn how to speak English, but these notes and some corresponding hand signals are the only forms of communication they deign to use.  And that’s too bad, because if they spoke English, we could ask them, “What’s the point of all this?”

In the meantime, at an air-traffic control center, pilots from different planes tell of unusual activity on the part of some strange aircraft, but no one wants to report it as a UFO. They don’t want to get involved.  So, not only does the government cover up information it has about UFOs, but a lot of such sightings don’t even get reported.

The scene shifts to a house in Indiana.  It’s the middle of the night, and Barry, a five-year-old boy, is awakened when his toys become activated.  As he walks through the house, other such things start happening, such as doors opening on their own and a coke can opening by itself.  Implicit in this is the suggestion that in those stories about houses where stuff flies around the room, the cause is UFOs.

The old man who witnessed the planes being placed on the ground in Mexico had a childlike mentality. Barry, a second person to witness one of the UFOs, is an actual child.  Perhaps it is not too soon to recall Luke 18:17, in which Jesus says, “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.”

This movie is not alone in suggesting a religious aspect to UFOs.  I first became aware of the way some people make that connection about fifty years ago.  A friend of mine, who was studying to become a minister, offered up the following argument.  UFO sightings are evidence of a higher intelligence on other planets, he said. So, if I was willing to accept that, then I should be open to the possibility that there is an even higher intelligence, namely God.

I feel bad repeating this argument, for it may appear that I’m making fun of him. But I do repeat it because I have since come across the idea behind it in many forms.  What was unusual about his argument is that he actually presented it explicitly.  Usually, the connection between extraterrestrials and God is only hinted at so that it never amounts to more than a feeling.  The entire movie Contact (1997) is an example of this.

The scene shifts to another house in Indiana consisting of the Neary family.  That would be Roy (Richard Dreyfuss), his wife Ronnie (Terri Garr), and their young children, two boys and a girl.  They are all in the living room, and it is pandemonium.  About a week earlier, Roy promised the family a movie.  He sees that Pinocchio (1940) is playing at a theater, and his kids have never seen it.  He tells them they will love it, but one of his sons, who is eight years old, says, “Who wants to see some dumb cartoon rated G for kids?”

Ostensibly, the joke is that this boy is a kid.  However, I believe this is also an inside joke.  One thing that producers in Hollywood quickly learned after the ratings system was established was that it was difficult to make a lot of money on a movie rated G.  The ideal rating is PG, which is conducive to maximum attendance.  Therefore, to keep the movie we are watching from being rated G, the word “shit” is worked into the dialogue four times.  I first became aware of this a few years later when I saw Popeye (1980), which you would expect to be a movie for children.  I was surprised when at one point in the movie, the title character, played by Robin Williams, says, “Oh, shit!”  The reason for this, as I later discovered, was to give the movie its PG rating.

The character Pinocchio is a little boy, wooden at first.  And it is clear that Roy wants to see the movie for its own sake, while enjoying it vicariously through his children.  Roy also likes to play Goofy Golf, and we see him playing with toy trains with his son.  In other words, he too is childlike.

Finally, Ronnie announces that it is time for bed.  One of the boys says, “No way! Dad said we could finish watching The Ten Commandments.”  It is the 1956 version.

Needless to say, there are many other movies that might have been on television, but this one was chosen as another way of making an association between UFOs and religion.  In 1968, Erich Von Däniken published Chariot of the Gods?  Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, in which he argued that aliens from other planets enabled ancient civilizations to build things like the pyramids of Egypt or the statues on Easter Island.  These ancient astronauts were regarded by those on Earth as gods.

Building on this thesis, there are those who wonder if many of the miracles reported in the Bible were brought about by these ancient astronauts.  In ETs Among Us:  UFO Witnesses and Whistleblowers (2016), someone in the movie argues that religious art from the past proves that miracles associated with Moses, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and Jesus were brought about by UFOs.

One might suppose that this is an atheistic thesis:  since we have ancient astronauts to account for miracles, then I guess we don’t need God.  But somehow, these ancient astronauts are supposed to be evidence that there is a God.

In particular, the parting of the Red Sea, allowing Moses and the Hebrews to get across before the Egyptians could catch up with them, is explained by some as the work of ancient astronauts.  Once again, the proponents of this idea know that it does not pay to get too far into details, lest the idea collapse under the absurdity of it all.  No one says, “God told the ancient astronauts to swoop down and part the Red Sea.”  Certainly, Close Encounters of the Third Kind does not.  It merely operates on the association of ideas.  Having The Ten Commandments being shown on television while Earth is being visited by UFOs is all that is needed for the purpose at hand.

In a similar way, in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a man from another planet calls himself “Mr. Carpenter” and is resurrected after he dies, prompting an association of him with Jesus.  But an association of ideas is as far as that movie is willing to go.  No one says, “Gosh, Mr. Carpenter must actually be Jesus Christ, and his landing here on Earth in a flying saucer is the Second Coming.” At that point, reason would kick in, and the idea would be rejected as preposterous.

Roy is a utility lineman, and he gets a call telling him he is needed to take care of a huge power outage. While out in his truck, a UFO hovers over him, doing its poltergeist thing, and then moves on.  He starts driving again when he almost hits Barry, whose mother Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) grabs him out of the middle of the road at the last second.  It’s a good thing she sleeps in her clothes, because if she had had to get dressed first before chasing after Barry, she might not have made it in time.

Roy goes back home and drags his entire family out of bed so that he can take them back to where he was, so that they can see what he saw, but it’s not there anymore.  Ronnie is not amused.  The next day they start arguing about it, with Roy wanting to investigate what he saw, and Ronnie wanting him to stop with the nonsense.  Then she answers the phone and finds out that Roy has been fired. We don’t know why because while she was talking to his boss, their two boys were arguing about aliens that live on the moon, and it was hard to hear what she was saying.

Earlier that day, while Roy was getting ready to shave, the shaving cream in his hand triggered something in his head, an idea put there by the space aliens.  In other words, we can now add ESP to all the other weird stuff that UFOs are responsible for. That night, Roy comes across Jillian again.  Her son Barry is building a shape out of the mud, with her help, that matches the shape that Roy has been seeing.

When Roy gets back home, he starts going crazy, determined to build a large version of his vision out of mud and other stuff right in his living room.  Ronnie gets so fed up that she takes the kids and goes to stay with her sister, eventually calling him up, saying she wants a divorce.  The reason for this becomes clear later on.  After the alien mothership lands, Roy wants to go with them and gets on board.  Had Ronnie not left him, he would be abandoning his wife and children, and that would never do.

Being part of a family is not conducive to having a religious experience, especially a family like that of the Neary household, which is never quiet, but always full of noise and confusion.  That is why in Luke 14:26, Jesus says, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”  Roy’s vision is part of his religious experience, which he feels compelled to follow, but his obligations to his family conflict with that.  (Luke 14:20:  “And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.”)  This is solved by having his wife leave him.

In the meantime, a UFO visited the Guiler house again, this time trying to get inside, so to speak.  As Jillian tries to keep it out, Barry wants to let it in, saying, “Toys!” and “You can come and play now.” Eventually, he gets away from Jillian and is abducted by the aliens.  But not to worry.  Barry was right. When we get to the end of the movie, we see that the aliens look like space children, so they only wanted Barry to come out and play.  Jillian did not realize that Barry’s abduction was just a play date.

The government and the scientists figure out that the UFOs want to meet us earthlings at Devils Tower, the vision of which has been haunting Roy, Jillian, and some others.  The government tries to keep anyone else from knowing about this because that’s what the government always does in a UFO movie.  But Roy and Jillian manage to make it there and see what is happening.

When the mothership first opens up, out come the missing pilots from Flight 19. Commenting on the fact that the pilots don’t seem to have aged, a scientist says, “Einstein was right.”  Another scientist replies, “Einstein was probably one of them.”

Those not enamored of the Constellation of the Weird simply smirked when they heard this line while watching this movie, not taking it seriously.  But Spielberg did intend for it to be taken seriously.  Of course, Einstein did not look like those aliens, so what Spielberg meant to suggest was that one of those aliens mystically infused his spirit into Einstein’s body, thereby giving him the insight that no human being on this planet would be capable of.  But the scientist making that comment does not flatly state that thesis because it would violate the principle that such things are only to be hinted at, never to be clearly enunciated.

As far as the first scientist is concerned, he is, of course, referring to the twin paradox, in which an astronaut gets on a rocket and flies away at speeds close to that of light, while his twin stays here on Earth.  When the rocket finally returns, the astronaut seems to have aged only slightly, while the twin that stayed on Earth is an old man.

So, I guess what happened is this.  The aliens abducted the pilots and took off at speeds approaching that of light for just over thirty years of Earth time, but only a year or so of UFO time, and then brought them back.  Oh, but wait a minute!  They also abducted the crew of the SS Cotopaxi in 1925. So, they flew off with them at speeds close to that of light, and after thirty years of Earth time, returned, picked up the crew of Flight 19, and then took off again for another thirty years of Earth time.  But we also see a woman exiting the mothership, so somewhere along the way they returned, picked her up, and took off again.  Why they did this over and over again, we never find out.

At the beginning of the movie, we saw that one of the planes had a photograph of a young woman, probably the pilot’s sweetheart.  I would love for that pilot to have said, “Now that I’m back, Margie and I are going to get married,” only to be told that Margie is a grandmother now.  Better still would be for another pilot to say that he can’t wait to go home and see his mother again, only to be told that she died a long time ago. And in addition to the heartbreak experienced by the abducted, having lost their loved ones, think of all the grief visited upon the friends and family of those abducted people, when they thought their loved ones had died.  Those aliens are an inconsiderate bunch.

We see several men and women in red uniforms, apparently potential passengers on the mothership for its next trip out.  A prayer is said over them to establish, once more, a connection between religion and UFOs.  Then we see them parading toward the spaceship.  Roy is with them.  He is singled out as someone special by the leader of the aliens, and he will be the one they take on board.  I suppose the aliens’ plan is to take off at speeds close to that of light for about thirty Earth years, and then return him looking as young as when he left, since that seems to be their thing.  Roy’s wife will have to raise three children by herself without child support, but he doesn’t care about them.