Close Encounters came out in 1977 and for years it's been a movie frequently aired on television. It's got a wide appeal, the ever-trendy element of aliens, and director Steven Spielberg's name attached. Still, the other night, watching it nearly from the start, all over again, I realized once again how truly great this film is, and just how much it moves me.

Close Encounters is about the intersection of ordinary people with the extraordinary: aliens from another world or, it may as well be, another dimension. Other movies have humans encountering aliens in outer space or humans being attacked by aliens who've come to earth. Usually the humans are scientists, diplomats, or heroes. Not in Close Encounters. In this movie, aliens don't send warships and the people touched by aliens are ordinary people who weren't looking for them.

Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is an electrical utility worker in Indiana. One night, while out investigating a power outage, Neary's truck encounters a bright light, along with other phenomena he can't explain -- least of all a "sunburn" across one side of his face. Afterward, Neary isn't the same. He wants to know what he saw. Even more than that, he wants to know what it meant. And why does he keep thinking about this... shape in his head? He makes the shape in his shaving cream. He makes it in his mashed potatoes. His wife and kids think he's nuts. Especially when he starts making the shape in the middle of the family's model railroad set, and then right in the middle of the living room. (I won't give away the shape, in case by some miracle there's somebody who hasn't seen this movie.)

Meanwhile people all around the world are similarly touched. Jilian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) is a single mother who loses her son when an alien spaceship comes to the field by her farmhouse and her son simply can't resist going out to meet it. In other parts of the world, other strange phenomenon, from mass sightings to WWII pilots returning out of nowhere, to balls of light buzzing airplanes, have got the world on notice that something is about to happen. Finding out what it is ends up being the job of a French scientist, Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut, in a bit of truly inspired casting), who unravels the mystery and ends up working with the U.S. military to coordinate a "close encounter" between the people of earth and the aliens, who apparently want to introduce themselves.

Some people have called Close Encounters "slow-moving" or a movie where "nothing happens." I disagree. For me, the movie is one that shows the gradual awakening of the human soul, and the profound realization -- not belief, but actual knowing -- that we are not alone in the universe. People like Neary and Guiler are touched early on and "get it"; they remark to one another, near the movie's climax "Nobody knows, just us."

When the aliens finally do reveal themselves, in an extraordinary and lengthy finale, the real show isn't all the glowing lights of the spaceships (although they are very impressive, even by today's standards!) but the looks on the faces of the men and women witnessing it. They've been set up to make a close encounter, but until they see it with their own eyes, until they hear the musical communication of the human keyboard and the spaceships, they don't truly believe, they don't know. There's one moment where the keyboard player steps back from his keyboard and from the look on his face, it's clear that suddenly, he does know. His heart is changed.

There are other things to appreciate about this movie, besides the overall message. One thing that was for me interesting in this last viewing was the plot element of the U.S. government manipulating the media into believing there has been a massive chemical accident in the area around the arranged close encounter. They have the entire 300 square mile area evacuated, staging an elaborate ruse to grant themselves total secrecy. It's only through desperate persistence that Neary and Guiler manage to breach security. The tie-ins with the actions of today's U.S. government were only too clear, especially when it's obvious that in fact the government could and has got away with a lot worse than the government in the movie.

Another great thing about the movie is Richard Dreyfuss. I've enjoyed Dreyfuss in a lot of roles, from Jaws to What About Bob?, but in this movie, his role of the "ordinary guy" is one where you can't tell where the actor starts and the character begins. Watching him cope with his experience, you can't help but feel he's doing the very best he can under the circumstances and that it's only natural he seems on the verge of cracking up. You can understand his frustration with the government, just as by the end you can understand his fascination with the alien ships and finally, the aliens themselves. At the conclusion of the movie, you can understand why he's made the choices he has.

If you haven't seen Close Encounters in a while, I suggest you go watch it again; it's out in a couple different editions on DVD and certainly on VHS. Or maybe you already have it on some tape you got off TV. If you haven't seen this movie, I suggest you go run and get it.