Stellar collections for Spielberg’s little extraterrestrial, who immediately became iconographic
On May 26, 1982, the Cannes Film Festival closed in the name of an absolute masterpiece in the history of cinema, “ET the extra-terrestrial”: a “small” film by Steven Spielberg (with a budget exactly identical to that of “Poltergeist – Demoniache presenze “by Tobe Hooper, of which the director was producer in the same year), destined to undermine” Star Wars “from the contemporary podium of the highest grossing of all time and that Universal initially realized reluctantly, as it was scarcely convinced of its potential commercial. After another of his masterpieces, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind / Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), with which he had already overturned the stereotype of “bad aliens” in an evident message of peace and tolerance – literally – universal, Spielberg had started working on a new project, the never realized “Night Skies” where the “visitors” would have to become a threat again; but the idea (perhaps also due to the exploit of Ridley Scott who in 1979 with “Alien” brought the theme back into the sign of horror and death) was shelved. From the ashes of that script, which included the abandonment on Earth of a “puppy” of the invaders, and from the childhood memories of an imaginary extraterrestrial friend created to overcome the trauma of the divorce of his parents, then developed with the screenwriter Melissa Mathison a science fiction fairytale with the characteristics of a “mystical” autobiography in which to overturn fantastic memories and elaborations of never healed wounds: and the result was one of the most powerful emotional and purely cinematic experiences ever. “ET l’Extra-terrestre” came out in the United States on 11 June 1982 (in Italy it even had to wait for Christmas) and the following year it received nine Oscar nominations, including best film and screenplay: it only got four (for the soundtrack of John Williams, the visual effects to which Carlo Rambaldi contributed in a decisive way, the sound and sound editing), beaten by the now dusty and forgotten “Gandhi” by Richard Attenborough.
What years later, commenting on his result, he had to say: “I was sure not only that ‘ET’ would win, but that it should win: it was inventive, powerful and wonderful, while I make more mundane films.” He was right. California, San Fernando Valley. After being lost (and having escaped the government agents who had detected his presence), an alien frightened and abandoned by his fellows, forced by circumstances to leave hastily, finds refuge in the home of his single mother Mary (Dee Wallace) and the his three children, Elliott (Henry Thomas), Michael (Robert McNaughton) and Gertie (Drew Barrymore). To establish contact with the creature the pimp Elliott, who manages to lure it inside the house with a ruse, immediately discovering that the alien has established a sort of empathic bond with him. Unable to keep it hidden, he introduces him to the incredulous brothers, leaving his mother in the dark: and the funny ET, as he was renamed with an acronym by the boys, at first tries to explain his origin to them by levitating spheres and objects to replicate his system. planetary and then proves to possess almost thaumaturgical powers, making a withered plant flourish and healing with the luminous tip of his long wrinkled hand a wound that Elliott got in his finger. While the latter experiences an increasingly strong symbiosis with him that also causes him some scholastic embarrassment when ET left alone in the house experiences a state of intoxication after drinking beer, the alien guest builds an improvised device with which he hopes to “call home ”to be picked up, aware that his health (which Elliott also suffers from) is increasingly frail.
Taking advantage of the Halloween celebrations to make him go unnoticed, the boys thus disguise ET as a ghost to accompany him into the forest and make him launch a signal into space; but after spending the night in the open, Michael finds the in the meantime dead creature dying and brings him back to a dying Elliott. at which point Mary discovers everything; but also the moment when the men led by the unnamed agent (Peter Coyote) who had already chased the alien invade the house turning it into a laboratory. When the connection between Elliott and ET disappears and the latter appears to be dead, the child realizes that the extraterrestrial needed to disconnect from him to recover all his vital energy: and, with ET restored, he wages a fight with his brothers against the time (and the authorities) to reunite him with his fellow men who are coming. It is still difficult to say something about a film so loved and analyzed in every aspect that does not sound at the same time as rhetorical, “recycled” or ultimately useless. It is even impossible to detect any imperfection or, worse, some sign of “impermanence”: “ET the extra-terrestrial” has always been a perfect and timeless object, as well as one of the highest results ever achieved in intrinsically cinematic narration and wonder. And this remains, today, after forty years, as well as probably in another forty.
With all due respect to many other no less significant titles or popular films of Spielberg’s long career, undoubtedly his apex, his most “private” and at the same time universal film; as well as one of the highest examples of pure writing for images ever seen, overflowing with “paintings” that have become iconic (such as the flying bike that stands out against the moon against the light in the night) and symbolic intuitions (all the adult protagonists, except for the mother of the boys, they do not have a face for a good part of the film, until the acknowledgment of the agent played by Peter Coyote characterized in the opening words only by the huge and rattling bunch of keys that hangs from his belt; evident symbol of the boyish projection of a world “of the great” that possesses the -metaphorical- tools of access to Life). But also a “pure” film, made of the material of the cinema itself, which could exist and have a meaning and legibility even if it were totally deprived of dialogue (as the last twenty minutes demonstrate, substantially silent and almost exclusively entrusted to sound and power of John Williams’ unforgettable music). It is also an unsurpassed example of the magical suspension of disbelief: for the naturalness with which every single and most absurd narrative intuition (such as the construction of a space telephone made of a can, a disc saw, an umbrella covered with tinfoil and a “Cricket” / “Speak & Spell”, a very popular vintage electronic game to teach children to read and write) is perfectly plausible in a context that is only apparently “empirical” and in reality so abstract and fantastic as to be almost derealized.
A masterpiece (it must be reiterated), whose popular success not only contributed significantly to the character design with which the genius of Carlo Rambaldi super himself (not surprisingly it was his last “animatronic” creation for the big screen, after “King Kong” and the mechanics of the xenomorph of “Alien “Designed by the visionary HR Giger), but also an underground epper noticeable” Disney “ancestry, cornerstone of Spielberg’s poetics (see the quotations of” Dumbo “in” 1941 “and” Pinocchio “in” Close encounters of the third kind “), that here, almost a decade before “Hook”, pushes a possible parallel between the “lost boy” Elliott, the funny and (perhaps) eternal infant ET and the scientists / “pirates” (not coincidentally, the literary work dli Barrie which is read by Mary to Gertie before bed). As well as, surprisingly, and despite Spielberg’s proud Jewish origins, his not at all hidden nature of a Christian parable: where an explicit representation of death at the hands of “unbelievers” is followed by a real resurrection propitiated by love and, in some measure, faith. Review it in the original edition, if you can, to rediscover this declination of meaning in the finale of Elliott’s splendid monologue in front of the “body bag” of his friend who is believed to have disappeared. [ “You must be dead, ‘cause I don’t know how to feel. I can’t feel anything anymore. You’ve gone someplace else now. I’ll believe in you all my life, every day. E.T., I love you”]. But also to acknowledge that such a high level of writing, in poor contemporary pop cinema, is now pure utopia.
May 26, 2022 (change May 26, 2022 | 08:09)
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