At the beginning of ET the Extra-Terrestrial there is a crucial home scene where 10-year-old Elliott (Henry Thomas) desperately tries to convince his mother (Dee Wallace), his older brother Michael (Robert McNaughton) and his little sister Gertie Drew Barrymore) that he found an alien in the backyard of their suburban home. Nobody believes him. So he attacks, as many children would in this situation. He claims that his absent father would believe him. And he tells his nervous mother, who is still harsh about the divorce, that his father and a woman named Sally are on holiday in Mexico. It hurts her feelings.
Michael throws himself at Elliott. “Why don’t you grow up?” Think of other people for change. “
Thinking about others is what ET is about. And that’s why he has been shedding tears from the audience so effectively for 40 years. A child of divorce himself, Spielberg is uniquely insightful about how children are sensitive, vulnerable, innocent beings who feel the world intensely, but are also naturally solipsists. They understand how events affect them, but empathy is a learned trait, part of the same slow developmental process that teaches them to walk, read, and take care of themselves. (Many adults fail to learn this.) Spielberg imagines a science fiction fantasy in which a boy literally senses what another being feels, and the connection between them is extremely strong. Elliott is growing at a breathless rate.
The simplicity of the film’s storybook is key. That’s why Spielberg commissioned Melissa Mathison, who previously wrote The Black Stallion, another reserve children’s drama about the relationship between a little boy and an orphaned creature. Mathison’s script is a model of economy and clarity, abbreviated to serve a story that doesn’t really have much of a twist: Elliott meets ET, an alien lost in the woods after his spaceship leaves without him. Elliott and his siblings then shelter the alien and help him return home. Beyond the scary, faceless adults who eventually intervene, that’s all. Even dialogue, though bizarre at times, favors directness. Some of the most quoted lines: “Beeeee good.” “ET phone home.” “Oh” “Stay.”
Spielberg has already opposed expectations of a hostile alien invasion earlier with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, who expressed hope that such interspecies contact could bring out the best in humanity. The squatting, muttering, deer eyes in the alien is much more a device that serves to illuminate the loneliness and stress of a kid with a key who has not settled into his new situation. Although the film never says how long Elliott’s father has been out of the house, it seems recent enough to make him feel uneasy. The alien brings Elliott closer to his siblings as they work together to shelter him and find out what he needs, but they both try to return to their families. As Elliott helps ET get home, he learns to accept the recently restored version of what home means to him as well.
Working at his best, Spielberg gave ET a sentimental attraction that would have felt more manipulative if he hadn’t refrained so strategically. John Williams’s part is one of his most famous and uplifting, but Spielberg treats it like a shark in Jaws, handing it out in pieces before allowing the audience to experience the whole thing. It is only in the sequence in which ET raises Elliott’s motorbike to the sky that the orchestration strikes completely and the effect is like a dam burst, this transcendent moment when a supernatural event is associated with a huge emotional crescendo. It’s like a children’s movie, the equivalent of an opera night.
Spielberg and Mathison also return to the synchronized emotions between a boy and an alien, approaching comedy first before attacking the tear ducts. In one of the film’s most famous series, Spielberg harmonizes the mornings of Elliott and ET as the boy is asked to dissect a frog in a science class and his new boyfriend bursts into the fridge, skipping a potato salad in favor of eating six packets. . The release of Elliott’s frogs foreshadows his efforts to free aliens from scientists later – again, because he learns to take an interest in things other than himself – but the image of this curious, strange little creature drunkenly bumps into cabinets and surfing the canals is a comic pleasure in itself, as if going through an accelerated course to become an American.
Spielberg behind the scenes of ET. Photo: Universal / Rex / Shutterstock
ET is a touchstone for Spielberg’s acclaimed reputation for working with child actors who, under his supervision, are neither too mature nor too disgusting. Barrymore laughs the most like Gertie, but her reaction to a moment near death when the alien is defibrillated may be the most poignant in the film. At the same time, adults also play an important role in aliens, and not all are men in protective suits and probes. Wallace needs some time to establish herself as a working mother who cares exclusively for her children, but often can only do her best to keep the chaos away. And Peter Coyote has a crucial late appearance as a scientist who confirms the boy’s feeling when he needs him most.
There is no irony about ET and no feeling that it is trying to reproduce the magic of its predecessor in the way that future films will try to imitate it. Spielberg approaches the material with the sincerity and openness that his characters bring to their relationship with the alien, and he still feels eternal and pure, like few movies. ET is a request for emotional growth, for people to shout the best of themselves when it really matters. Children can do it, and adults can learn again if necessary.
Add Comment