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E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Retrospectives
- April 2003
USA, 1982. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written
by Melissa Mathison. Photographed by Allen Daviau. Edited by Carol Littleton.
Music by John Williams. Released by Universal. 115
minutes.
Starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Drew Barrymore,
Peter Coyote, Robert McNaughton, C. Thomas Howell, Erika Eleniak, K.C. Martel,
Sean Frye; with the voice of Pat Welsh.
It gets me every time. Embarrassing, that's how
it is. You know the scene I'm talking about. The kids and the adults are
in the woods, standing by as E.T.'s spaceship arrives to take him away. They
all have tears in their eyes. They have to say goodbye. Whenever the movie
gets to this point, the knowledge dawns that this is where I always cry.
Keeping it together feels good. Then the ramp on the spaceship starts to
close in, the music swells bigger, and it's no use anymore. Sometimes the
tears don't come out. But they're pushing it. And choking up is not a matter
of choice.
Oh, it's a remarkable piece of filmmaking, that
scene. The actors look overcome. The light and breeze left by the departing
spaceship has a sense of the touch of heaven. The music of John Williams
is low-key for much of the movie, while enchanting little discoveries are
made in its domestic setting. But now it lets loose with the most operatic
of soaring -- you need a big breath to take it in. Steven Spielberg told
Williams to record the last piece of score without timing it to a screen,
so it could be as free as possible, and if need be slight re-editing would
be done to the accompanying images. The result might be called the most effective
strains of music in movie history, doing transcendent justice to how every
laugh, sigh and moment of melancholy builds to the final moments. The images
are sad, the music triumphant; there's reflection on the end of a journey
in there, a sense of achievement in families becoming united, a general mood
of amazement at what could be beyond the stars.
But I can watch that scene on its own and still
find myself becoming a blubbering wreck. Being a skilled piece of manipulation
is hardly the full explanation of its effect. It plays so strongly because
E.T. was a friend to us, not just to Elliot. When he says goodbye, it means
something more than a part of a story. It is a reminder of someone special
who came into our lives. I was born in 1982, the year the film came out,
and people of my age have grown up in its shadow, with its funny little creature
a key figure in our cultural memory. But the all-encompassing popular success
of "E.T." shows that people of all ages found in it something
they had never imagined before, and could never forget. Saying that the movie
is about a boy who meets a being from outer space describes it as science
fiction, but nobody thinks of it that way, because it is quietly and tenderly
about magic, friendship and healing.
"E.T." doesn't play like regular science fiction,
and E.T. himself has never seemed like a special effect. He sounds a little
like my Indian grandmother, and also like my Yorkshire Terrier dog. His voice
came from an old woman named Pat Welch, whose lines were electronically altered
for more of an otherworldly pitch, and he emits noises that the sound crew
got from bird sounds, children doing impressions, you name it. Carlo Rambaldi,
who designed the aliens in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", gave him
eyes that were inspired by photographs of Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway,
but could also open wide enough to express the fascination of a child. The
miracle of E.T. -- the reason he has been embraced all over the world --
is that we can project onto him whatever we want, while he remains unique,
specific and real. He can stumble around with curiosity or display the power
to levitate objects and heal wounds. And he looks at once animalistic, plantlike
and human.
Such an astonishing creation was the extra terrestrial
puppet that I am shocked at how Spielberg felt the need to go and digitally
'restore' it for the 20th anniversary re-release. "I didn't want to change
it," he said, "but it was just like taking a very fine paintbrush and putting
a little bit of rouge on a pallid face." But a change is a change, and
Spielberg's excuse is the kind of ridiculous doublespeak that he should know
better than to attempt. Very little controversy has emerged over the digital
alterations, and countless members of the press declared them to be invisible,
but I can sure as hell see them, and my reaction is not positive. Putting
more expression on the face of E.T. is not necessary. One of the best shots
in the movie, where he looks blank after Gertie has dressed him in women's
clothing, now has his forehead wobbling up and down, and his eyes rolling
around -- it's trying to be obviously funny, which necessarily means that
it is not. Even in the subtlest of changes, the face looks too dark and fluid,
with that damned computerised sheen so common in special effects these last
few years.
There's also a psychological problem with altering
the face of E.T. It makes us conscious of it. Although the essence of the
story has not been changed, when watching the restored edition I could not
concentrate, because I was aware of E.T. every time he came into shot, and
found myself studying his details rather than enjoying his company. The rest
of the changes are pointless: The added scene featuring E.T. and Elliot playing
around in the bathroom was shot with a dark, creepy, spying camera, like
something out of "The Conversation", and its fully digitised E.T. has the
appearance of a mawkish cartoon. Digitally removing guns from the hands of
federal agents, and replacing the word "terrorist" with "hippie" when mom
criticises the Halloween costume of Michael, is the kind of inane oversensitivity
more suited to a bad studio executive than a good director.
Spielberg is not an evil guy. Unlike George Lucas,
who determines to rewrite history by refusing to release the original "Star
Wars" trilogy on home video, he has included the original "E.T." on the DVD
release. It's not a perfect situation; while all American DVD editions feature
both versions of the movie, here in the UK we have to shell out extra for
a three-disc collector's set, and the 1982 version is no longer available
for VHS or cinema release at all. But hey. At least it's
preserved.
And maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe most viewers
don't notice the changes, and the new "E.T." seems the same as the old.
Surrounding the new crap is still a wonderful story. Spielberg has said many
times that the character of Elliot was based on himself, growing up in the
suburbs, fighting with his siblings the way kids do, trying to get over his
parents' separation and feeling lost in the world. E.T. represents the kind
of force he might have hoped for to whisk away his sadness -- when making
the film, he worried that it might be too personal. Upon release it quickly
became the biggest box-office success in history, but Spielberg made it for
less than ten million dollars and had called it a small project: "As small
as it gets with me, anyway." What makes his personal vision play so well
is that everyone is sad or hungering, in some small place at least, and watching
"E.T." feels like filling the void.
An ugly alien coming down from the sky and solving
all our problems could have been a story destined for pompous sentimentality.
But rather than pushing it, "E.T." delicately involves the audience, by
ingratiating itself through comedy. The initial friendship of Elliot and
E.T. basically consists of them looking around the house, playing with household
items, and the boy trying to keep the creature from eating his toys. Tenderness
and humour are intertwined -- we laugh with recognition when Gertie rolls
her eyes at patronising comments from older kids, or sits at the kitchen
table repeating what the others are saying. In the same way, plot considerations
like the idea that an alien could be dangerous are dealt with by jokes in
throwaway moments. "Okay," says Michael, "I just hope we don't wake up on
Mars or something, surrounded by millions of little squashy
guys."
I was going to write a big long essay about the
movie, and try to deal with as many of its aspects as possible. But I'm sitting
here unable to do that -- enough has been written about it already, and trying
to drag out analysis is too laborious a task for a work as much pure fun
as this one. The simple truth is, no other movie has the same power to unite
audiences in wonder and fulfilment. So many people surrender to it, I think,
because bringing in baggage is too difficult. The friendly creature is from
another world, so we react to him with curiosity, and because his particulars
hit fundamental nerves in the imagination, the very idea of his being is
entrancing. The fact that the movie is filmed from the point of view of a
child means that the visceral experience is one of simple, direct values.
There are, for example, no politics to be quibbled over when government
scientists descend on Elliot and E.T.'s friendship with their noisy trucks
and pushy flashlights. They represent tall, unhelpful, scary adults. If you
can remember being a kid, you can identify with that.
And when we watch "E.T.", we can remember being
kids.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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