The last time I watched this movie was when I was 4 or 5 years old but the imagery got stuck in my mind until today when I found that its on **Netflix**. Having grown up watching **The Ten Commandments** on repeat on VHS, I cant help catching the similar biblical visual cues.
Lights from the skies, similar to the enlightenment from God, shining down to the people of Indiana.
The chosen ones (Roy Neary, Jillian Guiler) had an encounter with the lights and been having images in their heads of the Devil’s Tower, initially realising that it is the place they should go.
The encounter might be as horrific as a poltergeist haunting with everything in the house shaking and flying around for those who does not understand, except ***Barry***, the little boy who are not scared at all, because he is not yet being indoctrinated and see things differently.
The sleep aerosol used by the military as a scare tactics to evacuate the area around the **Devil’s Tower** to avoid the mass to witness the scheduled UFO encounter, copying from the plagues on the **Pharoah**.
The **Exodus** of the people of **Wyoming** after being made believe that the air is contaminated.
The **Hindu** priests in **India** recites on the same tone that has been ringing in the heads of the chosen ones and received by the radio observatories. It saying alot about the interconnection of science and religion which is rarely made back then in movies in **1977**.
The shape of the spaceships are also in the form of the stupas found in most of **Hindu** temples. The images of flying **stupas** also very evident in the illustration of the **Rig Veda.**
The communication between aliens and the scientist are with colored lights and sounds. The two mathematical elements that is probably the constant of the universe. And I think the universe is mathematical.
The journey of Roy Neary and Jillian Guiler going against the mass population is almost what the ancient prophets of the old went through in the believe and faith of what they have received from above and follow what is in their heads. Similar to Moses’s climb to Mount Sinai in The Ten Commandments.
There might have to be the chosen ones because not everyone can understand the message. Like how a batch of people being selected in the end to go home with the aliens probably to learn their ways, come back and spread the knowledge to the mass. Some might accept it, some might not.
Like religion, like science. The fusion between the two is getting closer and this movie put a sci-fi theme using biblical visuals. Some frames has been composed almost like it comes out of a biblical oil painting.
Both Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Ten Commandments put into moving pictures two similar subjects using the similar language. And also in a revolutionary way that never has been done before. That what makes a movie to be as iconic and a classic.
Which reminds me of what the late Nik Aziz Nik Mat told Nasir Jani in their documentary filming back then in the 90s, “Do what the Americans havent done yet”.
