We never get to glimpse an alien clearly. Two minutes fifty-one seconds in it appears that we will, as one slowly walks up the gangplank, only for the focus to shift from deep to shallow as we see an alien hand carefully move a branch. Suspense through delaying revelation is one that Spielberg is good at creating.
We are still waiting for the horror movie promised by the opening bars at the start of the credits. When we first heard the aliens the made low grunting noises, they rustled quietly in the forest. Animal noises. When we entered the aliens’ spaceship we can hear the soft rhythm of water falling, this is an organic space. We see the shrubbery that they have gathered, the water keeping the plants alive. Steam hisses. But the music is discordant, it is warning us that this is not normal. Natural sounds and unnatural music are giving us two differing messages.
Is this the start of the horror movie?
An owl hoots a warning to the aliens and we get to see their chests light up in answer. Owls may be predators but here they are helping.
The splashes of red are soft now as we see them from our position within the forest. The red is low, almost within the foliage.
Then we get our first glimpse of ET. The music changes and his grunts are to the fore. We see his fingers first as they reach into frame from the left to pick up the sapling. ET will always help the youth of this world. This is at once a shot full of mystery, tenderness and tactility.
Next, we get a shot of a rabbit, a shot that will be repeated. This is from ground level, the body of the rabbit centred. Is this a simple nod to the environmentally friendly alien or a signal that ET is about to fall through a rabbit hole?
The second shot is closer, and the rabbit is given a lovely little skip in the music.
The forest looms large over ET when we get our first full glimpse of him, he is small within the multiple frames of the trees. The music adds grandeur to the moment. We are feeling what ET is feeling. We wonder at the spectacle; the sound of his breathing is intensified when we see shots of the trees rising up into the night. This would indicate that the shot is his POV, usually reserved for the main protagonist in a film.
When the city lights are revealed to ET he is heard to gasp and we are given an image of him watching, right of frame, in the dark, still indefinable.
Then the camera pans sharply to the left.
When the men arrive, we hear the loud car engines, we hear the crunch of wheels destroying. They are at odds with nature. Where the aliens gently moved branches aside, carefully lifted plants up from their roots, earth still attached, the men are hasty, carelessly destructive.
Before this all the action had taken place in the background now, though, the car crashes into frame and nearly goes over a slight incline. In the next shot another car does the same coming in from the left, its manufactured, rubber wheel dominating half of the frame.
20 CinÉireann / February 2018