There is a crucial domestic scene at the beginning of ET the Extra-Terrestrial where 10-year-old Elliott (Henry Thomas) desperately tries to convince his mother (Dee Wallace), his older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) and his sister little Gertie (Drew). Barrymore) who has found an alien in the backyard of his suburban home. Nobody believes it. So he attacks, as many children would in this situation. He claims that his absent father would have believed him. And he tells his persecuted mother, who is still raw about divorce, that his father and a woman named Sally are on vacation in Mexico. It hurts his feelings.
Michael explodes at Elliott. “Why don’t you grow up? Think of other people to change. “
Thinking of others is what ET is all about. And that’s why he’s been pulling tears from the audience for 40 years so effectively. Divorced son, Spielberg has a unique perception of how children are sensitive, vulnerable, and innocent creatures who feel the world intensely, but are also naturally solipsistic. They understand how events affect them, but empathy is a learned trait, part of the same slow development process that teaches them to walk, read, and fend for themselves. (Many adults don’t learn it.) Spielberg conceived of a sci-fi fantasy in which a child literally feels what another being feels, and the bond between them is overwhelmingly powerful. Elliott grows at a brisk pace with no breath.
The simplicity of the film’s storybook is key. That’s why Spielberg commissioned Melissa Mathison, who had previously written The Black Stallion, another children’s drama about the connection between a young child and an orphan. Mathison’s screenplay is a model of economy and clarity, reduced to serving a story that doesn’t really have big twists and turns: Elliott meets ET, an alien lost in the woods after his spaceship goes without him. Elliott and his brothers take refuge in the alien and help him return home. Outside of the terrifying, faceless adults who finally step in, that’s all there is to it. Even dialogue, though sometimes whimsical, prioritizes frankness. Some of the most quotable lines: “Beeeeee good.” “I’ll call you at home.” “Oh.” “Stay”.
Spielberg had already defied the expectation of a previously hostile alien invasion with close encounters of the third kind, expressing hope that this contact between species could bring out the best in humanity. Squatting, whispering and deer-eyed in ET is much more of a device, which serves to illuminate the loneliness and stress of a child who has not adapted to his new situation. While the film never says how long Elliott’s father has been away from home, it seems recent enough for everyone to feel uneasy. The alien brings Elliott closer to his brothers as they work together to protect him and find out what he needs, but they both try to get back together with their families. While Elliott helps ET return home, he also learns to accept a newly reconstituted version of what home means to him.
Working up to his powers, Spielberg gives ET a sentimental push that would feel more manipulative if not so strategically restrained. John Williams’s score is one of his most famous and lofty, but Spielberg treats it like the Jaws Shark, breaking it into pieces before allowing the audience to experience everything. It is not until the sequence in which ET lifts Elliott’s bicycle into the sky that the orchestration arrives in full swing, and the effect is like the bursting of the dam, this momentous moment in which a supernatural event is linked to a huge emotional crescendo. It’s like the equivalent of a children’s movie night at the opera.
Spielberg and Mathison also return to the synchronized emotions between the child and the alien, approaching it as a comedy first before attacking the tear ducts. In one of the film’s most celebrated sequences, Spielberg harmonizes the mornings of Elliott and ET as the boy is asked to dissect a frog in science class and his new friend attacks the fridge, letting the ‘potato salad in favor of drinking a pack of six. . Elliott Releasing Frogs foreshadows his efforts to free ET from scientists later, again, because he is learning to worry about things other than himself, but the image of this curious, strange creature crashing drunk against the cupboards and navigating the canal is a comic delight. in himself, as if he were taking an intensive course to become an American.
Spielberg behind the scenes on ET. Photo: Universal / Rex / Shutterstock
ET is the touchstone of Spielberg’s fame for working with child actors, who under his watch are neither too early to adult nor unpleasantly unpleasant. Barrymore makes the biggest laughs like Gertie, but his reaction to a near-death moment when the alien is being defibrillated may be the most real of the film. At the same time, adults also play an important role in ET, and not all of them are men in suits and probes of hazardous material. Wallace needs little time to establish herself as a working mother who cares immensely for her children, but often she can only do all she can to keep the chaos at bay. And Peter Coyote has a crucial late appearance as a scientist who validates the child’s feelings when he needs them most.
There’s no irony with ET, and it makes no sense to try to reproduce the magic of a predecessor in the way future films would work to imitate it. Spielberg approaches the material with the sincerity and openness that his characters bring to his kinship with the alien, and still feels timeless and pure like few films. ET is a petition for emotional growth, for people to call the best of themselves when it really matters. Children can do this and adults can re-learn if necessary.