The Man Who Looked to the Skies
Think of Steven Spielberg and UFOs, and you likely picture one of two things: the gentle, glowing alien of *E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial* or the monumental light-and-sound show of *Close Encounters of the Third Kind*. For decades, these films have defined
our collective vision of first contact. They are grand, hopeful, and filled with a sense of childlike wonder. But beneath the awe, there’s a consistent, melancholic undercurrent: a broken family. In *Close Encounters*, Richard Dreyfuss’s Roy Neary becomes so obsessed with the mysterious signals from the sky that he abandons his wife and children. He sculpts mashed potatoes, rips up the garden for raw materials, and ultimately alienates everyone he loves in pursuit of a cosmic calling. It’s a spectacular and troubling portrait of a man driven by something he can’t explain. While the film’s climax is one of cinema’s most transcendent moments, the journey there is paved with domestic rubble. This isn't an accident; it’s the key to the entire story.
A Story Older Than the Stars
To understand Roy Neary, you have to understand the childhood of the man who created him. When Spielberg was a teenager, his parents, Leah and Arnold, divorced. It was a deeply formative and painful experience for him. His father, a pioneering computer engineer, moved away. In interviews over the years, Spielberg has described feeling as though his father was a genius on par with the scientists he worked with—a man drawn to a higher calling, much like the characters in his films. Spielberg has openly admitted that the theme of the absent father, which appears in everything from *Hook* to *Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade*, is a direct result of this period. He channeled his feelings of abandonment and confusion into his art. The divorce, he once said, was the “greatest, most powerful, most negative, and most character-building” event of his youth. So, when he finally got the budget and creative freedom to make his ultimate UFO movie, he didn't just tell a story about aliens; he told a story about a dad leaving.
The Detail That Changes Everything
This brings us to the one, crucial detail: in *Close Encounters*, Roy Neary isn’t taken. He *chooses* to go. He gets the invitation to board the mothership and, without a backward glance at the family he left behind, he walks up the ramp into the light. This is the fantasy of a child trying to make sense of a parent’s departure. It recasts abandonment as a heroic journey. Dad didn’t just leave; he was chosen for a grand, cosmic purpose that we couldn’t possibly understand. He went to join the stars. This single creative choice transforms the film from a simple sci-fi adventure into a profound act of personal myth-making. Spielberg is using the language of cinema to heal a childhood wound, or at least to explain it in a way that makes it bearable. The awe and wonder of the final scene aren't just for the audience; they’re a balm for the filmmaker himself. Roy Neary’s departure isn't a failure; it’s a form of ascension. The aliens didn’t break up his family—they gave his obsession a divine purpose.
Echoes Across the Galaxy
Once you see this detail, you see it everywhere in Spielberg’s work. The entire plot of *E.T.* is driven by an alien who is, essentially, a lost child, and a human boy, Elliott, whose father has recently left for Mexico. The film becomes a story of two lonely souls, both missing a key part of their family, finding solace in each other. Elliott is filling a dad-sized hole in his life, and in doing so, he helps his alien friend get home. Decades later, Spielberg would confront this theme head-on in *The Fabelmans*, his most autobiographical film, which directly dramatizes his parents’ divorce and his use of filmmaking as an escape. He’s been telling us the same personal story his entire career, just wrapped in different, dazzling packages—whether it’s a boy with a bicycle, an archaeologist with a whip, or a man compelled to chase strange lights in the sky.
