Close Encounters of the Third Kind

:This article is about the film; for the classfication, see Close encounter.

Plot Overview

The movie plot has three basic threads:

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• A group of scientific researchers including Lacombe and Laughlin (Balaban) investigate UFO reports worldwide, and discover a lost squadron of World War II aircraft (see Flight 19) in a Mexican desert.
• Indiana electrical lineman Roy Neary (Dreyfuss) experiences a close encounter of the second kind (a sighting that leaves physical evidence) and thereafter becomes obsessed with aliens, to the great dismay of his family. He begins making endless models of a distinctive mountain or hill - a place he has never actually seen, and with which he is unfamiliar.
• Jillian Guiler (Dillon) witnesses the UFOs as well, then loses her son Barry (Guffey) to aliens who come to her home.

After Neary's increasingly bizarre conduct causes his family to abandon him, he sees the feature he has been modelling on a television news show. He and others with similar experiences obsessively head towards the site. He meets up with Guiler en route. Elsewhere in the world, the pace of alien activity is increasing. Claude Lacombe (a character based on Jacques Vallee, played by Truffaut) investigates a host of weird occurrences along with other United Nations experts. The obsessives and the experts eventually meet up at Devils Tower in Wyoming. The United States Army evacuates the area after spreading false reports that a train wreck has spilled highly dangerous nerve gas. Neary and Guiler persist, and eventually see dozens of spacecraft appear, culminating with appearances from extraterrestrials, and the return of people who'd been abducted, including Guiler's young son Barry. The aliens spurn a group of astronauts who have been specially trained to go with them, and select only Neary, who leaves Earth in a massive alien starship.

Related Topics:
Jacques Vallee - United Nations - Devils Tower - Wyoming - United States Army - Nerve gas - Abducted - Astronaut

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