Sundays with Spielberg: 'E.T.' is Spielberg's emotional masterpiece
Few films so capably understand the horror and wonder of childhood.
Just a quick note: This week took it out of me, and by the evenings (when I do most my writing), I was pretty exhausted. So that’s why there was no newsletter on Friday. My hope is to be back later this week with both a continuation of my Summer of 1996 series and my thoughts on F9. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I can’t say it with 100% certainty, but as I recall, E.T. is the first movie I ever saw on the big screen. In the summer of 1982, I would have been 3 years old, and I have a vivid memory of being crammed into the backseat of my parents’ car at a drive-in along with my infant brother, who cried through the entire thing. I also recall seeing it at a traditional theater with my dad; I know it was E.T. because the final image of the spaceship ascending to the heavens as John Williams’ score crescendos is burned into my mind.
I loved E.T. as a child. So did my entire family. When the film was finally released on VHS in 1988 — a six-year window! — my parents immediately bought it. Near the end of one of our first viewings, we turned it off to hear sniffling down the hall. Following a trail of wadded-up Kleenex across the living room, we found my 3-year-old sister bawling her eyes out because she couldn’t handle E.T. and Elliott’s separation. My parents seem to have loved the film as much as we did, possibly more. They were the ones, after all, who took me to see it twice in theaters, and they were the ones who rushed out to buy it on home video. When we took a trip to Universal Studios Florida in the early 1990s, my mom — who has a very uncommon name — gave the operator at the E.T. ride a fake name just so she could hear the robotic alien talk to her at the end.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve watched many films I loved as a kid lose their luster. I recently tried to watch Oliver & Company with my kids and could barely make it through the cringe-inducing puns and substandard animation. Certain movies, like The Goonies, pack a substantial nostalgic joy that masks their lack of quality.
But E.T. still works. Spielberg’s magic retains its pull. When I watch it, my pulse pounds as Elliott traipses through his overgrown backyard to have his first encounter with the alien. My heart soars as E.T. and Elliott take that iconic bike ride to the stars. I weep when E.T. dies, cheer when he’s resurrected, and am a blubbery mess all over again when E.T. leaves for home, leaving Elliott staring in awe at the night sky.
A boy’s life
Why does E.T. work so well? On the surface, its plot isn’t much different from all the kid-befriends-alien/animal/imaginary-friend stories that came in its wake. Elliot and E.T.’s adventure sets the template that would be followed by everything from Mac and Me to Harry and the Hendersons to Super 8: kid encounters the creature, forms a bond, has some hijinks and helps the creature escape from those who want to imprison or dissect it. Why do those movies make me cringe while E.T. still entertains, delights and moves me?
Much of it comes down to the knack Spielberg had early in his career for capturing childhood so well. Few directors have ever portrayed the chaos of suburban life as authentically as Spielberg did in the 70s and early 80s. E.T.’s scenes of sibling discord, with kids talking excitedly over one another in a room strewn with pop culture detritus, perfectly captures domestic anarchy, a skill that would show up not only in Spielberg’s early directorial efforts (particularly here and in Close Encounters of the Third Kind) but also in the films his Amblin banner produced.
But it’s more than just a superficial re-creation of suburban life; Spielberg’s key is to capture not just the tone of suburbia but also its emotional reality. Where most kids’ movies aim for wish fulfillment, Spielberg probes deeper. He understands that there is awe, wonder and humor in childhood. But it’s also confusing, lonely and scary. While the iconic moments are steeped in excitement, the film is equally interspersed with moments of sadness and fear.
Spielberg creates empathy for his young characters by placing the camera at their level, allowing us to view the world from their perspective. Aside from Elliott’s mother, we don’t see the faces of any other adults until later on, creating a world in which grown-ups are imposing and dangerous. Spielberg uses the visual wit he honed so well in Raiders of the Lost Ark to create some of his funniest sequences, such as when E.T. gets drunk or a Halloween walk where the alien mistakes a kid dressed as Yoda for family. Working with constant collaborator John Williams, he one-ups the wonder of Close Encounters of the Third Kind; the sequence in which E.T. and Elliott take to the skies may be one of the most iconic scenes in film, and it still provokes a gasp. But Spielberg also takes in the beauty of small moments, viewing a mother’s bedtime telling of Peter Pan through closed slats in a closet, and he understands the way danger can lurk at the edges of suburbia; the moment in which the government invades the home is straight out of a horror movie.
Few have ever been as good at directing child actors, something Spielberg had previously proven with his work with Carey Guffey in Close Encounters. Here, he triples down. Henry Thomas is equally winning and devastating as Elliott, elated to find a friend from the stars but also terrified of losing him, and still grappling with the wounds of his parents’ divorce. Robert McNaughton is one of cinema’s great big brothers, eager to torture his sibling if he can get away with it, but also shouldering the burden of being the man of the house. And a young Drew Barrymore nails her every line as Gertie, showing a comedic timing that is impressive for her age.
Childhood is a time of pure, unfiltered and uncontrollable emotion, when silliness can shift into fear at a moment’s notice, and tears can quickly follow smiles. Where most kids’ movies revel in juvenile antics and gross-out gags, E.T. works because Spielberg is more interested in burrowing and recreating these feelings. Kids love “E.T.” because they understand the emotions it elicits; adults love it because it’s a form of time travel, transporting them back to when the world was big and mysterious and brokenness could be mended with magic.
Broken homes and best friends
Amid all the sci-fi dressing, E.T. is chiefly about a family grappling with its recent brokenness. The film’s origins came from Spielberg’s desire to write a coming-of-age story, and Melissa Mathison’s script wrestles with the experiences of being a child of divorce. The separation doesn’t provide the movie with its plot, and the word itself is only mentioned once or twice. But it permeates the setting; nearly every scene is saturated in the sadness and emptiness caused by divorce. When we first watch Elliott’s family sit to eat, his mother, Mary (Dee Wallace), walks away in tears upon learning her ex-husband is in Mexico. As government agents listen in on conversations inside the neighborhood, Elliott and Michael wistfully recall their father’s cologne. While the kids are out on Halloween, Mary sits at home, sadly dousing a candle before heading out to find her children (and spitting a bitter “Mexico” as she peels out of the driveway). When E.T. is about to die, Michael, who’s shouldering the burden of being the man of the house, seeks refuge in Elliott’s closet, shielding himself with the totems of childhood.
In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Hollywood was just beginning to wrestle with the specter of divorce and its impact on homes. Three years prior to Spielberg’s blockbuster, Kramer vs. Kramer won the Academy Award for best picture. Many of my childhood friends were from homes impacted by divorce, returning to empty houses after school because they were raised by one parent, who was at work. Several talked with regret about their fathers, who they hadn’t seen in years. That’s the world Spielberg sets E.T. in.
But the wonder of childhood is that even the darkest moments can be laced with unexpected magic. Into that loneliness, Spielberg gives Elliott a connection with someone who also only wants their family to be made whole again. In the film’s masterful opening scene, he reveals so much about E.T. Using only simple movements and glowing of their hearts, he shows us that the alien’s race is something of an emotional hive mind. Communicating through their feelings, symbolized through their glowing hearts. When the spaceship takes off without E.T., Spielberg lingers on a shot of the alien looking wistfully at the sky, moaning as his family flies off. Throughout the film, it becomes apparent that E.T. cannot survive without that familial connection.
Elliott and E.T.’s friendship is more than just wish fulfillment or an avenue for hijinks. They need each other. They form a bond, and the film explicitly notes that it is rooted more in empathy than in telepathy. “Elliott thinks his thoughts?” a scientist asks. “No,” Michael responds. “Elliott feels his feelings.” For E.T., the emotional connection is a lifeline, temporarily replacing the tether to his species. For Elliott, E.T. — whose design makes him look somehow old and young — is both a best friend and surrogate father, whisking him away for adventures in the sky and introducing new shades of emotion and understanding. If Close Encounters provided Spielberg with the opportunity to muse on why his father left, E.T. allows him to express what life in his father’s absence felt like and supplies his hero a balm that the young director may not have had.
E.T. doesn’t alternate between silly and serious so much as find a balance between harsh reality and childhood magic. Its tone is bittersweet; whimsical and fantastic at some moments, with sadness and longing lurking behind the scenes. Every character is in search of something; a father, a friend, a family. Even the adults are broken; Mary is lonely in the aftermath of the divorce. Peter Coyote’s scientist, identified through much of the film only by a set of keys on his waist, is searching for answers that appear to slip away as soon as he meets E.T. Spielberg allows those wounds to exist, but also answers it with the hope and possibility that can only exist in a child’s mind.
A running theme through E.T. is that children believe in a magic that can heal brokenness and even undo death. It’s shown when E.T. heals a cut on Elliott’s finger and when the alien brings a dead geranium back to life. Most notably, it’s present in the scene where Mary reads Peter Pan to Gertie, particularly the scene where Peter drinks poison and Tinkerbell exhorts the readers to clap to bring him back to life. In E.T., children inhabit a difficult world, but they still believe that magic can make things better; like the readers of Peter Pan, the audience comes to believe in that magic, too.
Which is why E.T. has to die.
The greatest story ever retold
When I used to call E.T. the greatest Jesus movie ever made, I realized I wasn’t being original. The beats are all there. The alien comes from the sky, heals others, tells them to be good, dies, rises again, and then ascends into the heavens (spoiler for what was the most popular movie ever for about 11 years). And there’s certainly a superficial reading of the film that can present it as a Christ allegory. But I the film’s themes of childhood belief and hope also present a narrative in which E.T.’s death and resurrection are essential to the narrative.
I’ll be honest: I used to see E.T.’s death as a manipulative tactic Spielberg used to wring a few tears out of the audience. Watching it again, however, I see it as the film’s greatest feat. It’s not just that E.T. dies and comes back; it’s that Spielberg somehow enables audiences to care about that death and be elated when it’s reversed.
E.T.’s death is raw and ugly, the type of moment you don’t expect in a family film. It’s not quick or sanitized. For nearly 15 minutes, Spielberg forces us to watch the alien’s impending death, starting with the mother’s discovery of the ashy being on the floor of the bathroom, lying alongside her similarly ill son. There’s no John Williams score to lighten the moment; there’s only the sound of doctors frantically trying to revive E.T., the droning of an EKG detecting no heartbeat, the cries of Elliott when he realizes his improvement is a result of E.T. letting go of their connection in an act of sacrifice. The cold finality of it is brutal; Spielberg gives us shots of doctors using defibrillators to try and shock E.T. back to life, and then lingers to watch them close his dead eyes. It’s not a fake-out death; anyone who has sat in a hospital as someone breathes their last can fully attest that this captures the gut-wrenching reality. Death is the rawest wound both childhood and adulthood can bring, and the driving force in most religions is the desire to see it undone.
Because this is a movie, Spielberg can fulfill that desire right on the screen. Yes, there’s a narrative explanation — E.T.’s family is returning and, as part of a hive mind (hive heart?), his vitality returns with their proximity. But it’s also a fulfillment of that thematic seed Spielberg planted with the Peter Pan story. Because we’ve watched his horrible death and wept with the characters, we want E.T. to return. Because Spielberg has done such a wonderful job creating empathy with Elliott, Michael and the rest of the family, we believe it’s possible. We might not be asked to clap, but we are asked to believe. When E.T. comes back to life, it doesn’t feel like a fake out; it’s a moment of triumph. The hope of childhood wins out.
After that, it’s a victory lap. The bicycle chase through the suburbs is one of the most thrilling bits of childhood triumph on film; and again, because Spielberg has done such a great job creating that link between the audience and the characters, we share that exhilaration. As the police are about to stop the cyclists, guns drawn, you can imagine audiences in 1982 holding their breath, waiting for those bikes to lift up into the air. When it happens, there are few greater moments of cinematic joy.
And when E.T. reaches the spaceship, Spielberg sets up one of the great tear-jerking finales. Changed by his adventures, Elliott is able to say goodbye to E.T. and let him fly home. Just as my sister did all those years ago, I found myself weeping as I watched this nearly 40-year-old film.
I’m sure I’m not the first to realize this, but watching it in close proximity to Close Encounters of the Third Kind made both films’ endings stand out. Close Encounters allows Spielberg to wrestle with why his father may have left. E.T. allows Elliott to be the bigger man. Invited to come with E.T., Elliott decides to stay. Spielberg has said he’d never make Close Encounters with that ending today; E.T. allows his childlike self to do the thing his father never did and stay with his family (the real complexities of Spielberg’s parents’ divorce wouldn’t be revealed to him until later).
What a beautiful film. What a work of art. And it was the fourth masterpiece a young Steven Spielberg would direct.
After that, the 1980s got choppy for Spielberg. But we’ll get to that.
Previous Sundays with Spielberg entries