37: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Gareth Higgins on E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL
Twice in the past week I’ve been overwhelmed at the cinema, by films I’ve already seen probably dozens of times between them. To reinvigorate cinema-going, two of the great summer blockbuster experiences from the father of summer blockbusters, Steven Spielberg have been re-released. This time, however, Jaws and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial are out on IMAX screens, meaning they are now briefly available on the largest screens on which they’ve ever been projected. E.T., in particular, does awe better than almost any other movie, but watching it at such enormous scale had the effect of focusing my mind on the smallness of the story at its heart: a boy misses his absent father, finds a friend who heals his heart, and then by means of helping the friend reunite with his family, both opens the wound again, and is initiated as a healer, an authentic adult.
In his brilliant book, The Journey of Soul Initiation, the wilderness guide and wisdom teacher Bill Plotkin defines an “authentic adult” as someone who “experiences themselves first and foremost as a member of the earth community…” and who has had “one or more revelatory experiences” of their “eco-niche”. In other words, an initiated person has been individuated beyond individualism, and no longer sees themselves primarily as a single citizen or subject in competition with other individuals, but as a member of a community in interdependent relationship with all creation - from the leaves on a tree to those in a book, or the ones we turn over in life when we grow. Elliott, the child in E.T. becomes such an initiated person, and the movie that traces his journey really is one of the most artful, heartfelt, and honest ever made about the journey of initiation into a more integrated way of being. Such initiation can be like root canal work - there’s a reason we sometimes call the challenges of growing up “teething problems”; the reason we cry when we watch E.T. is partly sympathy for Elliott’s grief at saying goodbye to his alien friend/surrogate father/alter-ego, and partly recognition that our own journeys toward the light are bound to be accompanied by some further measure of grief. But the grief associated with loss or death does not have to be a dead-end, nor is it a permanent state of deprivation. All the wisest traditions tell us that grief is a portal, loss permits gain; as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial has it, we can never be fully separated from the deepest loves. Even when they leave us physically, in a coffin under earth, ashes scattered to the wind, or even a spaceship, our deepest loves will “be right here”.
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