When I first saw E.T., at the cinema in the early 80's, my girlfriend fell asleep, woke up 5 minutes from the end and cried. I assumed this was her unconscious commentary on a date with me as I was transfixed by the screen, I couldn't have fallen asleep if I'd wanted to, and the ending struck me as joyous not tearful. I must have watched it 30 times since then, and never, not once, have I dozed off, and whilst occasionally it tugs at my heart, I've never cried either...honestly!
I had never seen a film like it, and I still haven't. It is now a favourite of my children, and I have even convinced my wife, who isn't the girlfriend I took in the eighties, but whose memories of it as a childhood film were soppy, to like it.
However, for several years I had a nagging suspicion that I recognised the story, but couldn't quite say where I had seen or read or heard it before.
Then out of the blue, whilst I was watching it on British television as a Christmas special, it hit me. The BBC (or maybe ITV, I forget) knew something that had evaded me for years. It explained why it was almost a Christmas television tradition, and why the story had an "eternal" feel to it.
E.T. is an almost direct copy of the New Testament.
Fine, I realize that most of you disbelieve this statement, in fact I imagine a lot of you finished reading the last phrase then went surfing elsewhere, however, for those of you who want to see the film anew I will try to explain.
In my job as an English teacher I quite often get into discussions about films with my students, and almost always E.T. comes up (maybe because I drag the conversation in that direction). Generally the students dismiss it as a childish film about aliens, however, if I manage to convince them to watch it again, keeping the story of Jesus in mind, I find that the next lesson is full of new converts (to my theory. I don't claim that watching the film is a revelatory experience anymore than reading the Bible is. And it has certainly never converted me from my atheism).
The best way to show you this would be to sit you down in front of a TV and read the Bible out loud while you watch the scenes in the film. However, I doubt many of you would want me in your living room, and you're certainly not all coming around here, so I'm going to have to try something else.
What I've done is to take stills from the film and placed them in their relevant places with a summary of the narrative from the Gospels. I don't give Chapter and Verse quotes as we are all familiar with the story of Jesus, however if you want to check up on my summary then feel free to read the on-line version of the Bible. This should be enough to convince the majority of you, although familiarity with the film also helps. Maybe another viewing will do it for you, and let's face it you can't go wrong with watching it again anyway.
Let's get started at the beginning with the next entry on the film stills.
