Disclosure Day
Is Steven Spielberg's Newest Close Encounters Thriller Too Optimistic Or Is The World To Cynical?
After stealing some top-secret data from his employer, cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner (Josh O’ Connor) is on the run from his sinisterly brooding tech boss Scanlon (Colin Firth). Kellner has uncovered the truth that the government has kept hidden for years which he believes the world deserves to know and it’s no spoilers to say that it concerns the presence of alien life. With the assistance of a secret resistance group led by Hugo played by the always charismatically voice of wisdom Colman Domingo, Kellner’s path will fatefully collide with Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) a news anchor who develops a universal translation ability after encountering a peculiar bird. Both Kellner and Fairchild share some kind of intuitive understanding of what seems to be happening and are on a pre-set course to be the unifying components of a grand revelation.
The father of 21st Century cinema is back with a return to extraterrestrial conspiracy, where the right to know the truth is what is at stake. The crucial question is: Would knowing about the existence of aliens make the world a better place? For the director that has managed to pull of all manner of blockbuster epics and adventures, Disclosure Day finds a relatively old-fashioned story that Spielberg sentimentally enflames as a humane antidote to the divided world on the brink of nuclear disaster. Spielberg still knows how to create an exciting romp, there are car chases, characters jumping across moving trains, telekinetic threats, and Spielberg can always find the right place for the camera, though he could loose one or two lens flairs now and then.
Disclosure Day has got a lot to live up too in Spielberg's legacy as well as the rest of the contemporary science fiction films that have gone further than he has. Though the majority of the picture is an ongoing chase, there are some interesting questions raised, particularly regarding how news of alien life would affect people’s whole belief systems. While this idea starts an intriguing thought process, the script doesn’t have the confidence to develop a substantial debate or answer, it’s up to Emily Blunt’s whimsical performance that manages to get away with wherever the story goes.
Ultimately Spielberg genuinely believes that the existence of aliens would only be good news, as Daniel and Margaret become instruments of an empathetic experiment that the extra-terrestrials are implementing with their arrival. That’s all very well and as much as I would like to join Spielberg in such a sentiment, the crucial problem with Disclosure Day is that it has no honest relationship to the real world to convince me that of any of it would really work. We are talking about a great big science fiction adventure here with a large starry ensemble cast, but Spielberg’s head is so in the clouds that there is no reflection of the distrusting post truth human race that we have sadly become. The breaking news irrevocably comes in large scale international broadcast of digital files and videos when the whole world seems to be watching, in this moment everyone seems utterly transfixed and moved to such a degree that it might finally bring everyone together, but I just don’t buy it.
Maybe Spielberg only sees the good-natured humanity over the cynical and that our salvation is not as complicated to achieve as it looks, but it is still in the film’s best interest to have found a more candid portrayal of the digital disparaging world to make such a statement. When we have AI and one-sided fake news ruling our feeds, I think if extra-terrestrial life was ever to be made known on earth, human race would never trust it, and it would be dismissed as false manipulative propaganda or some 'tik tok' stunt. I feel cynical myself even admitting that, but that just feels like the reality of the world today.
For this kind of story, Spielberg could take a lesson from Denis Villeneurve’s Arrival (2016) which leaned into a much more intimate state of psychological changed caused by a unifying mission to decipher alien language. Arrival shares the same sentiments as Disclosure Day, but it has much more internal focus on one character’s journey through this extra-terrestrial proximity slowly building to life-altering enlightenment.
Disclosure Day’s yearning for otherness and comradery feels like a cry out to God, and maybe that’s what the film is really praying for, a sense of divine revelation to shake the world back together. It’s admirable and adorable of Spielberg to have never lost that childhood sense of wonder and as a true champion of empathy maybe we should be in awe of his outlook, but it just feels like not enough of world is on board either.
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