After Disclosure Day, There's Only One Steven Spielberg Movie You Need To Watch – And It's Not Close Encounters
by Rafael Motamayor · /FilmWe are not alone, there are spoilers among us for "Disclosure Day."
Steven Spielberg has made some of the all-time best motion pictures about extra-terrestrials, between "E.T.," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and "War of the Worlds." The idea of one of the best filmmakers of all time returning to the sci-fi genre was tantalizing, and /Film's own review praises "Disclosure Day" as an "immensely exciting sci-fi chase thriller."
The film centers on a powerful company that has studied aliens and their technology for the government for decades, and follows the efforts of its former employees to publish evidence of extra-terrestrial life. It's less about the aliens themselves and more about the question of whether the idea of truth is more important than how the public might react.
Of course, with Spielberg's grand return to movies about aliens, it's not surprising that we're seeing re-appraisals of his earlier alien movies, particularly "Close Encounters," and "E.T." Sure, you can keep the sci-fi going and re-watch those movies after you go see "Disclosure Day," but that'd be a mistake. You shouldn't actually follow this movie with another movie about aliens. Instead, the one Steven Spielberg movie you absolutely should revisit after watching "Disclosure Day" features no sci-fi elements whatsoever. It does, however, have a strong thematic connection to Spielberg's latest.
I'm talking, of course, "The Post."
Yes, the best Spielberg movie to follow "Disclosure Day" with is the 2017 movie starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks about the efforts of the journalists and editor at the Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Not only is "The Post" one of the most important movies of 2017, and a film that remains quite timely, but it's essential to understanding what Spielberg is doing with "Disclosure Day."
The importance of truth
Arguably the biggest surprise of "Disclosure Day" is how big a focus the movie places on the power of the press, compared to focusing on the aliens themselves. Indeed, the biggest question the movie ponders, and the dilemma that drives the narrative forward, is whether information about aliens should be disclosed. We see this struggle in Eve Hewson's Jane Blankenship, a former nun and girlfriend to Josh O'Connor's Daniel Kellner.
When she learns the truth about the existence of aliens, Jane immediately interrogates the idea of disclosure because of how it might impact the world's religions. It's not that she thinks the truth might contradict religion, but she doesn't trust humanity to handle the truth and thinks chaos will ensue. Likewise, Colin Firth's villainous Noah Scanlon, the main evil government guy hunting down the would-be whistleblowers, is fighting to prevent the truth from getting out in order to protect the bedrock of society. It doesn't matter that, as we hear throughout the movie, the world is on the brink of World War III anyway, because the truth is scarier than anything else.
The tension of "Disclosure Day" hinges on the ethics of disclosing privileged and classified information with the power of upending society as we know it. Is public opinion more important than the truth?
There are no scenes where the protagonists argue about whether they should attempt to betray the extragovernmental agency they work at, no moments when they hesitate to go public with the intel they have on aliens' existence. This is by design. "Disclosure Day" may be released by an older, more cynical Steven Spielberg, but it has the kind of relentless optimism and earnestness that was prominent in the filmmaker's 1980s output.
The Post is essential Spielberg
"The Post" arrived at an interesting point in the career of Steven Spielberg, after the disaster that was "The BFG" (even if the movie has some defenders out there), and the one-two punch of grounded yet epic adult dramas "Lincoln" and "Bridge of Spies."
The film follows Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, who is about to take the paper public when her team catches wind of a story of the U.S. government's rather corrupt and messed up reasons to go to war in Vietnam. It's less a movie about the Pentagon Papers, or even the act of publishing them, as it is a movie about the importance of freedom of the press. Famously, Spielberg had a rather short production time and had to rush in order to meet the release date for "The Post." The reason was simple: Not only did 20th Century Studios want to take advantage of awards season, but the film came out early in Trump's first term. Watching a movie about the fundamental right to access information the same year that a president constantly declared war on journalism and on the truth was quite poignant. Perhaps nothing encapsulates the message of "The Post," or its importance, as much as this line from Tom Hanks' Ben Bradlee: "The only way to assert the right to publish is to publish."
"Disclosure Day" doesn't show what happens after the truth is discovered. It doesn't tell us whether WWIII was averted. It doesn't care about that. It cares about the right to know the truth, and the moral obligation to publish that truth.