To cut through the noise and disclose the truth

By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter

Movie Review
Disclosure Day
Directed by Steven Spielberg

STEVEN SPIELBERG’S filmography, in hindsight, has been a continuous probe into the core of what it means to be human in the face of the unknowable. He’s directed quite a few movies about aliens in particular, all offering different takes on how the existence of extraterrestrials in the universe ripples out to affect earthly life and human relationships.

There’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which sees a man abandon his family as he chases the unknown; E.T., where a child copes with his loneliness by befriending an alien; and War of the Worlds, in which UFO arrivals draw a man and his estranged children together. In the year 2026, Spielberg is back with Disclosure Day, another movie that portrays the distance — and connections — between humans in the context of alien life.

The premise is straightforward enough. Cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (played by Josh O’Connor) becomes a whistleblower to reveal secrets about aliens, and he goes on the run from a corporation that seeks to hide the truth. Meanwhile, weather news anchor Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) experiences strange phenomena and is compelled to find him by an invisible, inexplicable force. By enveloping bigger philosophical questions about alien and human life in a high-stakes, deep-state intelligence thriller, Spielberg allows us to enjoy the magic of the movies for a while.

The adrenaline-fueled narrative hits the ground running, with Blunt’s phenomenal performance leading the charge. (Mild spoilers ahead. – Ed.)

We travel along with her, in awe of the abilities she gains as a vessel of some mysterious power, while also confused and overwhelmed by one high-tension situation after another. The movie exists in that plane of stressful existence for a while, with the characters (and the audience) having no clue as to what’s happening but believing it will all work out eventually.

Disclosure Day is a reminder that there’s a reason Spielberg is considered one of the best. Seamless long takes where the actors voice their thoughts and try to put the puzzle pieces together are easy to watch. Chase scenes are absolutely thrilling, with one sequence on a train upping the ante as each new element is introduced to raise the stakes higher and higher. Again, Blunt and O’Connor do a great job as two people blindsided by the largeness of it all but on board for the ride to see where it leads — a story told capably by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and editor Sarah Broshar with their lens flares and steady cuts driving home the visual spectacle.

Spielberg’s most recent film, The Fabelmans, had a similar level of visual spectacle, though it channeled his personal childhood trauma to represent humanity’s flaws. Here, humanity’s flaws are front and center, with people growing apart and existing in siloes, and of course he presents the achingly earnest conclusion that we don’t have to be alone — with the plot veering towards questions of collective faith.

A powerful scene is when Blunt’s character tells someone that she refuses to be someone’s religion. It’s a strong declaration after the movie offers up people who make up different points on the faith-based spectrum: O’Connor’s math whiz hacker who is centered only on the real; his girlfriend (Eve Hewson) who happens to be an ex-nun questioning people’s relationship with faith, and Colman Domingo’s character who is a bright-eyed, idealistic leader of a resistance. Spielberg often has the camera focused on their faces, close up, grounding this blockbuster in human emotions.

The cliche antagonists, embodying the predictable trope of bad government agents/contractors, have their moments, too. There are little tidbits in the narrative that lend them some depth, though they are severely lacking, even with Colin Firth doing a decent job as the terrifying, unhinged Scanlon who wields power that he can no longer handle. His distinctly British charisma has allowed him to inspire sympathy for much of his career, and he sheds that persona here so that we come away from his lead antagonist getting a tiny, intriguing glimpse of his inner turmoil.

Ultimately, Disclosure Day is a staggeringly powerful call to cut through the world’s noise and keep your ears attuned to the truth. Its earnest emotion crosses slightly into overkill, but all the same, it’s thrilling to get caught up in the masterful storytelling that only Spielberg can pull off. Its last half hour would have anyone leaning forward in their seat, as we finally reach the conclusion of whether we deserve the truth and how people might react to it.

Perhaps there’s something dated about screenwriter David Koepp’s idea of how people would react to aliens today, in a world stuck in its own hellish landscape of apathy and divisiveness, sensationalized fake news, and blatant warmongering behavior. This is where the extremity of the alien truths being exposed in the story comes into play, because it would really take something truly horrific for people to pay attention now. As bleak as it is, the sense of scale for what people care about these days is warped beyond recognition, and society is no longer as naive and wide-eyed to the idea of the extraterrestrial as it used to be.

Thus, the answer Spielberg posits to the question of what it would take for humanity to band together is heartfelt, but somewhat underwhelming. Modern-day audiences have little tolerance for scenarios that are cheesy and oversimplified, and it doesn’t help that John Williams’ schmaltzy score evokes but a fraction of the wonder we felt in Spielberg’s older works. It’s fantastical now to buy into the notion that proof of alien life would be so dangerous to the social order that a group of people would be treated as pariahs for trying to leak it.

Disclosure Day pools together bits and pieces of Spielberg’s cinematic and philosophical imagination over the decades, delivering a thrilling blockbuster that puts our fears, desires, and uncanny ability to empathize and believe front and center. It lies somewhere in the middle of his body of work in terms of quality, but the brilliant direction and camerawork remain proof of his genius.