A local weatherwoman learns a second language from a bird to help an IT employee violate his nondisclosure agreement on live television.
People will cry derivative at just about anything these days.
Truthfully, Disclosure Day may have more old wiring behind that fresh plaster than I’m letting on. But if you came for a tome scolding a director whose plaque already hangs in Cooperstown for revisiting his classics, you’ve got the wrong idea about this publication. The film may not take Steven Spielberg anywhere new, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable a ride. And if you’re rolling your eyes at “another tired alien movie,” take a seat in summer school and try and comprehend the message you missed in your prior enrollments. Spielberg’s lesson in human empathy, told through an alien’s backstory, is just as affecting as ever.
The film opens not with humanity exploring a new frontier, but with the powerful exploiting an old privilege. Those in the know have had proof of alien life for the better part of a century. They’ve spent just as long making sure nobody else joins the club. Would humanity destroy itself with this kind of knowledge? We all seem pretty fucking close to doing that without it.
Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) has stolen the proof the world needs to both hear the truth and believe it. Head baddie Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) has stolen Daniel’s girlfriend—Eve Hewson doing a lot with a limited assignment— hoping to trade her for it before the cat’s out of the bag.
Coming into this knowledge a little more organically, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) has started reporting the day’s weather forecast in glottal stops. On a day calling for hail, this could pass for sound effects. Still, it’s probably worth a trip to the hospital. Her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell, tasked with portraying little more than a wet blanket) takes a dim view of these developments, making an increasingly persuasive case for dating outside the species.
Luckily, the head of the resistance Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) has the world’s best rolodex and gives Margaret a call to introduce himself and let her know where to head after she ditches Jackson.
If you’ve spent all year praising Obsession, Curry Barker’s masterclass in doing more with less, may I remind you that he’s not the only living director who can take something you’ve seen before and turn it into something you can’t stop watching.
Spielberg submits Disclosure Day as evidence of how little machinery his own brand of enchantment requires. There are spectacular stunts, to be sure—two people board a moving train from a car being dragged underneath it—but the film seldom needs anything so elaborate to keep us captivated. That we don’t groan when the visitors finally reveal themselves is a testament to that gift. They look like the sort of alien action figure that comes free with a kids’ meal. No matter. By then, you’ve long since bought in.
No small part of Spielberg’s success in summoning wonder on command is driven by Blunt’s performance. Her character is the only one the movie fully develops and that requires her to quickly cycle through all stages of post-abduction confusion, amazement, acceptance, and purpose. Whether the film pauses to take in the spectacle or decides it’s time to get moving, she makes its pace feel dictated by what Margaret is experiencing. And Blunt makes all those experiences feel both fully incited and fully explored. The result is a movie that can go just about anywhere so long as we believe her, and she gives us little reason not to.
Spielberg makes his case for empathy through questions rather than answers, letting wonder do the persuading without polluting it with anything more heavy handed. Disclosure Day won’t change your life or even crack your top ten. But it does expose the difference between a master making a movie out of reused parts and fucking Netflix expecting the parts to spontaneously combust into a movie. Spielberg puts the old staples onto his workbench knowing the director’s work is still ahead of him—weaving them into a story that gives us someone to care about and a reason to keep watching. They are just there to help build that story, not to spare him the trouble of telling one.
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