Review by Tim Robins
WARNING: Mild Spoilers Ahead
If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to eight billion people. We are coming close to … Disclosure Day.
Full disclosure: I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy the new Stephen Spielberg movie, and I’m still not sure I did. Working from a story by Spielberg and a script by his long time associate, David Koep, Disclosure Day is a spin on the chase thriller genre and serves as a sequel, of sorts, to the director’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and ET: The Extraterrestrial (1982).
Disclosure Day returns to the motif of human, alien encounters. It explores humanity’s reaction to discovering that aliens are real, UFOs, and every conspiracy surrounding them. Frankly, when it comes to distraction techniques, America’s Trump government, should have got Spielberg onboard as part of their recent release of UFO-related documents (a third tranche now available). The director would have been much better at steering Americans from the Epstein Files, let alone The X Files. And nonsense is much more believable when it is accompanied by a rousing John Williams score.
The film is another take on The Outer Limits’ episode “The Architects of Fear” (1963), re-visited in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons 1986-87 comic Watchmen, which argued that if we knew aliens existed, it would bring an end to war. And, in this case, the aliens are really friendly and come in the form of adorable Earthly fauna. But, looking at today’s political scene, it’s easier to believe in aliens than it is to think we’d actually stop killing each other because they had finally decided to wave hello.
Disclosure Day is set during the End Times, as the world progresses seemingly inevitably to World War Three. So, no pressure then on those humans who want to spread the good news that aliens are here and have brought with them the healing gift of empathy for all. Humanity’s fate rests in the hands of those in the know and those who don’t want us to know.
On one side is the American governmental organisation ‘Wardex’ led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), who spends a lot of the film channeling the intensity of Patrick (The Prisoner) McGoohan. Opposing Wardex are its former employees, led by the unfortunately named Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo).
It is surely intentional that Domingo’s character shares his last name with notorious anti-Vaxxer Andrew Wakefield. So let me take a moment to point out that, in the real world, Wakefield is no kind of heroic truth-teller and, Mr Spielberg, you have no business confusing people any more than they already are. Wakefield’s “disclosure”, i.e. invention, of a non-existent link between the MMR vaccine and autism has caused untold fear and misery.
Back to the film: caught between SHADO-like organisation and a shadowy gathering of conspirators are two couples: Daniel Kellner, (Josh O’Connor), Wardex’s former cybersecurity expert and all-round maths whiz; and his mysterious girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), and meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and her untrustworthy, unconvincing guitarist, boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell).
Emily Blunt delivers a standout performance as the local weather girl for a Kansas City television network, with aspirations to be a news anchor but with greater, previously unsuspected, talents as a linguist, including a fluent speaker of alienese. Josh O’Connor’s prodigious ears steal every scene they are in and sell his character as seemingly hapless, boffin on the run.
Although it is Blunt’s and O’Connor’s characters who become the film’s power couple, based on their common past and complementary abilities, Hewson is excellent , particularly in a scene in which she is telepathically possessed by the boss of Wardex. Spielberg directs this with aplomb. He suggests possession by swapping the characters’ eye colours with each other.
That said, there’s no doubt who the star of Disclosure Day is, and that’s its director. The film looks absolutely stunning, with multiple shots through windows and mirrors. At times, the film becomes a celebration of lens flare, with its characters embedded in light. And it’s rewarding to pay attention to detail. I smiled when a character removes his dental plate and it sounds just like the aliens’ clicking language. That’s what Spielberg isn’t above calling attention to himself.
If there are no obvious moments for Spielberg to show off his abilities, he just invents them. A car chase ends with our protagonists’ trying to escape their car which is being remorselessly dragged along a railway track under the wheels of a freight train. As the couple try to climb onto the train, another is thundering towards them on a parallel track. To make matters worse, the characters are being shot at from the road by an assassin from Wardex. There’s nothing that really warrants these events, other than to be thrilling. None of the people involved have the action adventure skills of a Jack Ryan. Perhaps that’s the point.
Unfortunately, the third act allows Spielberg to indulge in his sickly taste for sentimentality. The director has always positioned himself a company man rather than an edgy, anti-Establishment “auteur”. Unfortunately, the company he has kept closest to his heart is Walt Disney. When you wish upon a Spielberg film, all his dreams of Disneyland come true.
The wildlife that seemed to menace our characters in the trailer, finally turn up in Fairchild’s memories of childhood. She sleeps surrounded by wallpaper covered in butterfly prints. Her bed lies beneath a mobile of origami Cardinals that flutter above her head. Then, as if in a scene from Snow White (1937), actual animals step into the room to offer a friendly hoof or claw. OK, but the butterfly wallpaper was a mistake. It just recalls the wallpapered bedroom in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). (Unless, Spielberg was thinking, “hmm, farm animals…”).
The apotheosis of Disclosure Day’s sentimentality comes when the animals usher Fairchild towards a house in the woods. The scene has a queasy resemblance to paintings by Thomas Kinkade and Donna Jones. Again, I am sure this is intentional. Kinkade was known as “the painter of light”, and Spielberg is certainly a director of light. But both can be makers of slop. It’s no wonder the animals in the film don’t look real. That’s not a bad CGI deer, that’s just how Kinkade paints deer.
Kinkade also sought to merge images of the countryside with religious themes, much as Spielberg wants to do. In trying to reconcile nations at war, the script also tries to reconcile science, science fiction, spirituality and religious belief. A wise old nun pops up to explain any contradictions between alien life and the Bible. Spoiler alert, they are all explained with answers from Genesis. I was far from enraptured by this revelation.
Disclosure Day is above all, Spielberg’s nostalgia for himself. In many shots, the backgrounds appear as if bathed in a fine, misty haze. It’s the haze of an adult trying to see the world as if through the eyes of a child. If you can choose your seats in the cinema, the film is best viewed from a pushchair.
The truth is, Spielberg doesn’t know the truth. The film even misunderstands its central theme of empathy. Yes, empathy involves recognising another person’s point of view. But, feeling the world from another person’s perspective doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with it. And empathy certainly isn’t a tool for manipulating people into getting what you want.
I think I can see Spielberg’s point of view, and I’m delighted the octogenarian has lost none of his ability to make an entertaining movie. But there’s a fine line between being nostalgic and being out of time.
I’m sure a director who had the guts to look squarely into the eyes of Holocaust in Schindler’s List can make a film about today’s politics of hate or even the muddle headedness that clouds the minds of so many conspiracy theorists. Spielberg is welcome to his nostalgia and he’s entitled to use his talent as he wishes. But the answer to the problems the world poses today is not aliens. It is never aliens.
Ultimately, Disclosure Day is a real SpielBurger of a movie – a fantastical narrative that looks good in publicity photos and should be a filling feast for the eyes. But, after I’d finished, I was left with an all too familiar, empty feeling that, ironically, left me hungry for more.
Tim Robins
• Disclosure Day is in cinemas now
Head downthetubes for…
• Disclosure Day: Official Website
• Disclosure Day: AmazonUK Preorder (Affiliate Link)
Be warned that Amazon’s search includes links to a number of rush released AI generated books about the film. Given the abhorrent quality of such works in other fields we have seen, we strongly advise caution, and against their purchase
• US Department of War: UFO Reports
• Thomas Kinkade Prints (Official Site)
Thomas Kinkade is America’s most collected living artist. Coming from a modest background, he emphasises simple pleasures and inspirational messages through his paintings. As a devout Christian, Kinkade uses his gift as a vehicle to communicate and spread inherent life-affirming values.
The Outer Limits: The Architects of Fear
• The Outer Limits: The Architects of Fear on Amazon (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
• Wikipedia: The Outer Limits – The Architects of Fear
• The Beat: Did Watchmen Steal From The Outer Limits, Or From Jack Kirby?
• We Are Controlling Transmission: The Architects of Fear
• View from the Junkyard: The Outer Limits: The Architects of Fear
• Review: Thetan – Architects of Fear figure Outer Limits Collection
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: downthetubes News, Features, Film, Other Worlds, Reviews
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