This review is dedicated to my parents, who brought me to my first Steven Spielberg film. When? Well…
Three months before I turned 6, Steven Spielberg gave E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial to the world. My family saw it opening weekend, and I remember being completely swept away by the magic it possessed: Henry Thomas’ performance, the way the story flowed, the emotion of friendship, and John Williams’ ethereal and eternal score. Since then, I’ve held that memory in my head, and for a time, I—rather wrongly—measured my experiences with his movies against how E.T. made me feel. Don’t worry, I have evolved out of this mistaken notion that when a certain director’s name is on the film, it means it’ll undoubtedly carry the same level of quality and delight. (Although it’s not too much to hope… is it?) As time wore on and Spielberg tackled more mature themes, I wondered if I’d ever catch that same feeling again, and he’s definitely come close.
But Disclosure Day brought that exact feeling back to me.
There I was, in an IMAX theater in Silver Spring, MD (that’ll be funny when you see the movie), reduced to being a young boy again, whisked away by high adventure and high stakes (and John Williams’ perfect musical backing – sorry, Gail!), with the government once again chasing someone who knows about the existence of aliens. We’re held in thrall as our principals—cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt)—are methodically tracked by an agency tasked with making sure the public doesn’t know about the existence of UFOs and their occupants.
And that’s really all you need to know about the story or its plot. Discussing specifics would be saying too much, and my hope is that I can finish out the rest of the article without telling you much more than that. So where does that leave us? How do I tell you that this is the Spielberg movie that I hoped I’d get to review someday?
It all starts with the construct. What Spielberg, longtime cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, and every last person in front of and behind the camera have created. The physical form of the film (yes, it was shot on Kodak), manipulated from scratch and shaped into something so breathtakingly wondrous. What gets lost in a lot of our movies these days is a sense of scale, knowing that a movie was shot outside a studio, in the real world, with real houses, fields, and structures, instead of being digitally captured against an LED wall or a green screen. That’s the first aspect of Disclosure Day that hits you immediately; you’re traveling down actual, tangible streets, and entering physical, well-decorated spaces, as if to boldly say, “This is happening right in front of you, and you don’t even see it.”
To that point, there’s a little bit of a jab at our current political situation in the opening sequence, which takes place at a WWE-type event and features a few people with red hats cheering the match in the ring. The irony of conspiracy theory junkies not knowing that they’re sitting next to actual conspirators engaged in the very kind of activity they claim to know everything about is just too delicious not to mention. (That bit is a one-and-done, so don’t worry about that kind of thing lasting past the first scene.) From here, the movie takes off at a thousand miles per hour, and there’s still a whole lot of room on the speedometer to spare. Daniel’s only job is to keep ahead of these agents, who’ve already proven they’re willing to do whatever it takes—even going so far as to kidnap his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson)—to get him to comply with their orders.
In another part of the U.S., we’ve got Margaret, who suddenly finds herself in possession of heightened extrasensory abilities. One minute, they’re not there, but the next, she can’t stop what comes out of her mouth. Even her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) doesn’t know what to do with her or her newfound attributes. It’s like Margaret and Daniel have been activated for some kind of plan, and we do see some kind of ringmaster commanding everything, but it’s not perfect, and at some points, I don’t even know if what happens was totally meant to be part of this specific plan. There’s a little bit of the whole “people are inexplicably pulled toward Devil’s Tower” motif from Close Encounters of the Third Kind drifting into the story, but the beauty of Disclosure Day is watching these two separately escape detection, dodge their pursuers, and find their purpose in the grand scheme.
The term “grand scheme” gets overused a lot in everyday parlance, but there is no grander than the one at play here. Even the villain of the piece, the cold and ruthless Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), doesn’t know what role he’s been given; all he knows is that there’s something out there that he’s been trying to keep secret for years, and he’s going to do everything he can to maintain his own personal status quo. But even watching him and his machinations is fascinating, as there’s something else pricking at the seams, just beyond his (and our) reach. We know it’s all eventually going to make sense, and things will be revealed; until then, Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp (working from Spielberg’s original story) work overtime to keep the mystery front and center.
Another portion of the magic is something that Spielberg has always done best: maintaining a superb balance between human nature and external force. One of the reasons why Disclosure Day succeeds so mightily is that genuine care is taken to make each character tangible and relatable. Koepp hasn’t written buffoons into this film; he’s written genuine people caught so far out of their depth and trying to make sense of what’s happened to them, never mind what’s on their horizons. His script makes us enjoy their humanity and their foibles, somehow luckily failing upward and constantly moving toward their objectives. It’s not just character development—it’s character itself. What one does and what one is working as the same unit. Josh O’Connor and Emily Blunt are perfect as the individuals caught at the center of this whirlwind, and they encourage us to stay with them through every action set piece, every confrontation, and every revelation that threatens to loosen their tenuous grip on who they believe themselves to be. They’re the missing pieces of the puzzle that keep evading the person trying to put it together, blown about like leaves in a hurricane, but the hurricane has a purpose, and Spielberg makes it so much fun watching these two find it.
Janusz Kamiński’s lensing keeps us right alongside them, whether they’re ducking agents swarming a house or attempting to jump onto a moving train. There are some excellent camera moves and setups that Kamiński uses to grab us and immerse us in these events. Spielberg’s never been a one for fast cutting and hyper-stylized motion; he maintains realism by not shifting our perspectives at a whim, at one point taking us over, under, and through fence rails to follow the camera’s subject without losing sight of them. He wants to attach us to these characters visually and emotionally, and Kamiński does exactly what Spielberg intends, orchestrating his cameras to be in the right place at the right time. Not to wow us Michael Bay-style or be obvious about what he’s doing, but to extend a hand to the audience and make sure we’re still along for the ride.
But the story… it couldn’t be a more heartfelt plea for compassion and wisdom if it tried. Even the film’s final word is meant to send us out with a message Spielberg hopes we take with us. The humanity that made E.T. so heartfelt and immediate is all over Disclosure Day, even with the aforementioned dig at a portion of our electorate. His focus is not on the aliens or their spaceships; his concern is the here and now with this film’s leads, and how disparate people can come together to do the right thing. There’s no ugliness beyond the villain’s actions, doing what he feels needs to be done for the sake of humanity’s safety and security; there are no dramatics that surpass the already frantic situation that Daniel and Margaret need to traverse to be part of the story’s end.
There’s only the bond that we share when our minds are open and receptive, and Disclosure Day stresses the absolute necessity for togetherness in the face of the unknown. This is the Steven Spielberg movie I’ve been waiting to review since I started writing about movies in 2010, a return to the magic of what made the first two films of this informal alien trilogy—Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.—such big parts of our cinematic hearts. This one’s a multi-generational banger, so if you kids out there want to know what it felt like growing up with these movies, hop in the car with your folks and prepare to be dazzled. Those of us who remember how our souls felt as Elliot watched his friend soar off into the twilight sky will be welcomed once again with the sights of the impossible becoming real in only the way Spielberg can make it real.
No trailer this time. Just go to the theater.
