After Disclosure Day screened for the masses on June 8, marking a new D-Day in pop culture, feeds lit up. Fans quickly debated the last decade of Steven Spielberg movies. Every cinephile had a take about where Disclosure Day ranked among the ’berg’s best. For this writer, the top spot on the list of Steven’s previous ten movies easily goes to The Post, his riveting saga about The Washington Post’s landmark stand for truth-telling while publishing the Pentagon Papers. That The Post features a smash performance by Meryl Streep probably accounts for its place atop the list.
However, Disclosure Day gives The Post a run for its money in Spielberg’s recent oeuvre. Lend the exhilarating new movie the benefit of time and could surpass it. Moreover, Disclosure Day offers a brilliant companion piece to The Post and, quite surprisingly, synthesizes the Spielberg canon. On one hand, it reaffirms Steven Spielberg as Hollywood’s king of blockbusters. On the other, it illustrates his adept social commentary that infiltrates even the biggest popcorn movie. Disclosure Day is a whip-smart and hugely entertaining saga about the importance of journalistic integrity and old-school reporting. Call it The Post with aliens.
The film, drawing from a story by Spielberg and written by David Koepp (Black Bag), begins in media res as Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor, Challengers) makes a deal with some shady agents. He’s on the run with valuable assets, including a volatile rod-thing. The agents pursue Kellner and his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson, Flora & Son), with extreme urgency. Lead agent Scanlon (Colin Firth) stresses extreme caution. But Kellner keeps running for his life, eager to share his valuable materials like he’s Daniel Ellsberg with dirt on Vietnam.
Cut to a sunny morning and weatherperson Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt, The Devil Wears Prada 2) faces unpredictable storms. She has premonitions, reads minds, and speaks new languages at random. The latter includes a clicking alien tongue, which she delivers on-air to the shock of the masses.
Blunt gives one of her best performances yet as Margaret wrestles with the alien presence that overtakes her. The extremely dynamic role tasks her with speaking multiple languages and exploring further depths of non-verbal communication as Margaret frantically navigates shifts in consciousness, sometimes speaking a words with mind/body disconnect. Other times, these flashes of unfamiliar behaviour, like zoning out in a different tongue, demand quick counter-blows to deflect a sense that anything’s amiss. Her deadpan comic timing almost single-handedly sells the suspension of disbelief that Disclosure Day requires, while Margaret’s emotional journey keeps one invested in the stakes of what it means to make contact and carry that trauma.
Margaret’s fate inevitable becomes intertwined with Kellner’s when he sees the viral clip of her message. Meanwhile, Margaret’s newfound Spidey senses tell her to find Kellner. In grand Spielbergian fashion, their paths converge with Scanlon and his goons in hot pursuit. And just as the situation escalates, Jane demands Kellner tell her what they’re after. Played with a solidly playful rapscallion aura, O’Connor perfectly handles role as the keeper of hard truths. His Pentagon Paper are archival images: shocking classified footage documenting alien contact across several decades. It’s no wonder that Scanlon and company want this matter snuffed out. Their aggressive tactics inspire one of the wildest car-crash-meets-train-accident set pieces in movie history, a bravura ballet of stunt work and special effects that absolutely demands the big screen experience. (It’s a great week for rails between Disclosure Day and STOP! THAT! TRAIN!)
Disclosure Day probably reads like a convoluted blockbuster, but it moves at a terrific pace with refreshingly lucid exposition that builds the world and moves the story along. Aliens aside, Spielberg keeps this drama rooted in a sense of reality. Close Encounters gets a hit of West Side Story as the flashy cinematography by Janusz Kaminsky accentuates a natural, neutral palette with some exclamatory lens flare. Each sparkle injects a hint of the unknown as Kellner, Margaret, and company combine their efforts to disclose the truth to the world.
The film takes audiences to spectacular realms as the tools that Kellner and Scanlon carry in their bags of tricks harness otherworldly forces. (So too does Kellner’s associate Hugo, played by Colman Domingo in a scene-stealer performance if there ever was one.) Disclosure Day offers big screen Hollywood escapism at its finest as Spielberg builds massive set pieces and action scenes that start the wow factor at 100. The film builds upon the sense of awe they inspire by refusing to reduce them to mere spectacle. This film’s as smart as it is sturdy.
As Margaret’s premonitions and linguistic outburst combine with Kellner’s analytical skills, Disclosure Day resonates with their fight for the truth. The final act provides a timely treatise on the importance of old-school journalism and stories supported by sound reporting and verifiable facts. As the world looks on in awe at videos of aliens, Spielberg makes compelling arguments in favour of authentic images in the age of A.I. The film presents a worthy reminder that seeing is believing, but that audiences needs to be skeptical of images at a time when anything—even E.T.—can be generated to look like the real deal.
Other images, like a shot of Scanlon and his goons storming a TV station, make an obvious reference to ICE agents pursuing the alien other. The film reflects the enduring malleability of the unknown, from extraterrestrial forces to anxiety-driven wars (World War III also seems to be breaking out, FYI), that unite people in the complexity of what it means to be a citizen of world.
It helps, too, that Spielberg grounds this otherworldly adventure in human emotion thanks to a top-form cast headlined by Blunt, O’Connor, and Domingo, but also Courtney Grace in one of those one-scene wonders of a performance that brings the film together playing a news anchor who processes the images in real time.
That Spielberg has all these bells and whistles at his disposal, but trusts the grandest moments of Disclosure Day to his actors, really shows proof of a master who knows how to keep large-scale Hollywood filmmaking both timely and timeless. He can be America’s resident cheesemeister with his wholesome, all-American entertainment, but his latest epic shows that, when it works, the Spielberg touch delivers true movie magic.
Disclosure Day opens in theatres on June 12.
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