Disclosure Day review

 

I suspect that if proof of aliens really was disclosed at this current febrile time the public reaction would be hysterical with calls for them to be locked up, dropped on the Moon or something similarly draconian. This is not presently a world receptive to `others` of the human variety let along extra-terrestrials. The idea of such a reveal is what drives Steven Spielberg’s latest which returns him to the territory of ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Disclosure Day lacks the certainty of those earlier movies though and the sense of wonder they created is in shorter supply. I think it’s potentially a good story presented in a way that doesn’t do it justice.

 Spoilers disclosed after the break...

It opens with one of its main characters already on the run carrying proof of our many close encounters yet it ends at what feels like the point where the story is only half told. I doubt a sequel is envisaged and this is not, as was predicted by some, a sequel itself to Close Encounters so what in the end is it saying? David Koepp’s narrative (from a story by Spielberg) is not afraid to venture close to the key questions- notably a strand comparing evidence of aliens to believing in God- but often seems  more interested in being a Mission Impossible style pursuit. Admittedly this works well enough in itself but somehow seems the wrong fit for the story its trying to tell.

Margaret Fairchild (a fantastic Emily Blunt) is a weather presenter at a local Kansas tv station.  One day- shortly after seeing a red Cardinal bird pop up in her apartment - she discovers a hitherto unknown ability to speak multiple languages and an uncanny empathy with the personal lives of anybody she meets. When she appears on a regular forecast making strange clicking noises it seems clear other worldly something is happening to her. After a series of scans suggest she is fine, she seems taken with the idea of traveling in a particular direction for unknown reasons. Elsewhere we also meet Doctor Daniel Kellner (a tense Josh O’Connor) who has stolen proof of interaction with aliens  including an object with unusual abilities. It is the flight of both of these people- and their eventual meeting- which leads to memories of a childhood experience somewhat more sinister than ET. Where that earlier film showed the visitor as a child like being trying to escape, Disclosure Day ends up showing what might have happened had those white suited scientists got their hands on ET.

The momentum of the pursuit does work really well, Spielberg is a master at agile cameras and jeopardy none more so than the film’s most exciting sequence involving a car and a train. He shoots something as straightforward as a group of vehicles pursuing a car with more panache than any other director might proving a real sense of scale and also bringing us to the heart of the action. Equally he can navigate around two characters conversing and make you feel you are there. Its not a 3D movie but moments like these make it feel as if it is.

It’s a terrific cast as well. Emily Blunt gives one of her best performances (and that’s saying something) as Margaret moves from comedic fascination thorough terror towards an awakening of what happened to her. Deceptively low key, Josh O’Connor is a brilliant foil for her firebrand energy with Daniel’s certainty that he is doing the right thing. There is very strong support too from Eve Hwson as Jane , Daniel’s’ bewildered girlfriend (who is also a former novitiate) and Wyatt Russell as Jack, Margaret’s befuddled partner.

Cast against his usual type Colin Firth makes the most of his somewhat sketchily written antagonist Noah Scanlon, head of a company called Wardex. He is desperate to stop the disclosure – though unfortunately the script doesn’t clarify why. Colman Domingo gets the role of Hugo Wakefield, who worked for Wardex but defected once it became clear that disclosure was not on their agenda. He and his team aid Daniel’s flight however his backstory is too vague as well. Reasons given against revealing the information are not really laid out playing into a conspiracy theorists’ dream. The alien device that proves to be the film’s McGuffin enables Scanlon to speak to both Jane and Hugo remotely appearing before them, a conceit that hints that the aliens’ technology has also been ransacked.

Therein lies the problem with Disclosure Day. Superficially it’s a great thriller which holds the attention across a lengthy two and a half hours but the alien story could be anything. It could be a nuclear code, it could be a new medicine, it could be a prototype invention of some sort. The atmospheric trailer suggested a different mood with its eerie shots of deer and dazzling lights but these turn out to be fleeting and somewhat out of place after the car chases, seedy motels and brightly lit science labs. The animals look a little too digital on an IMAX screen though perhaps because they are meant to be generated by the aliens. Maybe a second watch would help but I don’t feel as if the reason why people are either trying to help or hinder disclosure is clear enough. Indeed, what is the aliens’ reason for their actions? Have they just come out of curiosity?

The film concludes with the showing of these files which are themselves evocatively shot found footage of sundry alien meetings playing out across the many screens in a tv studio and beyond into devices all around the world. Most pertinently why doesn’t Daniel just drop these files online on You Tube or similar rather than rely on the work of a tv station, it seems a decidedly old fashioned delivery method which I suppose is in keeping with the film’s grainy cinematography.

While Steven Speilberg’s undoubted directorial abilities make this worth watching, it doesn’t offer anything new; even the aliens are generic grey creatures that feel familiar. And just when the really interesting movement happens- the disclosure footage is released- the film ends. Maybe a more interesting idea would be to start the film there, rolling back to see Margaret and Daniel’s journeys- and then looking at what happens once people know. Or maybe the point of the film (whose last word is “Listen”) is that it holds a mirror up on the way we treat outsiders and asks if that is really how we wish to continue.