If you are a member of Generation X like myself, you grew up with the works of Steven Spielberg.
His movies dominated our summers for years. The first that I can actively recall seeing in a theater was Close Encounters of the Third Kind back in 1977.
He has returned to the alien encounters genre twice since then, in 2005’s War of the Worlds and again this summer in the highly anticipated Disclosure Day.
Based on a story by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by David Koepp, who previously teamed up on Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park the two have a history of making science fiction box office blockbusters. Is this the next?
Probably, given the star power behind and in front of the camera. That and most of the people I talked to at the screening said over and over, “And you know … .it’s Spielberg.”
The man’s name itself is enough to sell tickets.
Add in again the musical genius of John Williams on the score, and you have the recipe for a summer hit.
While it is not up there with his most iconic works, it is a sci-fi thriller with outstanding performances, specifically Emily Blunt, that had the kid in me smiling, and the adult in me wondering, is this what it would look like if aliens decided to make their presence known?
Think Close Encounters, but the government cover-up worked, and the general public has remained in the dark all these years.
Roswell was real, and like many a conspiracy theory, the alien tech is being used in military applications. We have a shadowy private military-like organization called Wardex, who works with the government to exploit said tech, but primarily, to keep it all a closely held secret. It is a very deep state, and one of the agents of Wardex even wears a red hat with an American flag on it at one point, Spielberg is clearly telling you these are the bad guys.
Josh O’Connor stars as David Kellner, a cybersecurity expert for Wardex who has stolen those secrets. He is a bit like Edward Snowden, the tech admin who stole secrets about government spying by the NSA.
Like Snowden, Kellner is driven by the belief that what he has discovered can no longer be kept hidden. He feels it is not just the American people who deserve and need to know, it is the entire population of Earth that should have this knowledge. He is also a math genius, able to see numbers and equations in his head.
With the help of fellow Wardex whistleblower, Colman Dominigo as Hugo Wakefield, and his girlfriend Eve Hewson as Jane Blankenship, who has no idea what Kellner has done, he goes on the run with the evidence needed to show the world how for 79 years the American people and the world have been kept in the dark.
Colin Firth, as the shadowy Noah Scanlon, is out to get those secrets back under lock and key at any cost. Firth does a great job of playing Scanlon not just as a man who wants to keep the tech for himself and the US military, but is also conflicted about what the knowledge that aliens are among us will have on the world. Are we ready as a species to deal with this, and how will it change the world? It allows Firth to play Scanlon as a multifaceted villain.
Emily Blunt, in what is a career defining performance, plays Margaret Fairchild, a Kansas City TV weather presenter who dreams of bigger and better things. She has a great life, or so she thinks, with her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell), a musician slacker type, who doesn’t have the same big dreams or aspirations.
After having an encounter with a cardinal in her apartment, Fairchild starts to experience psychic abilities, culminating with an on-air breakdown where she begins to speak with what first appears to be gibberish, but is later revealed to be the language the aliens communicate with. This brings her to the attention of Scanlon and his Wardex agents, and the story takes off. Blunt plays her as a woman unsure of herself, knowing she wants more, but unsure how to get there.
There are hints of an incident in her past, and the death of her father, that shaped who she is today. She wants nothing to do with her new abilities, or the journey they are compelling her to go on, but as time goes on, she adjusts and becomes the strong woman who can do things on her own that she has always dreamt of being.
This puts her on a collision course with Kellner, who she feels drawn to, and that race to find him before Wardex does becomes the chase that drives the film.
Like Fairchild, Kellner too has an incident in his childhood, he cannot remember his life before ten years old, and his gift with math started after an encounter with a cardinal as well. The two are drawn together for reasons that become clear in the movie, but I won’t spoil it here.
Will the good guys avoid Wardex long enough to get their information out to the world? At the same time, the world teeters on the brink of war, as in the background we are made aware of a conflict on the Korean peninsula. I won’t spoil anything, but to say that this is a Spielberg film, so you can draw your own conclusions as to what happens.
What I liked most about the movie was not just how timely the deep state shadowy private military tech companies controlling access to information are these days (Palantir anyone?). But there are deeper themes being explored. How would an alien arrival affect the religions of the earth? What would happen if truly superior beings arrived? Spielberg hands this with a deft touch. It won’t make evangelicals happy, but then again, what does?
And like most of his films, Spielberg dives into what it is that makes us human, and that in the end, we all have a capacity to be more than we thought, and it is the inherent goodness of our humanity that will, hopefully, save the day. To me that is the real story of the movie, not just that aliens are among us, but are we good enough to deserve to be visited. I think the answer is yes, and in my view, so does Spielberg.
Disclosure Day isn’t a direct sequel to Close Encounters, but perhaps how the story would have been told in our modern age. While not as great, it is just as fun. I could have done with a few, “oh how will our heroes escape these trap?” scenes, and more with the aliens themselves. We discover they are benevolent, but why they chose the people they did to communicate with, and what they really want, is never made clear to us.
We see footage that shows they have been visiting us for 79 years, and even with how we treat them, and some of that treatment while done off screen is pretty gruesome, they have never chosen to attack us. It’s just sort of left out there that good things will happen. (Like hopefully that war in Korea won’t kick off because hey look, aliens.)
It’s open to interpretation, but I think it ends on a hopeful note.
Nevertheless,the ending left me cold. After all that build up, it just ends. The aliens are revealed to the world, broadcast live on television.
Then it just ends. Sure there is a hopeful tone, and I guess it is left open to interpretation, but after all that build up, I wanted more of a pay off.
Or any pay off for that matter.
I do think this film needs to be seen on the big screen, which is the only way to really appreciate how this movie was shot. It’s big, and clearly shot for large screens and big speakers. My advice, go on a hot summer day and sit in the air conditioned theater with a big bucket of popcorn on your lap.
It is not prime Spielberg, but it is better than endlessly scrolling Netflix.
I wanted to love it. I haven’t been this excited to see a movie in a long time. To feel like a kid again, but I just didn’t.
* * * * *
Produced by Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg
Screenplay by David Koepp
Story by Steven Spielberg
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor,
Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo
