Spielberg betrays the movies — and himself.
In Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg attempts nothing less than a redefinition of the Judeo-Christian ethic that formerly ruled Hollywood — making it a global, cultural superpower — since the days its Jewish immigrant founders realized what author Neal Gabler called “An Empire of Their Own” (in his 1988 book retelling the history of the American film industry). This is Spielberg’s most explicitly religious film, although its story exchanges religion for speculative political fiction: Emotionally troubled military-data analyst Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) steals classified government secrets about UFOs; the info is so shocking that he feels compelled to release it to the public. Daniel aligns with an underground government sect that has tracked Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) intelligence while also monitoring TV weather girl Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a conduit for unbidden messages from outer space. Both Daniel and Margaret are shown to be disciples/prophets chosen to present a message that will alter human consciousness. Margaret’s announcement: “Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know.”
Although this sounds potentially profound, Disclosure Day is the trashiest Spielberg film since the Halloween prank Poltergeist (credited to Tobe Hooper but bearing Spielberg’s fingerprints). Disclosure Day descends through dramatic rather than comic intervals into chase-movie set pieces, yet it lacks an action movie’s sense of fun. Two show-off sequences — cars bursting through a house, and a car dragged along railroad tracks between moving trains — sustain suspense, but the excitation is empty, despite some visual grace notes. All this is serious in a way Close Encounters of the Third Kind was not: CEOTK’s modern fable resolved sci-fi mystery with awe while Disclosure Day reflects Spielberg’s recent dystopic inclination, concentrating on dark cynicism. Daniel’s political subterfuge against the military industrial complex broadens into religious skepticism — excuses for a pell-mell approach and a fearful, threatening tone.
When faithless, defiant (unpatriotic) Daniel goes on the run, he’s hunted down by Noah Stanton (Colin Firth) a devious UAP expert who kidnaps Daniel’s girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson), a former Catholic novitiate, and then reveals to her the top-secret content that so frightens her and the nonbelieving, renegade Daniel. After suspiciously putting Jane at risk, Daniel asks whether she lost her faith; she responds, “I lost my calling.”
Jane’s despair could also apply to Spielberg, whose crowd-pleasing optimism seems to have waned along with his appreciation of wonder. He switches focus from Jane to Margaret, thus dropping any further theological inquiry, despite an extended sequence of Jane’s harrowing battle with Noah, pitting Christian faith against malignant forces. Margaret becomes the central protagonist seemingly because she is a media career-girl — Spielberg’s idea of a spiritual weathervane and social prognosticator. She’s a secular saint who acquires the gift of divination, bringing Daniel close to rectifying his deep-seated restlessness; she’s also an angel who heralds the news that there’s life beyond Earth.
Although Disclosure Day was scripted by David Koepp (the sharp scenarist of Jurassic Park, Snake Eyes, Panic Room, and War of the Worlds), Spielberg devised its story — a pessimistic sequel to the sci-fi adventure Close Encounters that Spielberg wrote himself. Unlike the sense of poetry in Close Encounter, which used Scripture-like metaphor to elaborate on the significance of human endeavor, Disclosure Day suggests an agnostic negativity. Spielberg stomps his way through Daniel and Jane’s disaffection. Their childhood trauma (abduction by aliens) mixes with adult trauma (dissatisfaction with modern life). Hurtling through events that challenge everyday certainty, they perceive the limits of orthodox reality. Then Spielberg questions their relation to government and faith.
But just as Spielberg raises Millennial doubts, the film goes for quasi-mystic, quasi-political claptrap. He seems to have forgotten that the third kind of close encounter was contact, not suspicion of religion but its confirmation of something bigger, greater than the mundane. Instead of confronting the dread influence affecting Daniel, Margaret, Jane, and Noah, Spielberg diminishes their only glimmer of hope. He misunderstands religion and myth as the explanation of what puzzles us and instead posits politicized alternatives: untrustworthy government and childhood sentimentality. (Margaret’s first awakening to the appearance of a cardinal floating in on a breeze is oddly disconnected from that symbol’s folkloric meaning.)
The only character with a backstory is weepy Jane, whose religious foundation gets teased and strained. Daniel and Margaret — the audience surrogates — are susceptible to machinations by Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), the government’s “director of biological assets,” who also has no personal background but speaks in the soothing tones of a seer — or mountebank — who best understands how to deal with alien life. (Hugo keeps the secret of 79 years of UAP, from the beginning of the 20th century to the Roswell mysteries.)
While these are not Spielberg’s usual everyman characters, they epitomize a dominated polity, open to manipulation by religion (which Jane grasps like the bloody crucifix that causes a stigmata in the palm of her hand); or by the defense industries (which Daniel opposes in his determination to release classified information to the public); or else by the media (which talking-head employee Margaret represents). Spielberg never digs into these figures, seekers desperate to confirm various belief systems; they clash head-on with the self-interest of their barely distinguishable overlords: Noah and his goons, Hugo and his workshop elves.
But Disclosure Day challenges religious orthodoxy for being the foremost alternative to secular political power — a pop culture outrage considering Spielberg’s earlier adherence to Hollywood’s once careful regard for ecumenical consciousness. The general, all-inclusive spirituality of Close Encounters showed that Spielberg understood the universality of personal aspiration and found extraordinary, relatable means to express it visually. (Here, scenes of Margaret’s psychic intuition of other people’s thoughts just seem like drab imitations of what was fresh in Close Encounters and Always.) The wondrous evocation of the Supreme Being or a supreme intelligence in Close Encounters answered mankind’s awe and made it magnificent. Having achieved that almost 50 years ago, the “revelation” of aliens in Disclosure Day is truly anticlimactic — it’s an unequal sequel.
