Film Review - Disclosure Day
Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Nearly fifty years after his first sci-fi film, Steven Spielberg returns to his extraterrestrial roots with the alien blockbuster thriller of the year.
Disclosure Day follows defecting American deep state worker Daniel (Josh O’Connor) and local news weather reporter Margaret (Emily Blunt) as his journey to prove alien life to the public intersects with her sudden capability to speak an alien language. The film starts off with a bang, grabbing the viewers’ attention in an unexpected way by opening with a POV shot of a professional wrestler in a ring getting punched. The plot of the film also places the viewers directly into the action by starting halfway through Daniel’s journey, which does wonders for the film’s pacing.
The film’s textual plot is engaging enough, but the subtext relating to Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical movie The Fabelmans (2023) is where it shines. If that was a film about Spielberg processing his life, this film is how he processed making The Fabelmans. With conventional science fiction themes of “the truth is out there” mixing with more personal ones of people’s right to know (with a key part of the film being how the knowledge that aliens exist will influence everyday life, and how it will influence religion), Spielberg posits how difficult it is to convey deeply personal information to widespread amounts of people. This is also the first Spielberg film since 2005 to be set in the present day, and the way he embeds modern technology like smartphones and the internet into his very 20th century style of narrative works surprisingly well. The film does have a problem; the CGI animals look really bad, which usually could be overlooked, but the number of times animals are relevant to incredibly emotional scenes means they can come off as goofy instead of heartfelt.
The visuals are incredible, with the usual Spielbergian dynamic camera movement and tracking shots, making the action scenes more exciting and the quiet moments more engaging. The way it’s shot also creates visual parallels with Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), using heavy backlighting, silhouettes and rays of lights to evoke an unearthly feeling in certain shots. John Williams returns as the film’s composer, however this is very different to his usual work. Instead of sweeping, rousing, and orchestral, this score is restrained and minimalistic, reflecting on how this film differs from the rest of Spielberg’s blockbuster filmography.
Disclosure Day is surprisingly funny, with the script balancing humour and drama well so it can tell an impactful story without resorting to witty quips every second line. Margaret’s fiancé (Wyatt Russell) is a very entertaining comedic foil, and Emily Blunt herself is great in both her more light-hearted scenes at the start and her much more dramatic scenes towards the end. The plot also concludes (no spoilers) where a lesser film would have a whole 30 minutes of epilogue, leaving the ending on a strong yet ambiguous note.
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Disclosure Day is screening in cinemas from Thursday the 11th of June. For tickets and more info, click here.