Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor expose alien secrets in Disclosure Day
Steven Spielberg’s latest work, “Disclosure Day”, arrived in cinemas worldwide last week, six months after an enigmatic billboard with the phrase “All Will Be Revealed” appeared in Times Square. The production marks the filmmaker’s return to the science fiction themes that captivated him throughout his career, interweaving several characters’ stories in an adventure full of adrenaline and dizzying moments. This article explores the layers, references and in-depth themes of the film.
The persistent question about life beyond Earth
Spielberg’s attraction to the cosmos dates back to his childhood. At the age of five or six, he was woken by his father in the middle of the night to observe a dazzling meteor shower in a quiet New Jersey field, an experience that drove him to create “out of this world” narratives. This experience planted the seed for “Firelight”, his first science fiction feature film about an alien invasion, filmed in 1964, when he was just 17 years old, with a budget of US$500. He would later explore these themes on a large scale with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982), works that, like “Disclosure Day”, subverted the image of aliens as menacing figures, portraying them as complex, emotional beings who yearn for understanding and connection.
The importance of whistleblowers in the central plot
From the beginning, “Disclosure Day” clearly establishes its protagonists and antagonists. Among the heroes is Margret Fairchild (played by Emily Blunt), an ambitious, if somewhat eccentric, weather girl who acquires the ability to speak an alien language and read minds after contact with a red cardinal who turns out to be an alien in disguise. At the same time, Daniel Kellner (played by Josh O’Connor) appears as a rebel who defected from the shadowy Wardex agency, taking with him confidential data about extraterrestrial life, accumulated over decades. After serving time for cybercrimes, his goal is to release this information to the public, telling his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson): “What I stole belongs to 8 billion people around the world.”
However, Noah Scanlon (played by Colin Firth), the leader of Wardex, is vehemently opposed to this initiative. Their plan is to suppress any information about alien life in order to monopolize extraterrestrial technology. Firth delivers a villainous and sophisticated performance, managing to make threatening statements, such as “History has no reset button”, without sounding cliché, something that actors with less charisma might not sustain. His character’s cruelty is unquestionable: the film’s first glimpse of aliens comes when Kellner accesses footage of a helpless creature on an operating table, while Scanlon orders a vivisection without anesthesia.
As the plot unfolds with quick transitions between characters, Spielberg’s message is clear: he supports Fairchild and Kellner. The impression is that the director is paying homage to real-life whistleblowers, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, who faced severe consequences for leaking government secrets.
Fast-paced action-adventure sequences
“Disclosure Day” begins with a violent wrestling match and maintains a breakneck pace with almost no pauses, all filmed and framed with such mastery that the viewer rarely wants the intensity to decrease. It’s captivating to see O’Connor, breaking away from his more subtle art-house roles as a daredevil driver in an SUV, outmaneuvering an army of menacing henchmen in a stunning car chase. Spielberg hasn’t delivered such electrifying emotion since “Minority Report”. The actor also stars in the film’s most spectacular sequence, where the camera pans around him as strong winds form complex circles in a corn field. Although perhaps a little sentimental for some, a charming flashback shows the abduction of Fairchild and Kellner as children by aliens disguised as forest creatures, who lead them to a Hansel and Gretel-style house.
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Emily Blunt shines in captivating performance among stellar cast
The “Disclosure Day” cast stars Blunt, O’Connor, Firth, Hewson and Colman Domingo as a Zen mentor figure to the whistleblowers and there is no weak link between them. However, the film derives its biggest laughs and much of its emotional depth from Emily Blunt’s attuned performance. After a confrontation with the villain Noah Scanlon (Firth), he marvels at her superhuman powers. “What is she?” he mutters, as an associate responds: “Unstoppable.”
After some somewhat thankless recent projects (“The Smashing Machine,” “The Fall Guy”), “Disclosure Day” joins “The Devil Wears Prada 2” as a reminder of Blunt’s brilliance, which manages to anchor and lend sincerity to the film’s increasingly extravagant plot. Her performance is a strong candidate for a best actress nomination at next year’s Oscars.
Growing public interest in the existence of extraterrestrial life
“I believe that people’s questions about what happens in our skies; in our world; with reality itself have reached a critical mass of complete fascination,” says Spielberg in the film’s production notes. The idea for “Disclosure Day” came in 2017, when the director read a New York Times article that revealed new details about a secret Pentagon UFO program. Recently, interest in extraterrestrials reached a new level of intensity after Barack Obama declared in a podcast: “They are real, but I haven’t seen them.” Not wanting to be left behind, Donald Trump promised to quickly release the files on alien life.
This month, the chairman of the International Academy of Astronautics’ search for extraterrestrial intelligence committee stated that the discovery of alien life is not a question of “if” but “when.” “I don’t know if it will be this year, next year, next decade, next century, or whenever,” he said, “But eventually, someone will find something.” All of this lends an oddly prescient feel to “Disclosure Day,” which deftly explores how news of alien life would spread globally mostly with people watching their phones in silence.
The approach to conspiracy theories and the film’s climax
Steven Spielberg is one of the few directors capable of transforming debunked alien conspiracy theories into narratives that are not only believable but also emotionally sincere. The film’s audacious climax finds Fairchild, Kellner and Wakefield storming a Kansas City news station, interrupting coverage of the war in North Korea for a monumental declaration: “This is Breakthrough Day.” They then display classified footage of aliens visiting Earth dating back to the 1947 Roswell incident, with exquisitely created “archival footage” that looks incredibly realistic. It’s particularly difficult to watch moments where aliens are portrayed as injured or suffering at the hands of human cruelty, perhaps because one suspects that humanity would welcome them with violence regardless of whether they came in peace.
In the final moments of the film, a slender, silvery alien emissary is taken to the television studio, emerges from a hyperbaric chamber and delivers a message for Fairchild to transmit to the citizens of Earth. Was it an appeal for empathy? A promise that humanity will pay for its crimes? The moment she opens her mouth to reveal it, the credits begin to roll.
