Somewhere in the middle of the 2-1/2 hour slog that is Disclosure Day, there is a scene that killed any hope I had that this thing was going to stick the landing. An ex-nun named Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson) calls up her former teacher, Sister Maura (Elizabeth Marvel) for some advice. Jane is the girlfriend of UFO whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh OāConnor). Daniel has explained to his significant other that he has proof aliens are real and the government is covering it up. He is going to disclose that information to the worldāif the generic, evil forces of the Deep State donāt stop him first. Jane is distraught because she is worried the revelation that there extraterrestrial beings will be a death knell to the faith she still holds dear. And so, without telling Sister Maura what prompted the question, Jane asks her old mentor for her opinion on whether or not aliens exist, and if so, if that endangers the foundation of Christendom.
Itās fine, Sister Maura explains patiently, as if she somehow knew all along what got her ex-pupil (nun-nee?) in a spot of bother. The Bible merely states humans are Godās greatest creations on Earth. So if beings with a sentience greater than our own exist elsewhere, itās all gravy. Belief in God and Men from Outer Space? No problem.
Itās a ridiculous scene, partly because Sister Maura takes Janeās question in stride, partly because itās more than convenient that she had an ardent belief in extraterrestrials teed up for the conversationābut mostly because it betrays the fact that Disclosure Day is a film that takes itself way too seriously. Someone, perhaps Steven Spielberg, or maybe his longtime scribe David Koepp, thought this movie would have such an impact that they needed to assure religious audiences that it was okay to go along with it. It reminds me a little bit of Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks, and no, no relation) at the end of the film adaptation of Da Vinci Code, when he ponders to another character but really to the audience, āWhy couldnāt have Jesus performed all those miracles and been a father too?ā It presumes the audience bought whatever conspiracy the film was selling: in one instance, Mary Magdalene was Jesusā wife and bore his children; in the other, that the government is hiding proof that aliens are real. Both films presume they have had such an effect that they need to assuage spiritual concerns about the implications being sold. Say what you will about Da Vinci Code, but at least Dan Brownās novel understood it was, at heart, an airport thriller.
I am a bit ambivalent about aliens. Itās complicated. Iām both a skeptic of the unknown and the most ardent believer youāll ever meet. On the one hand I think most supernatural accounts concerning aliens or otherwise lack the context that will suddenly make damning proof spurious, turn credible testimonies into mass hallucinations, reveal that smoking guns are a hair-trigger need for something to be true. On the other hand, I think the laptop Iām using, the cup of Costa Coffee from a Buc-eeās in Alabama (I know, right), and the very cramped car I am smushed in as I type this (not to mention Judith the Airedale who has her head resting on my wrist, making said typing a bit of a hassle that I am more than willing to endure for her) all have souls on the exact same ontological footing as my own, which is not to diminish myself but on the contrary to insist everything has some kind of divine power. I believe in synchronicities in a very strong sense, that there is a rhythm in the actualization of Events that is wildly beyond our typical comprehension. My theoretical commitments have led me to take up some stances that are decidedly āout thereā. I want to believe. I do believe. But I donāt want to be stupid about it.
Jung also wants to be known as a Smart Believer. The central thesis in his 1958 work Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies is that belief in UFOs betrays an unconscious need to believe in something. The void left by the unmooring of religion and in the face of technological progress and, in Jungās time, the arms race of the Cold War that might use those same technologies to blow the entire human race off the globe, fueled a need to discover something that transcends our earthly crises, in the same way that faith once did.
But Jung doesnāt shut the door on whether or not these things actually exist. In his estimate there are sober accounts of unexplained phenomena that cannot be readily explained away as misunderstanding or hallucination, and so he suggests it is possible that the desire for transcendent meaning and the literal existence of Flying Saucers coincides. Itās a nice way for him to have his cake and eat it too, yes. But it also suggests something powerful and unsettling about synchronicity: that mass frenzies and movements correspond with something tangibly real.
Steven Spielberg is a believer too. Heās made that clear in the many press junkets he did leading up to Disclosure Dayās release. It is his conviction that aliens are real, that the government may be hiding something, and full disclosure would be for the benefit of humankind. And clearly he thinks now is a pivotal moment for such conviction, just as Jung felt the original wave of Flying Saucer sightings was for the Cold War Fifties. In the backdrop of the world in Disclosure Day are global tensions vaguely similar to our own, but heightened: allusions to tensions with Russia and China, renewed fears of nuclear war, people raiding the convenient store for milk and bread, and so forth. In a scene where the leader of the whistleblower movement, Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo, who spends the entire movie taking phone calls in a warehouse) confronts the head of the shadowy paramilitary organization that has been keeping the lid on knowledge of extraterrestrials, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the real world war on empathy is addressed very bluntly. Empathy isnāt a flaw of ours, Hugo insists, itās a strength.
Despite being transparent in intent, the message in this scene works. It works because it is true, and because it is something that needs to be said, urgently, in the face of reactionaries and technocrats alike. The problem with the rest of the Disclosure Day is that the message isnāt quite right, and itās debatable if anyone is hearing it.
A common complaint online about the movie is that nothing really happens. An alien shows up in the flesh only in the final minutes, and its message to the human race, which is delivered by mid-market TV meteorologist-turned-extraterrestrial mouthpiece Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), is never heard beyond the opening word of what was presumably a stirring, epoch-shifting speech: āListen.ā Where are the aliens? That seems to be the question a lot of folks dissatisfied with the film are asking.
I donāt think this is the right critique. The real problem is that Disclosure Day pretends itās about aliens, it thinks it is about aliens, but it really isnāt. Rather itās about the need to believe in something, and the consequences of expressing that belief to a world that cannot conceive anything extraordinary. The actual content of what is āknownā is irrelevant. Disclosure Day could have been about ghosts, or cryptids, or the noumena. The real question it poses is thus: is the world ready to believe?
A friend who saw the film before I did said that it felt out of touch, that maybe Spielberg was showing āboomerā tendencies. I did not want to believe this. I still donāt. Spielberg, to me, is the greatest. Will always be the greatest. I owe much of my childhood wonder to him. Jurassic Park. Jaws. Indiana Jones. These movies got me thinking about science, myth, and storytelling. All things that have proved more than relevant to me. Moreover Spielberg has five decades worth of films that have had some impact on me. Sure, Crystal Skull blows, but does that even count? It is hard for me to accept that a film and subject he was deeply invested in could be the kind of misfire Disclosure Day is.
But again, a claim like āheās out of touchā might only be partly correct, or rather might not be precise enough. Itās clear Spielberg simply did not entirely understand the Problem he was trying to pose here: he too thought he was making a movie about aliens. Spielberg of course has made quite a few flicks about them. He has even said he considers Disclosure Day as the third act in an unofficial trilogy that includes Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.. Of course, one could argue that Close Encounters is really not about aliens either, but rather itās also about some quest for transcendent meaning. E.T. in many ways is about the loneliness of childhood during divorce.
It is interesting that Spielberg omitted another title here from his filmography: 2005ās War of the Worlds, a movie I quite liked. Not just because the aliens in that one are mean and appear in those cool tripods and bellow that menacing, blaring foghorn of a warning call; not just because the buildup to their initial attack is Spielberg at his best; but also because here too is an alien movie that is not truly about aliens, but in this case about the way oneās ordinary world is turned upside down during a catastrophic event, and how such calamities bring out both the best and very worst in humanity. A post-9/11 movie, War of the Worlds truly was, and underrated within Spielbergās canon.
Twenty-one years later Spielberg is trying to make a movie for our times once again, but this time he doesnāt seem to know what kind of movie he is trying to make. There are car chases and a sequence with a train and escalating danger that would feel very much at home in Indiana Jones, but here, in a movie that is otherwise a drama and heady thriller, feel totally out of place. I like stuff that defies genre; but perhaps when you donāt know what your storyās theme is, nothing feels right.
There are a lot of concepts thrown in here: aliens appearing as animals at first (and poorly rendered CGI ones at that) to induce calm; stolen alien tech that allows Colin Firth to get inside your head until it messes with his blood pressure; the fact that the whistleblower Daniel and the meteorologist Margaret both were abducted as kids and granted special powers, and that master whistlerblower Hugo apparently deduced he had to build a replica of Margaretās childhood home to get them to remember this, or something; crop circles show up for some reason that is never explained, other than come on itās aliens man, you need your crop circlesāitās a lot. Daniel has the ability to speak the language of the universe, math and logic; Margaret, the power of telepathic empathy. This could make for a very boring Eros and Logos show-and-tell if we were Lazy Jungians, but we are not Lazy Jungians here at Univocity Drift, and while I think the idea of two people being abducted at the same time as part of an intergalactic masterplan to move the human race out of its relative barbarism is interesting, it is all given very hastily in this film along with a bunch of other curiosities, as if the goal of the script was to cram as many interesting, alien-adjacent ideas into it to justify that this was, indeed, a sci-fi flick about aliens. Itās too much shit, which contributes to the movieās bloated runtime and why it absolutely drags.
If it were not for some fine performances by the entire cast, it might not be watchable at all. This whole thing desperately needed to be streamlined. But how can one do that when one cannot separate the superficial points (the aliens talk in clicks! And they appear as cardinals and fly in fairy tale houses! And have rods that can turn you invisible and also control people, and shit!) from the true thematic significance (itās not even about aliens or the goofy tech half-assedly thought up for this)? When one doesnāt know what the theme is (the world is ready to believe)?
Spielbergās real mistake here was confusing the superficial for the thematic, the ordinary for the singular. And isnāt this what nostalgia often errs in doing? Wanting to replicate the experience of something when it was the affect and intensity underwriting that experience one is truly seeking. In that sense, perhaps Spielberg is indeed stuck in the past, and after getting it right so many times for half-a-century, he has indeed delivered something very āout of touchā.
It all comes to a head at the filmās climax, during the titular unveiling to the public. A collage of classified footage is broadcast to the worldāincluding what is supposed to be black-and-white, handheld recordings of the Roswell crash. A news desk reporter relays what we all see through shock and tears. Around the world, everyone reacts similarly. Soldiers on frontlines stop to gawk at their phones. On airplanes and in bars all over the globe, everyone is transfixed by what they see. We are not alone. It all leads up to Emily Blunt beginning to relay the alienās message to us all (Listen . . .) before we cut to credits.
Nothing about the finale works. The footage all feels unconvincing (the Roswell recording in particularly feels laughably fake for some reason). Maybe itās because it all has the vibe of TikTok videos that we know not to trust. At one point a TV producer asks his crew (and us) ācould this be AI?ā Well yes, obviously it could be. The movieās conceit is that it is not, that this is all real, and at last we understand we are not alone in the universe, that human beings will put down their guns, East will meet West, and our petty conflicts will finally come to an end.
But none of this has the impact it should. It is very telling we do not hear the great āCome to (extraterrestrial) Jesusā speech, nor do we witness the great epochal change in humanity. We donāt see anything other than a lot of people squinting at their phones, which isnāt anything new at all. The movie insists to us, time and time again, that disclosure will cause a revolution, that people will be stirred for change. But we never see it.
A film like this manages to pretend the American people are a lot smarter than they have demonstrated to be, yet also condescends to them at the same time. āYou all want transcendence, donāt you?ā That is how the film handles its implicit question: is the world ready to believe? And Disclosure Day fails because it treats its result as a fait accompli. Of course full disclosure will have its intended effect. And so it is telling that we never see it happen. It is as if the filmmakers could not envision it. And thus by skirting around the real theme at stake, not only does Disclosure Day fail to understand its true message, it also does not truly understand the audience the message is meant for. This is obvious, because beyond the very patronizing gestures to religion, the movie never stops and considers a terrible possibility: what if disclosure bombed? What if people reject transcendence?
It is by far the most plausible outcome if one stops and thinks about it. People start arguing whether or not the declassified footage is fake or not. People on twitter try to edge one another out with the hottest take about just what the aliens are and what they want. Stephen A. somehow crams it into First Take. Influencers post YouTube videos with thumbnails of them with their jaws agape next to Flying Saucers. States and corporations vie and jockey to win the ascendent beingsā favor. Soldiers put their phones down and pick their guns up again. Triggers are squeezed. Humanity is so high on its own supply that even celestial providence cannot shake us from our addiction. What should deeply affect us no longer does. Once upon a time school shootings brought the nation to a standstill. Now we forget them by the next doomscrolling. Why would cosmic revelations be any different? Disclosure Day should have had a cynical end where nothing changes. Then it would have at least felt authentic.
Of course, cynicism is not Spielbergās thing. That is fine. But if you are going to handle things your own way, you better stick your landing, and instead Disclosure Day avoids it altogether. The fact the movie itself cannot imagine a sunny future where people embrace divine providence underscores the truth the film fails to grasp: that in a world where we are afforded the ability to seek the sacred within the profane, humanity has chosen to be shortsighted.
Wrath Mania a.k.a. Bob holds a doctorate in Psychoanalytic Studies from the University of Essex. A scholar of Jung and Spinoza, he also rides bikes and knows stuff about doors and windows. He lives in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and has yet to see the Jersey Devil. He is working on a lot of stuff at the moment, mind your own business, when itās done itās done. Heās in the Big Easy right now and weāll get back to you whenever.
His book Jung and Spinoza: Passage Through the Blessed Self is out now. Check it out, wonāt you?