Disclosure Day: Still Working on Me
I've seen three movies in the last week...one isn't letting go
Quick programming note - MaryAnn and I had a great conversation yesterday with Dr. Sebastian Barr as we did a Pride-themed PCPH episode. Check it out here!
In the last week or so, I’ve seen three very different movies. Masters of the Universe (He-Man), Remarkably Bright Creatures, and then Disclosure Day. I enjoyed all three for different reasons, but there’s only one that I’ve continued to think about consistently since I saw it... Disclosure Day.
I’ll admit that I am a mark for sci-fi and for Spielberg movies so there’s that. I also admit that my first reaction to Disclosure Day was not all that enthusiastic. What I said to several family members was that I felt like the film tried to do too much and, as a result, didn’t allow some of the storylines to really be explored. There were also a few points in the film where some story choices were made that were ridiculous (scene where one of our heroes is crawling behind an open fence with his pursuing authorities not 10’ from him and somehow they don’t see or hear him...I’m looking at you.). So the film was not perfect by any means but again, I’m still thinking about it 48 hours later.
And maybe that’s a sign of a good (great?) movie - that it stays with you after you leave the theater. I enjoyed Masters of the Universe but basically it was like downing a ridiculously sugary dessert and enjoying the rush of it and then crashing about 2 hrs later and wondering why I did what I just did. Remarkably Bright Creatures was also just a wonderful feel-good story about forgiveness and healing and community and totally worth a watch. But again, I’m still chewing on Disclosure Day.
It is a very different “alien” film. In a lot of ways, it isn’t really about the aliens as much as it is about us. The film asks big questions about what humanity would do if we found out definitively that we are not alone in the universe. In the film there are people who don’t trust how humanity would respond and so there is the requisite massive government cover-up. Within that, it also engages the question of what that definitive realization would mean for people of faith - how would major religions respond to this disclosure?
The film also does something Contact and Arrival both did - gives the sense that extra-terrestrial life have a greater belief in the human race than we have of ourselves. Whoever sent the communication from Vega in Contact and the Septapods from Arrival and the aliens from Disclosure Day seem to believe that humanity can handle this truth.
And finally, Disclosure Day asks whether this news could bring a sense of unity and commonality to our world right now. The subtext within the film is that the world is on the brink of a massive multi-national conflict (World War III?) but when the disclosure finally happens, WWIII is no longer the breaking news.
And that’s where I need to get into some big spoilers for the film. So if you haven’t seen it and do want to see it, stop here. Come back after you watch. I’m going to give some literal space before the spoilers...
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(Still in spoiler break)
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Ok - you have been warned.
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Spoilers abound…
The disclosure finally happens in the last 10 minutes or so of the movie and goes from a Kansas City television broadcast to eventually being news all over the world. There’s one particularly powerful portrayal of a national news anchor starting to be able to share the videos being disclosed and eventually losing the “professionalism” and being so very human as she tries to interpret what she’s seeing along with everyone else. And then the film ends as Margaret, Emily Blunt’s character who we first met in the film as a weather forecaster, begins to relay the actual message from one of the aliens to humanity. Margaret is one whose job it is to watch the skies for the rest of us and there’s one particular forecast she gives about hail coming that doesn’t seem to happen...until it does...Just like the insights she begins to gain don’t seem to have a foothold in reality...until they do.
And then as she looks into the camera, the film ends with just the first word of the message - a message that will land as strongly as hail on the roof and people have no choice but to... listen
The way that it is filmed, it felt to me that it was the first word of a sentence and not the whole of the message. But, as one reviewer wrote about it, even the best screenwriter can’t script something that would be appropriate to the momentousness of that kind of occasion. Instead, it is left to the viewer to try to interpret what might come next and to sit with the unresolvedness. It is almost like Spielberg is leaving the audience with that not as a statement but as a question...what will you do with what you are now hearing?
And I think that some of the criticism is that the film ends so abruptly and doesn’t have a clear resolution. And maybe that’s the genius of it - it is not trying to wrap up the story perfectly but allowing the story and the questions to continue to work.
Listen...
What was your experience of the film?
Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed