The following article contains major spoilers disclosure dayWhich includes its ending.
Watching a lot of Steven Spielberg’s movies is like bathing in a giant bucket of sentimental, wide-eyed optimism. disclosure day Is no different. And I really mean that as a compliment. As you may have read, we’re living in increasingly depressing times, and it’s entirely welcome to leave the cinema feeling less despairing about the state of the world and, well, the state of the human race.
It’s a strange way to feel about a story in which the US government is teaming up with a shady corporation to hide the existence of aliens from the public. Oh, and all the while, the planet is on the brink of World War III and nuclear annihilation – thanks to the renewed conflict between North Korea and the United States – and people are either frozen in terror or rushing to the supermarket to stock up on toilet paper in droves. And yet, somehow, disclosure day managed to become one of the most optimistic films in years; It’s anathema to the prevailing belief that everything will be for nothing, and we can simply buckle up for the ride. At least not when the end of the film hits.
First, a brief recap. Josh O’Connor plays moose-haired whistleblower Daniel Kellner, who steals classified evidence of alien visitation to Earth – which goes back to the infamous Roswell incident in the late ’40s – from his employer, Wardex Corporation, which has long conducted secret research on crashed UFOs on behalf of the White House. Meanwhile, what can only be described as “weird shit” begins to happen to weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) in Kansas City: one morning, she suddenly finds herself fluent in every language known to man, and she suddenly knows everything about someone just by looking at them, much to the astonishment of her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell). Both of them are being sought by Vardex, led by company head Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth).
The prospect of returning to Spielberg’s home turf, the subject of his early career, might have got everyone thinking disclosure day would be a close encounter Redux, but much of the film looks like one of their finger-chewing thrillers, la munich Or bridge of spies. It features killer action sequences and car chases; Screenwriter David Koepp All of this involves high thematic questions about whether the human race is ready to learn about the existence of aliens, and about the existential implications of world religions. (If God created us in His own image, then why do the aliens have big brown heads and giant oval eyes?) Turns out the aliens abducted Kellner and Fairchild when they were young, and gave them both almost magical powers.
It all leads to a climax in which, with the world on the brink of destruction, Kellner and Fairchild—aided by Vardex protector Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) and his fringe group of disclosure advocates—take over the latter’s news station. They broadcast archived alien footage, revealing to the world the existence of extraterrestrial beings. This proves to be enough to divert everyone’s attention from the impending geopolitical war. Just minutes before we leave each other in the dust, the world is united again in recognizing a status-quo-shattering truth: We are not alone. With it, humanity seems much smaller – and our petty, nuclear weapons disputes seem much smaller, too. Oh, and then Wakefield takes an actual alien into the newsroom, whispering something to Fairchild in his click-clack space language. She returns to the camera to relay her message: “Listen,” she begins. And then the screen goes black.
