I came to Close Encounters of the Third Kind quite late in life, having only watched it for the first time in the lead-up to the release of Steven Spielberg‘s last mega-profile release, The Fabelmans (maybe that year’s best film). At the time, I came away from Close Encounters with more cogent thoughts about the burgeoning filmmaker’s ode to the creative force and the discovery process of art in the creating of it. More than anything, I was staggered by the film’s final twenty minutes – when it goes full Electric Light Orchestra/Daft Punk – a pure power chord of emotionalism that created a lump in my throat the size of California. A very good film made marvelous by a young filmmaker who knew just what strings to pluck.
Now, approaching what is likely the twilight of his career, Spielberg is returning to that endlessly fertile ground of “are we alone in the universe?” in a somehow equally cynical and conspiratorial era. The threat of global conflict still hangs above us like a Sword of Damocles, trust in government is at an all-time low, and the financial order is even more perilous. On top of all of that, or perhaps because of all of that, the sense that something is being hidden from us by those in charge permeates to even the most rational of our citizenry. And it’s here that Spielberg reopens that fertile question about our place in the universe. So, what we must ask ourselves as viewers is, with Disclosure Day, is there still something worth mining?
Disclosure Day, originating in a story by Spielberg, sees him reunited with his Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp. It’s a story of rebels (Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson) who want to release the truth and are on the run from the nefarious schemes of the Wardex Corporation, an NGO run by a seemingly indefatigable blackhat (Colin Firth) who will stop at nothing to prevent what he sees as the end of society through the spreading of a secret. What’s that secret? That we’ve known about aliens for decades – and our own government has even been experimenting on them. The fly in the ointment here is Kansas City meteorologist, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), whose lifelong wanderlust and lack of “fitting into place” sees actualization when a cardinal flies into the apartment she shares with her boyfriend (Wyatt Russell). And suddenly, she’s able to read people’s thoughts. And then she begins communicating in an alien language on live television. This is the moment when those other beings have decided to make their grand entrance on our world stage, and it’s also the moment when Disclosure Day clicks into place and becomes the kind of big-scale adventure in the classic Spielberg mold that you’re always hoping he’ll lay in your lap.
There’s so much to admire in terms of how Spielberg frames tension on the biggest canvas possible. He remains a master of the set piece and communicating triumph at just the right moment. His inventive framing also continues to astound. There’s an ongoing sequence where Firth’s bad guy, Noah Scanlon, uses an alien device to tap into the minds of respective heroes. Every time he pops onto the scene out of nowhere to have a conversation with them, I got a little jolt of joy. But it’s also worth returning to the Koepp of it all, whose impression on this film is pronounced. His Catholic school-boy background informs so much of the front-half of the film especially, which is both textual (characters debate liturgy and the possibility of the Bible’s admission of other life) and subtextual (a character with a deep theological background self-flagellates in order to stave off the seduction of the film’s equivalent of the Devil). It also did not escape me that everything is kicked off by the appearance of a cardinal, both an evocative image and not so veiled reference to the Diocese and its Latin root in the term “pivot.” To a degree, this felt like one of the most Catholic-driven science fiction stories I’ve seen since the work of the late Gene Wolfe.
So too, beyond religion, do Koepp and Spielberg seem to have a greater thought in mind about the human condition. Both O’Connor’s Daniel Kellner and Blunt’s Fairchild play as two-halves to their higher-power benefactors in terms of understanding their language and providing a communication style that will allow the broader masses to believe these world-shattering revelations in a society steeped in a cynical “do not believe the evidence of your eyes” mindset. It’s a bit earnest admittedly, but Koepp takes the idea of the “left-brained analysis” and pairing in sync with “right-brained spatial awareness” through the film’s leads in a way that is reminiscent of Metropolis’ “the mediator between the head and the hand is the heart.” Here, the filmmakers posit that the only way forward for humanity to obtain and comprehend greater understanding of our universe is for the two halves of our brains (and the sort of individuals that are broadly represented by those designations) to work in concert towards a unified whole. Hokey? Maybe, but it’s difficult logic to argue with when taken to its logical conclusion within the current moment: that facts and feelings are equally meaningless on their own, and more powerful in concert.
More than anything though, I just keep returning to this idea of what an almost eighty year old Spielberg himself is adding to the argument he made nearly fifty years ago. What has a wiser, more able hand brought to the table? Maybe Fairchild’s character and her instinct-driven process, struck with the much more cautious but knowing Kellner, is a portrait of an aging artist struggling between safe harbors and taking one more big swing towards the great unknown. But it’s clear that the centralized theme of Disclosure Day is centered on empathy. Empathy for your fellow man, and in the end that is the key to unlock what actually lies beyond for us all.
And it must be said, even now, Spielberg still can play the hits with expert precision. Because much like he nailed the ending of Close Encounters, that same stirring of the uncanny that walloped me when I saw Richard Dreyfuss get greeted by a smiling, kind visitor from another world happens all over again here. It’s a power chord that never goes out of tune.