Once you have been working in the film industry for over half a century, becoming one of the profitable and acclaimed filmmakers to emerge from the New Hollywood movement, you are handed a blank cheque from which many fantastic films can be produced. There are not many filmmakers who are so indelible in the cultural iconography that their name is used as shorthand for the entire industry in which they worked. Steven Spielberg is not someone who needs much praise, nor does he seem to be someone who necessarily wants it – if he did, he’d not take the bold swings that have come to represent his most ambitious and daring work. Considering this, we find that he’s someone who has worked extensively to understand the human condition, even when working in genres that don’t always lend themselves to provocative thought. He has managed to blur the lines between philosophy and popular entertainment, proving that blockbusters can be effortlessly enjoyable and also very smart – but there are unfortunately a couple of instances where he does slightly fumble, his audacity outweighing the merit of his work. This is the case for Disclosure Day, his most recent offering and his return to the science fiction genre, which was one of the first that he mastered when he made Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a close contender for the most beloved science fiction film ever made. His most recent outing takes us into the present day, where we meet two aimless souls: Daniel, a whistleblower on the run from a secretive government agency, and Margaret, an ambitious television meteorologist with enormous ambitions. They find themselves to be inextricably connected for reasons that only become clear when they’re forced to go on the run together, being chased by a shadowy group of adversaries who are working desperately to prevent the secrets held by Daniel from being revealed to the entire world. The plot is quintessentially Spielberg, right down to the smallest and seemingly most insignificant details, being a film that is most certainly going to appeal more to those who are adherent to the director’s specific style, more than those who are agnostic towards it, which is precisely why it is likely to become one of his most divisive, and frankly quite disappointing, works to date.

Over the course of his decades-long career, which spans from the start of the New Hollywood movement right up until the present period, Spielberg has made it clear that he wants to be viewed as a versatile filmmaker, someone who doesn’t have a specific niche in terms of style and genre, but rather makes films that feel invigorating and unique, and most importantly provide constant entertainment for audiences of all ages. However, he clearly does have a special affection for science fiction, since two of his arguably most famous films are centred around the relationship between humans (particularly those who veer towards constant curiosity) and the questions that are simply impossible to answer, such as whether or not there is life outside our planet. Disclosure Day is the director’s return to this area of inquiry, after his fascinating but quite flawed War of the Worlds (a film I enjoy, but which I understand has proven to be very divisive), and one that he evidently intended to make one of his most ambitious forays into the subject yet. As with previous films built around this idea, Disclosure Day uses the subject of extraterrestrial beings as a starting point for something more profound, and while he has never been someone who is particularly focused on exploring religion as a theme beyond films in which it is the entire purpose, this is oddly one of the director’s most faith-fueled films, or at least the one that most notably explores religion as something socially relevant (even to those who may not subscribe to any belief), and as a deeply personal experience. His reasons for approaching this particular subject are not clear, but the themes that drive the film, namely that of a pair of people who see beyond the strict organisations dedicated to concealing secrets (whether these are thinly-veiled allusions to the powerful religious institutions remains a matter of debate) and who wish to bind the world together under one common humanity, is a fascinating concept, but one I don’t think Spielberg entirely knows how to handle, since its such an intimidating topic that any attempt to explore the intersections between personal faith (whether in some deity or something else) and the surrounding world, needed a far more concise and direct statement of purpose than whatever we received in this film, which proves to be over-ambitious, to its detriment. 

The problem with Disclosure Day is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be, and in the process struggles to make it clear what it wants to say. This is not a bad film in the sense that it lacks interesting ideas – if anything, the subject of disclosure is fascinating in itself and should’ve been the primary focus. Unfortunately, Spielberg chooses to throw together so many different ideas that it turns the film into an interminable bundle of ideas that work fine on their own, but fail to have any cohesion. The decision to structure the film as a story of two people on the run from the authorities is perhaps the biggest issue, since it distracts from the subject of extraterrestrials (with the film alluding to nearly a century of bizarre encounters, drawn from real-world debates) and instead turns this into a story of two people trying to escape the government. Nothing is being said in this film that we cannot find elsewhere, and considering who was at the helm, we certainly expected far better. We can blame some of this on David Koepp’s screenplay, since the writing is heavy-handed to the point of being frustrating, serving very little purpose other than moving from one chase scene to the next, with a mealy-mouthed monologue or hysterical argument peppered in to give the illusion of depth and nuance. Unfortunately, Disclosure Day is exactly what happens when a very talented director decides to blend every disparate idea that he has had for a film about alien encounters for the past fifty years but which he never managed to assemble into dedicated films on their own (since I’d wager that a good portion of this film was cobbled together from scraps of other films that the director never managed to see come to fruition), tied together by a bland story of the tense relationship between people and their government who simply do not have our best interests at heart. It doesn’t help that the film is as sickly sentimental and saccharine as we’ve come to expect – Spielberg has weaponised his predisposition for heavy-handed emotions to the point where it has become inextricable from his style, and while it does work on occasion, in Disclosure Day it is overwrought to the point of being profoundly unsettling and frankly a bit frustrating, since he somehow wants to explore both institutional corruption and tell an optimistic story of the future of humanity. These components do not go together nearly as well as this film wants us to think, and it becomes an unhinged waste of our time once we realise it isn’t saying anything particularly special.

There is nothing more unsettling than poor writing getting in the way of talented actors, since even those with the most staggering gifts do occasionally have to be subjected to subpar scripts. Koepp is not a bad writer, and I do give him credit for doing what he could to make sense of a concept that is scattered across a dozen different subjects. However, the actors do what they can to compensate for these shortcomings – but as we’ve come to learn, the privilege of working under the direction of such a notable filmmaker does sometimes lead to actors being a bit more reluctant to take bigger swings, as we find to be the case with Disclosure Day, a film where very few of the actors are bad, but they’re certainly far from doing career-best work. Emily Blunt perhaps comes closest to delivering something remarkable, since she has an inherently interesting character that anchors the film and has by far the most to do. She has the benefit of having a role that allows her to go as broad as she wants without it seeming out of place, since the nature of the film is more flexible in terms of how far she can go without it being too overwrought. Unfortunately, this means that the usually brilliant Josh O’Connor has to play the more subdued of the two, being shoved into the background and never really leaving much of a lasting impression as a result of needing to be the counter-balance to Blunt, who is intentionally playing to the rafters. The film has a large supporting cast, and while many terrific actors populate the ensemble, they’re given characters that are so underbaked that we feel like a genuine disservice has been done to these great performers. Colman Domingo and Colin Firth are generational talents, yet are playing such one-dimensional characters – the former the omnipresent mentor, whose sage wisdom guides the protagonists, the latter an over-the-top villain intent on destroying these same characters by any means necessary. The motivations and complexities that were needed for these characters are absent, and they exist merely to push the story forward – this is unfortunate, since both of them are interesting enough from a distance that the entire film could have revolved around their relationship (which was evidently much deeper than the film was willing to explore), but instead they just become secondary plot devices rather than fully-formed characters on their own. This is a problem with the film as a whole, which brings together a fantastic cast but sadly gives them very little to do, a problem that persists throughout and ultimately weighs it down considerably.

There is still some value in Disclosure Day, even if it is narratively quite bland and never really quite knows what it wants to say. Despite its shortcomings, the film is well-directed, which is to be expected when it is helmed by someone who has proven to be arguably the most important populist filmmaker of his generation. When stepping into a Spielberg film, the audience knows to expect something thrilling, at least on a technical level. This film is not an exception, and even when the overall product may be lacklustre, we can acknowledge that there are good elements, whether its a particular sequence (the final act is by far the best in the film, mostly because it has a purpose and point of view, which the rest of the film seems to lack), or a specific moment in which the collision of style and substance actually proves to be effective. Much of this credit has to go to the frequent collaborators who have reunited with the director – Janusz Kamiński is once again director of photography, and while his cinematography may not be to everyone’s taste, it is clear that he is the perfect companion for Spielberg insofar as he works hard to bring his vision to life through creating memorable visual compositions that may not have anything particularly meaningful beneath the surface in terms of narrative, but at least look beautiful and push the film forward enough to distract from the plot-based shortcomings. There is a slight lack of colour, and the film occasionally does look monotone and bland, but this is forgivable considering the story is trying to evoke the bleakness of modern existence, where the cold, clinical government institutions are defining life for many people. There are some gorgeous moments, such as the scene where the protagonists encounter the extraterrestrials for the first time, which is at least enough to make the film worth our time for the most part. Additionally, the score by John Williams, who stepped out of retirement to compose the music for this film, is stunning. We can only hope that the maestro will continue to work as long as he can, but even if the possibility of his retiring after this final collaboration does come to fruition, it would be a wonderful conclusion to his exceptional career. Disclosure Day finds the most value in the technical aspects more than the narrative ones, and while this is disappointing to an extent, it at least proves to be well-constructed enough to hold our attention.

We do have to question whether Disclosure Day can be considered a failure. This is a film that is already proving to be quite divisive, some proclaiming it to be one of Spielberg’s best films and a welcome return to form in terms of the science fiction genre, whereas others (myself included) find it to be a heavy-handed jumble of ideas that is admirable in theory, but utterly frustrating in execution. Unfortunately, Spielberg is heading into his eighth decade, and is working increasingly less, so it’s entirely possible that while it is very unlikely going to be his last film, it is entirely possible that this is his last entry into the science fiction genre, especially in terms o the subject of aliens – and it is profoundly underwhelming when we realise that this is not the full-circle moment between Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the film that essentially established him as a master of the genre, nor the masterful epilogue to his work in science fiction that we felt was inevitable, but instead a slightly tacky footnote that feels like a minor work, the kind of film that he would make a couple of decades ago when he could afford to take these big swings without the risk of it being his last foray into the genre. It’s a film that truly doesn’t do much to convince us that it is anything more than a blend of a dozen ideas for other films, placed together into what proves to be far too ambitious for its own good, never reaching a coherent point other than delivering the same message we see in just about every other recent film about encounters between humanity and beings from other dimensions. Despite some solid performances (which transcend the mediocre writing) and some very strong visual and aural elements that at least make the film seem more enthralling than it is, Disclosure Day is a bitterly disappointing film, struggling to reach a coherent point and simply being lacklustre in some very vital areas. It frankly feels more like a lesser filmmaker tried to do the closest impression of a Spielberg film that they could, with the navel-gazing sentimentality, heavy-handed emotions and over-reliance on suspension of disbelief being one of the many reasons this film falters and becomes so wholeheartedly bland.