Spielberg’s aliens are back but they are much more human than we think. Disclosure Day was one of the most anticipated films of the year, and those who attended the premiere, at least in Milan, noticed it right away. The turnout was that of great occasions, a concrete demonstration of how Steven Spielberg’s return behind the camera after a four-year absence was expected. After all, when the director returns to confront the mysteries of the cosmos, attention is inevitable.
The film evolves around a question that is as simple as it is powerful, moving beyond the classic question of “Are we alone in the universe?” – which is now taken for granted here – to reach something far more destabilizing: what would happen if someone proved to us that we are not alone? If the ultimate proof were in front of our eyes, what would be our reaction? Curiosity and wonder or fear and disaster?
In this sense Disclosure Day is a thriller that is ideally connected to one of the director’s great artistic obsessions, that for the “great unknowns of the cosmos.” It is an interest rooted in his childhood and his relationship with his father, who introduced him to both science fiction and more rigorous astronomy. It is a fascination that runs through much of his filmography and finds its highest point in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a work that transformed the unknown into a promise of hope.
Nearly fifty years later, Spielberg returns to those same questions with a different look: if Close Encounters imagined contact with the unknown as an opportunity, Disclosure Day focuses on the social, political, and cultural consequences that would result from discovering the truth. The result is a film that seems to function as the ideal conclusion to a journey that began decades ago and that, above all, does not simply ask whether aliens exist, but reflects on the very meaning of knowledge.
Prominent in the cast is an extraordinary Emily Blunt, who delivers an intense and multifaceted Oscar-worthy performance, and who, as she recounted, refused to use artificial intelligence to simulate her own voice in the alien-language sequences. Josh O’Connor confirms all his versatility by trying his hand at a genre in which he had not yet had a chance to fully shine, while Colin Firth is impeccable as the antagonist, believable and disturbing without ever falling into caricature. More eccentric but surprisingly effective is Colman Domingo, who builds a character who manages to immediately win the trust of the other protagonists and at the same time of the viewer.
But the real strength of Disclosure Day lies in its ultimate message. In a world beset by increasingly troubling geopolitical tensions, by a constant debate between secrecy and transparency, democracy and authoritarianism, science and faith, the director imagines an event so extraordinary that it forces us all to pause at the same instant, during the same globally disseminated announcement.
Not because aliens are the theme of the film, but because they are the pretext for talking about us. About our inability to listen to ourselves, the speed with which we choose sides, and the increasing difficulty of recognizing what is true from what is false. Disclosure Day hypothesizes that only something immensely greater than our divisions can push us to look at ourselves again as a community and not as opposing factions, reminding us that horror does not necessarily come from what is different and unknown, but is often already before our eyes: we see it every day in conflict, in inequality, and indifference to the suffering of others. The real question, then, is not whether we are ready to meet aliens, but whether we are still able to recognize humanity in other human beings. This is the real Disclosure Day.
[📸 © Universal Studios]
