Disclosure Day

I am enthusiastic about this movie, but you have to preface that wirth this is a Spielberg movie. It is fast paced adventure, so there are a lot of "just go with it" moments. It is a sugary confection that melts under the scrutiny of logic of asking how would such things happen in the real world. It is a fable and thus is carried by fable rules. Like Close Encounters, Spielberg uses aliens to bring mystery, transcendence, and awe to the very human need to connect, have a place in the universe, and to be seen and understood. Disclosure Day gives us a world about to tip over the brink into a nuclear world war three. Casually news and viewers go about their days fullfilling their mundane duties, all the while grappling with the unease of balancing life goes on with it might actually not. People raid grocery stores and still play Candy Crush. Our salvation in Spielberg's fable is empathy. The two leads represent the perfection of intellect and empathy; not warring or being balanced against each other, but being a united expression of our truest nature. Humanity will be saved by being able to understand, an empathy is just a necessary as intellect to true understanding. We are treated to car chases, slapstick cops, montages of stunned crowds "looking up;" but the most powerful part of the movie is Margaret (Emily Blunt)'s new found ability to just understand people. She speaks any language. She knows their lives. She is connected to and deeply understands everyone; and in doing do asks us to all just listen. From Indiana Jones to Disclosure Day; the theme of empathy as one of humanities highest values and most worthwhile endevors repeats across Spielberg. Indiana Jone's superpower is he understands the history and context of all the artifacts and people he meets. Margaret's superpower is she knows everyone and how it feels to be them. In Spielberg's world, the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, or spaceship, is the goal of the movie. The climax is not a scene of alien explosions, but a news caster giving a human reaction to seeing decades of imhumanity towards the inhuman aliens we have been on contact with. She apologizes to the viewers, and in doing to, so us as the movie audience. The point is to tell us that we should feel saddened. We should empathize with the aliens. We should see the alien as human and ourselves in them. The climax of the movie is a spectical and narration intended to invoke the audiences ability to empathize with something that was kept unknowable until that moment; thus creating a feeling of revalation and connection.