Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
A wise man once told me that the job of any great director is to have a constant conversation with the audience. Some filmmakers – Michael Haneke, they say – sit at the top, like a head teacher at a meeting, and read aloud the ways in which we have reduced ourselves and the school. There are others – Lars von Trier and Ari Aster come to mind – whose work comes to a screeching halt, shoving onlookers and then fleeing the scene sniffing out the authorities before they are notified. The work of Steven Spielberg – without a doubt the most amazing work in the history of popular cinema – it relied for a long time on the audience being on the same page, looking wide-eyed and without deception in the light: his great films, from Close Encounters to The Fabelmans, ask for another conversation, a strange back and forth.
So you can understand why Spielberg made such a divisive statement with Revelations, his biggest return to the action movie of the summer: he has as much skin in the game as the rest of us who aren’t trillions. However if the initial box office was strong enough, the secondary figures – a series of disappointed notes for friends and loved ones – may indicate that the film has turned out to be very different. In the US, the market research company CinemaScore – which chooses the viewers of the opening day of the movie to see what the film will do – Broadcast Day B, the joint second worst of Spielberg’s film, ahead of AI: Artificial Intelligence (recipient of a difficult C), the death of Indiana Jones and the Dial of De. Headmaster Haneke shakes his tired head again.
Despite the proximity to aliens, the new film focuses on people: the secrets we keep, the lies we tell. Reveal Day thus ties in well with the themes of several of Spielberg’s mature novels, particularly those of 2015. Bridge of Spies it’s 2017 The Post. To find the source of this interest, you only have to look at Fabelmans investigative film – Spielberg’s 2022 – which showed the effects of a similar trick on his growing house. Screenwriter David Koepp has a presence in the area, too: his spry documentary last year and Steven Soderbergh’s thriller. Black Bag he got rid of the bed spies. Yet the weak point of Disclosure Day is its thin and superficial plot, its cover story of an old and simple editorial.
The setting, admittedly, is solid: Close Encounters, updated over the years. The first contact here is no longer as cooperative as the five-point call and response; as shown by Weathergirl Emily Blunt, stopped speaking in tongues, and the main story mainlining everything on social media (news, several languages, whole century crashlandings and secrets) one fell swoop. Phones are bad and should be thrown away and run. On the reliable list: ordinary people, established religions, local stories (correct script, lots to digest) and – this is Spielberg – the family home. This older viewer sympathizes with all of that, but as a guiding vision, Revelation Day feels more old world than new, more 20th century than 21st. How many X-Files reboots does one development take?
Set Revelations Day against Spielbergian originals, and it’s a staff problem. No one is self-deprecating — and it’s fun to watch Wyatt Russell’s charm, at the center of TV’s Lodge 49, rise up the Imax screen — but Koepp’s characters don’t register or stick in the mind the way Close Encounters’ Roy Neary or ET’s Elliott did. Instead of being real, immortal, flesh-and-blood characters, these are cardboard heroes and villains, moving parts with no depth so they can be very well rounded. Colman Domingo is a good actor, but even he can’t sell us on a character who is a combination of secret critic, stand-in director and part-time manager. In a cardigan. Wasn’t Spielberg supposed to show reality here?
At one point, even Spielberg seems divided. The opening scene is the work of Spielberg’s sharp, well-versed, daring enough to bring the viewer down. in media res and to convince us of the wisdom of the slow explanation; he almost got out of the car and drove away from the farm house in the countryside. Yet Revelations relies on a flatpack reconstruction of an old picture: Domingo’s revelry at Blunt’s childhood home, starring Janusz Kamiński, scored by John Williams. Here, sappy Spielberg takes over, and the film pulls tired muscle memory: the way we used to live, the way Spielberg directed. (Though his VFX game was strong: how could a filmmaker who once believed in dinosaurs have to struggle to create believable wild creatures?)
Summer movies of yesteryear, indulged in popcorn paradise lost, Revelations Day seems dull, if not messed up, on the most important parts. What can any viewer say is the threat from Korea? Or how does a metal doohickey work? Koepp’s writing is consistent with one word – the final declaration of “listen”, which is here as Dr Spielberg’s advice for all our problems. A part of me – the part that grew up with Spielberg’s films, fought with them, made peace with them, admired the best – longed to respond and “hear”. But the closing moments of Disclosure Day are so difficult that they almost sound defensive, a last gasp of “listen to me”: the cries of producers who haven’t quite fulfilled the story they want to tell, desperate to get their audience to be a part of it.
