58/100
Gonna bullet-point this one as I have numerous scattered thoughts that won't coalesce coherently into a paragraph or two. MASSIVE SPOILERS.
• I do not believe that Earth has ever been visited by extraterrestrial intelligence, and strongly suspect that the laws of physics as we correctly understand them make that all but impossible. Still, it's orders of magnitude more plausible to me than some non-governmental agency successfully keeping eight decades' worth of spectacular spaceship crashes and recovered live aliens and Clarke-magic technology a secret, until finally just this year a courageous band of morally upright rebels within the system form a plan to leak it all. Bad form to reject a sci-fi movie's entire premise, but I can't pretend that the absurdity didn't impede my enjoyment (especially relative to CE3K's totally credible level of hush-hush). Rolled with it in The X Files because serialized TV trades in nonsense almost by definition (Rockford gets hired to find a murderer every week?!), but movies are different.
• Emotional climax skews a tad Communion-y for my taste, though I suppose that's a by-product of treating our collective cultural understanding of Greys as if it's always been based on reality. At the risk of getting too Everything Wrong With, though, I have many practical questions about Disclosure Day's entire scenario, and these seem to me typical of Koepp's longstanding logical sloppiness. It's unclear to me, for example, why the aliens chose to divvy up their gifts between two people, so that Kellner can understand their language while Fairchild can speak it without understanding it (plus has the ability to read minds and warp perception), except insofar as this echoes Spielberg's adorably childlike stratification of his own parents as The Intellect and The Empath. But let's say it's akin to giving two people the nuclear-launch keys and requiring that they turn them simultaneously from a distance that no one person could possibly reach, something of that nature. How does Fairchild speaking Alien Click on TV advance any alien goal, given that Kellner hears it as the simple English phrase "Don't be afraid of what you don't know" (or words to that effect)? Doesn't help bring them together, really—that's mostly effected via Fairchild seeing visions of Kellner, psychically receiving his name. Do they wait until she lands an on-camera media job to activate her? Did they know that little girl would one day pursue TV journalism, or implant a nudge in that direction? Isn't this all kind of irrelevant to Disclosure Day's actual disclosure (which is almost 100% Kellner-enabled)? I can huff and puff and rationalize much of the above, and accept the rest as thematically pertinent even if it makes little narrative sense, but it's very messy.
• Speaking of messiness, why is there a crop circle in this movie? That seems, forgive me, trailer-made for this film. ("If you loved Signs…")
• Total coincidence that I happened to rewatch Antitrust a week before seeing this—would never have remembered otherwise—but those two films have virtually the exact same ending, and I don't find "Everyone in America (or on Earth) simultaneously absorbs the news that they've been lied to as it's broadcast on every screen in every location" much less silly just because we all now have such a screen in our pocket at all times. Doesn't help that Spielberg inexplicably entrusted the Cronkite magnitude of this moment to an unknown actor who simply doesn't have the chops for it. In any case, the movie hasn't done its job if you're not wrecked by witnessing that Montage Of Heck, and I'm afraid it left me cold, sorry Lee Walker.
• What I loved loved loved was Scanlon diving into Jane, every single aspect of which gets superlatively handled by both Koepp and Spielberg. Thing is, while that process involves alien tech, it didn't need to. Could've been the basis for a thriller about some sinister device invented on Earth—hero steals it to prevent its abuse, baddie employs it to find him by tapping into his girlfriend. That whole early part of the movie winds up feeling detached from where we ultimately land, which was disappointing since I found it far more compelling than anything irretrievably alien-related. Also, getting repeatedly mind-raped blessedly gives Jane a function other than the risible Character Whose Implausible Backstory Facilitates Weighty Theological Discussion. Think I preferred Hewson's half-possessed performance to Blunt's celebrated spooky intensity, though part of that's just how radically different Hewson looks with brown eyes. (Firth is much more recognizably himself with blue eyes.) Anyway, Best Scene shortlist.
• Train setpiece also pretty great, and looked heavily practical to my eye (to the point where I wonder what got digitally removed from certain shots of Blunt and O'Connor on the car's hood; I assume that wasn't Cruise-level insanity on their part).
• I continue to find Josh O'Connor mostly underwhelming, Challengers excepted. Kellner never develops a distinct personality; I feel like you could plug just about anyone into that role and nothing of note would change. Which sure wasn't true of Richard Dreyfuss. (To be fair, that arguably just reflects the difference between a character who's obsessively, madly driven and a character who's just sort of reacting to events as they happen.)
• Love me some Colman Domingo but literally nothing about Hugo appealed to me, apart from that one fantastic shot of his face on a monitor that swings into frame reflected as a door closes during a related expository conversation (which I see Theo likewise appreciated). There's a whole lotta touchy-feeliness here (including Fairchild's various psychic manipulations, which are extremely therapy-coded in their conviction that anyone can be disarmed by hearing one specific person speak the words they've always longed to hear) and Hugo's the moist linchpin of that element.
• What else, what else? Oh, this makes two recent movies, Sirāt being the other, that had me thinking, well over an hour in, "Wait, is like World War III supposed to be happening right now?" Filmmakers could be making such a momentous backdrop to the action slightly less vague in my opinion. The convenience store melee had me quite bewildered, as I initially assumed they were freaked out by Fairchild's clicking having gone viral, which didn't make much sense since she was right there among them and no one noticed or cared. Most likely I spaced out during some early world-on-the-brink exposition; Spielberg generally errs on the side of being overly explicit, so I find it unlikely that he went ultra-subtle all of a sudden. (In my defense, WWIII may be imminent and there's still a sell-out crowd for a wrestling match? Odd choice for the opening location, in retrospect.)
• Would be funny if Fairchild breathlessly instructed the whole word to "Listen:" and then the aliens did a Rickroll.