Okay (space) Boomer

Spielberg's alien anachronisms

Spoiler alert: there are some. Still, “Disclosure Day” itself rather gives the game away.

Everyone told me I’d hate Disclosure Day. Correction, m’learned friends Zoe Williams and Harry Mount told me I’d hate Disclosure Day. And these are individuals whose tastes I share. Also – my own disclosure - I hate most films. Never has an art form been so bloated with money and lacking in brain.

Still, sometimes you just want to see a capital m Movie: the movie, that big budget, culture-defining thing that’s happening for a lot of viewers at one and the same time, and somehow makes you clearer on what a great glut of people think. A date, an event, a surround-sound experience to take you out of your own head, even if the place it puts you is bollocks. You yearn to be immersed in big-picture action, even where said action is a good-versus evil pantomime.

I prepped by watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which I knew merely as pilots wandering in from the light, together with its celebrated five-note sequence, reminiscent of that early Eighties memory gadget, Simon.

And the verdict? I didn’t hate it. The acting was sterling: Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr - François mofoin’ Truffaut! I was charmed by the reaction shots, and that the heroine was a single mother back when culture stereotyped such women as floozies. As for the dark state senselessly controlling something benevolent, well, sure. It’s about libtards loving foreigners – acknowledging the fear factor, but rolling with the wonder – and, as a libtard, I’m down with that.

I did not, however, finally watch ET: the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), as honestly, I just can’t. I’ve seen enough of it to know that’s not possible. Terence tells me I’m missing a trick. But, then, Terence is more traditional in his emotions. He admires, rather than fears, family dynamics; is good with sentimentality; has some truck with the fetishisation of childhood. He did not grow up avoiding Superman (1978), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), or whatever other Big Thing was going on because he knew his role was to be an arsy, proto-teen, forever setting herself up in opposition to the prevailing mood.

Which brings us to Disclosure Day. Doubtless, my friends’ warnings served as expectation management; ditto my desire for mass-market high jinks. Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor are talented, likeable performers, who more than deliver on the safe pair of hands front. Colman Domingo provides similar good vibes, giving great (tweedy, academic) super brain. While Colin Firth presents as not too bad a baddie, even while mind melting former God botherer Eve Hewson.

Spielberg’s attempt to convince humanity that aliens exist is his life’s work, whether he wants it to be or not.