Review: Disclosure Day is big on action, light on ideas
Review: Disclosure Day is big on action, light on ideas
影评：《披露日》：动作场面宏大，思想深度欠缺
The summer blockbuster season has kicked off in earnest with the theatrical release of Disclosure Day, director Steven Spielberg’s highly anticipated return to his “aliens are among us” sci-fi roots. Verdict: there’s not much fresh or original here as movies about aliens go, but it’s a fast-paced film with a luminous performance by Emily Blunt that won’t fail to entertain. (Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)
随着《披露日》（Disclosure Day）的院线上映，暑期大片季正式拉开帷幕。这是导演史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格备受期待的作品，标志着他回归了“外星人就在我们身边”这一科幻题材的本源。结论是：就外星人题材电影而言，本片并没有太多新意或原创之处，但它节奏明快，艾米莉·布朗特（Emily Blunt）的表演光彩照人，绝对值得一看。（下文包含部分剧透，但无重大情节泄露。）
The first half of the film is essentially a political thriller—shades of 1974’s The Parallax View and similar films—as global tensions have the world teetering on the brink of World War III. A cybersecurity specialist named Daniel (Josh O’Connor) has stolen a piece of alien technology and highly classified files from his employer, Wardex Corporation, a top-secret extension of the US government led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). Scanlon flushes out Daniel by holding his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) hostage. At the tradeoff, Daniel double-crosses them and escapes with Jane, and the two go on the run as Scanlon declares Daniel a traitor.
电影前半部分本质上是一部政治惊悚片——带有1974年电影《视差》（The Parallax View）及同类影片的影子——全球局势紧张，世界正处于第三次世界大战的边缘。一名叫丹尼尔（乔什·奥康纳饰）的网络安全专家从雇主Wardex公司窃取了一件外星科技产品和高度机密文件。Wardex是美国政府的一个绝密分支机构，由诺亚·斯坎伦（科林·费尔斯饰）领导。斯坎伦以丹尼尔的女友简（伊芙·休森饰）为人质，逼迫丹尼尔现身。在交换过程中，丹尼尔反将一军，带着简逃脱，随后两人开始逃亡，而斯坎伦则宣布丹尼尔为叛国者。
Meanwhile, Kansas City TV meteorologist Margaret (Emily Blunt) is having breakfast with her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) when a cardinal flies through the window and locks eyes with her before flying away. Margaret resumes her conversation with Jackson, only in Russian—a language she has never learned. On the way to work, she finds she can read the thoughts and feeling of other people, and converse in their native languages. And then—in a pivotal moment featured in all the trailers—Margaret starts her live weather report, only to lapse into an alien language on air. That moment immediately goes viral.
与此同时，堪萨斯城的电视气象预报员玛格丽特（艾米莉·布朗特饰）正与男友杰克逊（怀亚特·拉塞尔饰）吃早餐，一只红雀飞进窗户，与她对视后飞走。玛格丽特继续与杰克逊交谈，却发现自己说的是俄语——一种她从未学过的语言。在上班路上，她发现自己能读懂他人的思想和感受，并能用他们的母语交流。随后——在所有预告片中都出现的关键时刻——玛格丽特在直播天气预报时，突然切换成了一种外星语言。这一瞬间立即在网上疯传。
This brings her to Scanlon’s attention, as well as that of Scanlon’s Wardex colleague Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo). Hugo is the one pulling the strings behind the scenes to arrange for Daniel’s theft of the top secret materials. His goal: reveal their contents—detailing human-alien encounters over the last 80 years—to the world. Scanlon is equally intent on stopping the truth from ever getting out, and it becomes a high-stakes race against time as Daniel and Margaret try to evade his minions and find each other.
这引起了斯坎伦以及他Wardex同事雨果·韦克菲尔德（科尔曼·多明戈饰）的注意。雨果是幕后操盘手，安排了丹尼尔窃取绝密材料。他的目标是：向世界揭露这些材料的内容——详细记录了过去80年人类与外星人的接触史。斯坎伦则一心想阻止真相外泄，随着丹尼尔和玛格丽特试图躲避他的爪牙并寻找对方，一场高风险的生死时速就此展开。
A vibe shift
氛围的转变
I won’t say much about the final 30 minutes or so, because it would be giving too much away (although the final trailer gave some pretty strong hints). Suffice to say there is a pronounced vibe shift toward the mystical as the plot threads converge. In Spielberg’s capable hands, it works, although some have criticized the CGI, particularly for the animals. Given what those animals turn out to represent, I think it was the right decision to make them look otherworldly, as if they were stepping out of a fairy tale into our darker, grittier world.
关于最后30分钟左右的剧情，我不会透露太多，因为这会剧透（尽管最终预告片已经给出了相当明显的暗示）。只需说，随着情节线索的汇聚，影片的氛围明显转向了神秘主义。在斯皮尔伯格的掌控下，这种处理是有效的，尽管有些人批评了其中的CGI特效，尤其是动物的部分。考虑到这些动物最终所代表的含义，我认为让它们看起来超凡脱俗是正确的决定，仿佛它们是从童话故事中走出来，进入了我们这个更黑暗、更残酷的世界。
Spielberg has assembled an excellent cast, but it’s Blunt who anchors the film. Her performance has been garnering critical raves and the kudos are well-deserved. Blunt is an accomplished and versatile actress and she brings all that experience to bear to portray Margaret, as the character discovers the full range of her abilities—and accesses some long-dormant childhood memories in the process. Blunt even used her vocal training as an actor to produce the alien language guttural clicks and pops in a single four-minute take, refusing to let the filmmakers rely on AI-based post-processing to do so.
斯皮尔伯格组建了一支优秀的演员阵容，但布朗特才是整部电影的灵魂。她的表演赢得了影评人的高度赞誉，这些赞美实至名归。布朗特是一位成就卓著且戏路宽广的演员，她运用自己所有的经验来塑造玛格丽特，展现了角色发现自身全部潜能的过程，并在此过程中触及了一些尘封已久的童年记忆。布朗特甚至利用她作为演员的声乐训练，在一次四分钟的拍摄中一气呵成地完成了外星语言中那些喉音的点击声和爆破音，拒绝让制作方依赖基于人工智能的后期处理。
This is a nearly two-and-a-half-hour film but Spielberg’s expert pacing keeps it from feeling overlong. With a few notable exceptions, the plot mostly makes sense and it all works best when the film is in full thriller mode. But the underlying themes and ideas aren’t particularly deep, and the big final reveal is decidedly underwhelming. There is nothing here we haven’t seen a million times before; we’ve seen it from Spielberg himself, in fact.
这是一部时长近两个半小时的电影，但斯皮尔伯格精湛的节奏把控使其并不显得冗长。除了少数几个明显的漏洞外，剧情大体上逻辑自洽，且在电影处于纯粹的惊悚模式时效果最好。但其潜在的主题和思想并不深刻，最后的重大揭秘也确实令人失望。这里没有任何我们没见过无数次的东西；事实上，我们甚至在斯皮尔伯格自己的作品中就见过。
Honestly, it’s not clear why Spielberg wanted to make another alien movie when he already made two of the most seminal films in the genre: Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. Spielberg has credited a 2017 New York Times feature on the Pentagon’s UFO program for re-igniting his interest and declared himself even more convinced that intelligent alien life exists somewhere in our vast universe. Fair enough; plenty of scientists would agree it’s possible. But it doesn’t seem like he has anything new to say about it.
老实说，我不明白为什么斯皮尔伯格在已经拍出《第三类接触》和《E.T.外星人》这两部该类型最具开创性的电影后，还要再拍一部外星人电影。斯皮尔伯格曾表示，2017年《纽约时报》关于五角大楼UFO计划的专题报道重新点燃了他的兴趣，并宣称他更加确信在广袤的宇宙中存在智慧外星生命。这没问题；许多科学家也会同意这种可能性。但他似乎并没有什么新的见解。
Disclosure Day is closer in tone to Close Encounters, a fine film in its own right. But E.T. is arguably a perfect film, which is why it’s stood the test of time. How can you improve on perfection? The short answer is you can’t, and Disclosure Day doesn’t. But it’s still an eminently watchable, impeccably crafted film from one of our greatest directors.
《披露日》的基调更接近《第三类接触》，那本身就是一部佳作。但《E.T.外星人》可以说是一部完美的电影，这也是它经受住时间考验的原因。你如何超越完美？简短的回答是：你做不到，《披露日》也没做到。但它仍然是一部由我们最伟大的导演之一精心制作、非常值得一看的电影。