Audiences have propelled Spielberg\u2019s alien thriller to the top of the box office. Yet some exiting the cinema appear to believe this sappy extravaganza is not the director\u2019s finest hour<\/p>\n
A sage person once told me every noted director\u2019s career is an ongoing conversation with the audience. Some film-makers \u2013 Michael Haneke, say \u2013 sit on high, like a headteacher at an assembly, and loftily number the ways in which we\u2019ve let ourselves and the school down. There are others \u2013 Lars von Trier and Ari Aster spring to mind \u2013 whose work sidles up uncomfortably close, gooses the viewer and then flees the scene sniggering before the relevant authorities can be alerted. The career of Steven Spielberg \u2013 arguably the most remarkable career in the history of popular cinema \u2013 has long depended on the audience being on the exact same page, looking up wide-eyed and guileless towards the light: his greatest films, from Close Encounters to The Fabelmans, invite further discussion, an awestruck back-and-forth.<\/p>\n
You can therefore understand why Spielberg has broached the subject of social division with Disclosure Day, his much-trumpeted return to the summer event movie: he has almost as much skin in this game as the rest of us non-trillionaires. Yet if early box office has been solid enough, secondary indices \u2013 not least a slew of disappointed foyer texts from friends and loved ones \u2013 would suggest the film has itself proved distinctly polarising. In the US, market research firm CinemaScore \u2013 which polls opening-day cinemagoers to assess a film\u2019s commercial prospects \u2013 graded Disclosure Day a B, the joint second-worst for a Spielberg film, ahead of AI: Artificial Intelligence (recipient of a harsh C), dead level with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Headmaster Haneke again shakes his weary head.<\/p>\n
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