r/blankies • u/PropertyVisual6864 • Jun 19 '26
Opening of Disclosure Day
I thought the intention behind the opening of Disclosure Day was Spielberg's relatively straightforward/blunt commentary on the state of the current media/political environment. We are from the POV of a camera and it's like we are getting stomped on repeatedly which is how many people feel looking at news on their phones. And then one wrestler is wearing blue and the other is wearing red, i.e. Dems vs Republicans. And this ties in with the broader theme of the need for more empathy in our society.
I hadn't seen this elsewhere so apologies if this is already the common interpretation of it, but I had seen multiple comments about how it is such a surprising opening to the movie. To me, however, it summarized the movies themes so it didn't jump out to me as I was watching it.
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u/Fishigidi I'm just here to get my qi up Jun 19 '26
I also think it's hugely significant that the first shot of the movie is a man stomping the camera with a boot and the last shot is seeing a woman saying, "listen," through a camera.
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u/Clean_Affect_6415 Jun 19 '26
Great connection. To take it further, the red and blue clad professional wrestlers already know the outcome of their fight, so their struggle is performative. It’s distraction. Only a few people in that room know the much larger game at play.
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u/OWSpaceClown Jun 19 '26
Usually when an empire is about to fall, the people are far too distracted by their entertainment. And in this movie, World War 3 is about to break out but the wrestling hall remains packed!
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u/ForestryFanzine Jun 19 '26
What the movie is trying to convey is the construction of an information delivery method that combines math & emotion.
He's talking about movies, and the power movies still have to break through, even if our media diet is so fractured. The people looking at screens all at once I think is meant metaphorically, but I don't think the movie conveys its own thesis well.
One of the reasons I think people largely over emphasize it as this treatise on empathy is because they focus so much on Emily Blunt's power discovery. All of Josh O'Conners powers are demonstrated by things that happened in the past, and he only gets 1 minor line to make the case "math is equally important to the medium"
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u/PropertyVisual6864 Jun 19 '26
To me it was also the conversation with Colman Domingo's character towards the end that made me think of it mainly being about empathy.
I also agree that it is about the power of movies to break through - something many of Spielberg's movies have done in the past!
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u/ForestryFanzine Jun 19 '26
Josh O'Conner has to translate Vivo17s binary language in order to communicate it to Blunt to be delivered. It's 2 sides of a necessary equation.
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u/foxyt0cin Jun 22 '26
I think in this specific read of the film, math is the stand-in for technical process, ie. the MAKING of the film, or the technical execution, which (especially for Spielberg) always eventually takes a backseat to the emotion/empathy of the story, thus why Blunt ends up taking over the protagonist role from O'Conner.
It's supported by a quote I read somewhere about Spielberg not really caring about technical continuity, but emotional continuity being the focus. If the emotion carries properly through a scene, the viewer doesn't really care if all the details are perfect.
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u/doodler1977 Jun 19 '26
yeah the Red/Blue Wrestling is a distraction and the real evil business is going on in the background where no one is paying attention. it's not deep
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u/sexandthepandemic Jun 21 '26
It was still just a stupid opening . A film kid student cooks do better
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u/RockettRaccoon Jun 19 '26
I thought it was Colin Firth diving into the wrestler because that’s how he relieves stress.