THE STORY – An unprecedented and revelatory documentary –featuring 34 senior members of the U.S. Government, military, and intelligence community– that reveals an 80-year cover-up of the existence of non-human intelligent life and a secret war amongst major nations to reverse engineer technology of non-human origin. The film exposes the profound impact the situation has on the future of humanity, while providing a look behind-the-scenes with those at the forefront of the bi-partisan disclosure effort. The timely film comes on the heels of historic bi-partisan Congressional hearings on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP, aka UFOs) and Senate proposed legislation for disclosure.
THE CAST – Lue Elizondo, Jay Stratton, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senator Rounds, Senator Gillibrand, General Jim Clapper, Dr. Eric Davis, Dr. Hal Puthoff, Christopher Mellon & Representative Carson
THE TEAM – Dan Farah (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 109 Minutes
There’s a famous line from the TV series “The X-Files” in which Agent Scully tells her partner Mulder, “The truth is out there, but so are lies.” That reminder could be one of the driving forces behind producer/director Dan Farah’s new documentary “The Age of Disclosure.” The goal is which is to get at the truth in a serious examination of the existence of UFOs — or, as they are now called, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
“The Age of Disclosure” is designed to be something more than your typical UFO doc. Gone are the hysterical “eyewitnesses” who’d swear on a stack of Bibles that they saw a flying saucer in their backyard. Farah instead has brought in 34 senior members across the U.S. government, from the military to intelligence services, who go on camera to attest they have firsthand knowledge of the existence of UAPs and are willing to tell everything they know, or at least what they can lawfully discuss.
Farah stays true to his word to keep his doc fact-based, at least in the film’s first half, which centers on the two recent Congressional hearings on the subject in which elected officials in both parties agree that, based on classified material, more needs to be investigated, particularly when something unknown is operating in our own restricted airspaces. Farah even enlists the aid of several big-name officials — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Lt. General James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence — who all agree that UAPs could constitute a threat to national security.
From there, the bulk of the film’s testimony comes from U.S. Government officials, many of whom cite classified briefings as the source of their confidence that UAPs are real and that they utilize technologies far beyond current human capability. Primary among the advocates is Lue Elizondo, a former Defense Dept. official who has spent the last 20 years investigating what the U.S. Government has learned about UAPs so that he can pass along whatever is unclassified to the public.
Farah stages many of Elizondo’s scenes, almost like a college lecture with a blackboard and bullet points, which are backed up by a series of demonstrable facts. To Elizondo, the fact that we’re not alone in the universe is a given. From there, he asserts that technology of a non-human origin has been recovered, and other nations are racing to reverse-engineer that technology to gain a geopolitical advantage. The only reason, he argues, is that this information that is not released to the public is that it could be put in the hands of bad actors in Russia or China and used against us.
Because of the sheer amount of evidence that remains classified, the only visual proof is a bit of a letdown — clips of a UAP pausing in mid-air and suddenly zigzagging in the sky, as well as images of the 2004 “Tic Tac” incident in which Naval aviators spotted an oval-shaped object in the sky. Proof to a degree, but they are images that are already familiar to anyone exploring the subject on the internet.
Instead, what Farah is left with are his experts talking about the importance of further study into UAPs because of what many have seen in the classified material. Their arguments appear to be sincere, and I thoroughly believe that they believe what they said they saw. It’s designed to start a conversation, but it’s not proof (It doesn’t help that many of the talking heads speak in such a monotone — except for the lively Elizando — that their testimony begins to blur together and lose its impact the more the film goes on).
Worse, in several cases, when asked about the impact that revealing this information to the public would have, the responses ratchet up the hyperbole, with such phraseology as “This is similar to the Manhattan Project. This is the atomic weapon on steroids” and “This is the biggest discovery in human history.” Even the normally level-headed Elizondo is not immune, asserting, “You have information being locked away that can change the history of [our] species.”
With such extreme warnings, any viewer would ask, “OK, what is this information?” Unfortunately, the only practical answer, “We can’t tell you, it’s classified,” doesn’t really cut it. The implied message that the film’s experts suggest is simply “It’s big. Trust us,” which brings the film distressingly close to the pronouncements of many of the cheesier UFO docs. At its most speculative point, “The Age of Disclosure” comes off as “Unsolved Mysteries” dressed up in a suit and tie.
It’s a shame because clearly Farah, who has acknowledged that he grew up watching Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” and “Close Encounters” (and went on to produce the director’s “Ready Player One“), sincerely hopes this film will start a conversation or perhaps even a movement for the U.S. Government to follow through with action after last year’s Congressional hearings. That “The Age of Disclosure” falls short of being the magic key that will open those doors shouldn’t stop others from trying. The film is right in one respect: the truth is still out there.
