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DISCLOSURE
Rating: 
USA. 1994.
Director – Barry Levinson, Screenplay – Paul Attanasio, Based on the Novel by Michael Crichton, Producers – Michael Crichton & Barry Levinson, Photography – Anthony Pierce-Roberts, Music – Ennio Morricone, Visual Effects – Industrial Light & Magic (Supervisor – Eric Brevig), CGI Supervisor – Steve Archer, Special Effects Supervisor – Steve Galich, Production Design – Neil Spisak. Production Company – Baltimore Pictures/Constant c.
Cast:
Michael Douglas (Tom Sanders), Demi Moore (Meredith Johnson), Roma Maffia (Catherine Alvarez), Caroline Goodall (Susan Hendler), Donald Sutherland (Bob Garvin), Dylan Baker (Philip Blackburn), Jacqueline Kim (Cindy Chang), Allan Rich (Ben Heller), Nicholas Sadler (Don Cherry), Rosemary Forsyth (Stephanie Kaplan), Suzie Plakson (Mary Anne Hunter), Dennis Miller (Marc Lewyn)
Plot: Tom Sanders, head of the Advanced Products Division at the Seattle branch of the Digicom computer firm, heads to work on the morning that a new merger is to be announced, expectant that he is going to be promoted head of the Seattle branch. Instead he is informed that he has been passed over for the position in favour of Tom’s former lover, Meredith Johnson. That evening Meredith invites Tom up to her office to discuss work and then wants him to have sex. But the married Tom pulls away from her embrace. The next day Tom comes to work to learn that Meredith is contemplating pressing a sexual harassment suit against him. He responds by launching his own suit against her. But he soon finds that all his privileges at Digicom are canceled and that nobody in the firm will help him. But as he starts to dig deeper, he finds that behind the charges are things that Meredith and the firm want to keep covered up.
Michael Crichton emerged as a movelist in the late 1960s. He became a best-selling author and then a film director. Michael Crichton was at a peak in the 1970s with films such as The Andromeda Strain (1971), Westworld (1973), The Terminal Man (1974) and Coma (1978). However interest in Michael Crichton’s brand of techno-phobic alarmism began to falter in the 1980s and he retired as a director in 1989. That was until the mega-success of Jurassic Park (1993), adapted from Crichton’s book. Michael Crichton’s name was suddenly back in vogue all over again and the rights to all of his books instantly snapped up. This adaptation of Crichton’s 1993 novel was made by Barry Levinson, the celebrated director of the likes of Diner (1982), Good Morning Vietnam (1987), Rain Man (1988) and Bugsy (1991). Barry Levinson has also made various other genre films, including Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), the delightful offbeat fairytale Toys (1992) and would later return to Michael Crichton in his adaptation of Sphere (1998) about the discovery of a UFO.
There is a strongly conservative political edge to Michael Crichton’s writing. The book verson of Rising Sun (1991) argues that Japanese business practice is a direct threat to the American ecoonomy in terms that are blatantly racist; while State of Fear (2004) ardently argues that Global Warming is not merely questionable science but an environmentalist conspiracy. This adaptation of Disclosure, which Crichton claims he based on an experience of a friend, comes mired in controversy. A large part of the controversy for Disclosure’s claimed contribution to the male backlash against feminism is the fact that it features a man suing a woman for sexual harassment. (It is significant that the only film to have been made about workplace sexual harassment up until North Country (2005) a decade later is one that paints the female as a predatory aggressor – a situation that in reality is overwhelmingly rare in comparison to the male harassment of women). And secondly Disclosure accrued controversy for its steamy sex scenes – although for once this is steamy sex whose reputation exists more in regard to what is being talked about than what is shown (there is a complete absence of nudity).
One is not entirely sure whereabouts on the political spectrum Disclosure the film sits. It is undeniably part of the male backlash. And if there is any doubt about that then the casting of Michael Douglas, who in films such as Fatal Attraction (1987), Basic Instinct (1992) and Falling Down (1993) has become a poster-boy for the politically incorrect, would. (Both Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct are perhaps the most prominent of the male backlash films). Throughout both the book and film the character of Meredith is painted as sexually aggressive, therefore dangerous. Sexual aggression is about the only motivation she is ever given in the film and her actual motivations in regard to the thriller aspect are kept very murky, rather the film just sees her as all-embracingly evil and sees no need to write her any greater depth than that. Certainly the usually bland Demi Moore gives a performance that in its assertiveness manages to hold all attention when she is on screen, never more so than the scenes in the courtroom where she refuses to apologize for being someone who likes sex aggressively.
However despite the apparent Political Incorrectness of Disclosure, the script actually goes some way to try and redress matters – more so than the arch-conservative Michael Crichton did in the book. The giving of the job to the Stephanie Kaplan character at the end amidst much talk of the best person for the job – a piece added over the book – comes as a hopeful attempt to right matters. Roma Maffia’s lawyer gets an intriguing offhand line about how she met her husband after he asked her out at work, “These days he’d need the UN to negotiate any further.” There is a telling and interesting piece in a scene – invented over the book – where Michael Douglas’s wife Caroline Goodall quietly argues that she has suffered harassment in the workplace too but has learned to ignore it and why should it only be important when it suddenly happens to him. And one particularly good addition is the part where Michael Douglas’s secretary Jacqueline Kim is placed on the stand and her innocently honest comments about his casual touches are brutally hounded and turned around to make it seem that he is a sexually harassing monster.
All the controversy surrounding the issues in the film has tended to obscure what Disclosure is actually about. Once past the steamy sex and the haggling over the issues in the courtroom, Disclosure becomes a quite different type of story altogether – a corporate thriller. If anything Disclosure gives the appearance of the sexual harassment having been designed as a sensationalistic selling angle. Michael Crichton in the book, once past the actual issue, appeared to become completely disinterested in the politics or resolution of the situation. And while the film does cop out on following up the political storm it raises, it does segue into a fairly gratifying thriller. The courtroom sequences maintain an excellent suspenseful edge. And particularly good are the ones in the Virtual Reality net, which hold something genuinely science-fictional and frightening in the image of a blank digitized block with Demi Moore’s head on it advancing to eliminate files. Indeed try as he might Michael Crichton appears unable not to get back to his fascination with technology – even Crichton’s one other non-sf book-become-film, the equally controversial Rising Sun (1993), contains a strong element of experimental cutting edge technology.
Disclosure could be counted as one of the few worthwhile screen adaptations of a book. (These days Michael Crichton tends to write his books as virtual screen treatments). The script nips and tucks a few pieces here and there. What is most missed is some of the motivation – it is not at all clear why the company is backing Meredith as opposed to Sanders and why they continue to back her when she is clearly proven to be in the wrong. All mention of her affair with Garvin from the book has been dropped and as a result the ending doesn’t quite have the upbeat satisfaction it should – Kaplan is appointed the new exec but Garvin’s corruption has not been excised. But on the whole the film tightens the book extremely well, dropping many elements that aren’t needed, such as the sensation-seeking tv journalist. Paul Attanasio’s script actually improves on Michael Crichton in many areas. Crichton’s characters almost entirely tend toward the wooden – Paul Attanasio turns out some wonderfully snappy dialogue that makes the script positively sing.
Michael Crichton’s other films include:- The Andromeda Strain (1971) about an extra-terrestrial virus; the neurosurgical Frankenstein film The Terminal Man (1974); Jurassic Park (1993); Rising Sun (1993), an adaptation of Crichton’s blatantly racist book about Japanese business practice; the lost world film Congo (1995); The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997); Levinson’s underrated Sphere (1998) about the investigation of a crashed UFO; John McTiernan’s The 13th Warrior (1999), an historical epic about the meeting between Vikings and Neanderthals; Richard Donner’s dull adaptation of Crichton’s Timeline (2003) about time travel to Mediaeval France; and the tv mini-series remake of The Andromeda Strain (2008). Michael Crichton’s films as director include:– Westworld (1973) about an android amusement park that goes amok; the medical thriller Coma (1978); The Great Train Robbery (1979) about a Victorian train heist; Looker (1981) about virtual models; Runaway (1984) about a police force to stop amok robots; and the courtroom thriller Physical Evidence (1989). Crichton also created the hit hospital drama ER (1996– ) and wrote the original screenplay for Twister (1996) about tornado chasers.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1995
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