‘Disclaimer’ is Pulpy Suspense With an Arthouse Sheen
Alfonso Cuarón’s gripping "Disclaimer" pits Cate Blanchett against Kevin Kline in a thriller of long-held secrets exposed to light.
Arguably the most pivotal character in Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer doesn’t appear onscreen until episode two: Lesley Manville’s tremendous Nancy Brigstocke, who’s already dead.
By the time Mrs. Brigstocke quietly, though not timidly, enters the picture, chapter one has deftly positioned the series’ two Oscar-toting main combatants. Cate Blanchett enthralls as TV journalist and documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft, described by no less than Christiane Amanpour as “a beacon of truth,” while the newswoman bestows what is presumably not Catherine’s first prestigious prize for excellence in journalism.
Living in a vastly different universe of professional regard, and physical comfort elsewhere in London, Kevin Kline is modest, though not exactly humble, boys’ school professor Stephen Brigstocke. Stephen is Nancy’s widower, a lonely man who seems to have lost his greatest love.
On top of his grief, nakedly portrayed by Kline, Stephen learns of a secret Nancy kept that ignites his mouth-watering quest for revenge against Catherine. Kline renders Stephen’s bitterness with complexity, as Disclaimer, based on Renée Knight’s 2015 novel, weaves Nancy’s secrets, and Catherine’s, and Stephen’s into a juicy all-out battle between Catherine and Stephen. He’s determined to bring her down by dredging up her past.
Written and directed by five-time Oscar-winner Cuarón, the series’ seven chapters maneuver smoothly between the Ravenscrofts — Catherine and her rich nincompoop husband Robert, played to frustrating perfection by Sacha Baron Cohen — and the Brigstockes, Nancy, Stephen, and their 19-year old son Jonathan (Louis Partridge).
Jonathan is also a ghost in this drama, which unfolds like a cliffhanger serial, complete with silent-film fadeouts. It’s pulpy suspense with an arthouse sheen, pristine production design, an awards-heavy cast, and novelistic structure.
Stephen narrates his side of the story in voiceover, while we hear Catherine’s point-of-view elegantly narrated in second-person voiceover by Indira Varma. Varma also voices omniscient narration peering shrewdly into each character, including Catherine and Robert’s surly 25-year-old son Nicholas, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee.
McPhee puts the proper measure of petulance into Nicholas’ scenes with his parents, who have recently pushed him into getting his own place. For Catherine, who feels she’s been a “terrible” mother, her son’s angst over moving out is yet another source of sinking guilt.
Also, reflecting the show’s astute parent-kid dynamics, it’s yet another scenario where Robert blithely allows Catherine to be branded the bad guy. But that’s a light burden of blame compared to the devastating accountability she fears after she receives a package in the mail, a slim paperback novel titled Perfect Stranger. The book comes with a strange disclaimer: Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.
Indeed, Catherine recognizes herself in Perfect Stranger, set 20 years past, depicting her fateful encounter, while on vacation in Italy, with 19-year-old Jonathan Brigstocke, who was traveling alone. Whatever happened between the pair back then, Stephen and Nancy Brigstocke later demand accountability from Catherine in the most punishing terms.
In dramatizing the Brigstockes’ nefarious means, the series still regards them, as well as Catherine and Robert, with a compassion for parents longing to connect with their kids. Their mutual sense of loyalty and responsibility to their sons isn’t misguided, though their methods may be.
Any one of them might also be misinformed, even by their own memory. We are our own most unreliable narrators, the show implies, telling and retelling the stories of our lives with more sentiment than accuracy. Shuttling back and forth in the chronology of events, Disclaimer tests more than one version of the truth.
Giving visual distinction to the crisp, de-saturated sumptuousness of the Ravenscroft’s pad, versus the sun-bleached shores of Italy, and the dour environs of the Brigstocke home, Cuarón assembled the couldn’t-be-more-A-list tag-team of cinematographers Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity) and Bruno Delbonnel (The Tragedy of Macbeth), who traded off on shooting the show’s multiple locations and myriad perspectives.
Finneas O’Connell’s languid score, used sparingly but effectively, adds to the textured sound design. In one witty instant, we hear the sound of someone covering a cockroach with a glass, but from inside the glass, i.e., the perspective of the trapped victim. That’s where Stephen wants Catherine, trapped under glass.
The series stashes its humor in such slight but sharp gestures and not-quite throwaway dialogue, like Catherine mentioning that they’ve recently downsized to this still-enormous London townhouse. Blanchett serves the deadpan humor, and every other layer to the character, beautifully, sharing the storyline with Leila George as young Catherine.
Arguably the other most pivotal part, young Catherine, in her every word and action, is held up to the scrutiny of multiple lenses judging what kind of woman she is, what kind of mother she is, and whether her actions with Jonathan earn the retribution Catherine faces 20 years later.
Catherine’s present-day public humiliation, when it arrives, is depicted a bit clumsily, but Disclaimer nails her panic as she sees her darkest secret being weaponized against her, and her tenacity when she decides to fight back to protect her world from destruction.
New episodes of Disclaimer (★★★★☆) stream every Friday on Apple TV+. Visit www.apple.com/apple-tv-plus.
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