Cate Blanchett’s Apple thriller fails
No one films the ocean as a proxy for emotional extremes like Alfonso Cuarón. In films like “Children of Men,” “Gravity” and “Roma,” the Mexican director – often working with Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki – turns swirling waves into a metaphor for everything from rebirth to safety to cathartic rebirth. In this regard, the new Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer,” which Cuarón wrote and directed in its entirety, is a perfect fit for the author of “Y tu mamá también.” “Disclaimer” features competing stories surrounding the fatal drowning of a young man on an Italian beach, and you can bet that lira there are numerous and lengthy scenes built around the rhythmic pouring of water.
But Cuarón is a much less intuitive fit with other aspects of “Disclaimer,” which he adapted from Renée Knight’s 2015 novel of the same name. “Disclaimer” is, at its core, a chatty, interpersonal drama about grief, self-deception and storytelling, a genre that doesn’t play to the strengths of a filmmaker who tends to package intimacy in epic spectacle. (Even “Roma,” a memoir about his own upbringing in Mexico City, contained elements like a massive student uprising.) “Disclaimer” itself also doesn’t sit well with this new medium. The series isn’t the first book-to-TV project to cling to devices like outrageous storytelling that are best left on the page, nor is it the only show helmed by major cinematic talent, like stars Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, which you wrestle with. episodic pace and structure. “Disclaimer” starts as a strange, confusing watch and ends with a twist that has been undermined by the seven hours that precede it.
After her triumphant turn as Phyllis Schlafly in “Mrs. America,” Blanchett returns to television for “Disclaimer” as Catherine Ravenscroft, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker who is suddenly confronted with an incident from her past. Catherine’s actual work is ignored by the show in favor of its symbolic meaning: she has dedicated her life to uncovering the truth, but when a self-published novel called ‘The Perfect Stranger’ lands on her doorstep, its contents imply of the book that her prosperous existence may well be the case. are built on a lie. The titular disclaimer declares that any resemblance to persons is living or dead not a coincidence.
We learn that the publication ‘The Perfect Stranger’ is the work of Stephen Brigstocke (Kline, shockingly convincing as a Brit), who embarks on an extensive quest for revenge after leaving his job as a teacher and his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville). lost. to cancer. It was Stephen and Nancy’s son Jonathan (Louis Partridge) who died all those years ago during his gap year in Italy, and “Disclaimer” alternates between Stephen’s pursuit of Catherine and flashbacks that seem to explain why he blames her for Jonathan’s fate.
Lubezki, an executive producer who shares DP duties with Bruno Delbonnel, imbues these scenes with a golden hour glow that illustrates Jonathan’s infatuation with a younger Catherine (Leila George), on vacation with her five-year-old son. In the present, Stephen sends compromising photos of Catherine to her posh husband Rob (Sacha Baron Cohen, pleasantly pathetic as a cuckold), who falls into a downward spiral of sexual insecurity and catfishes her now adult son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee). , a slacker who lives in a squalid shared apartment and works in an appliance store. Smit-McPhee, so compelling in “The Power of the Dog,” is lost as a burnout whose degeneration is lazily signaled by his love of hip-hop.
Whether or not Stephen’s master plan is ultimately just, there should be a little more nasty fun in watching him abandon Catherine so completely. With his bushy eyebrows and Nancy’s favorite pink cardigan, Kline seems to give a more comedic performance than Cuarón agreed to in the montage, practically rubbing his hands together as he played the doddering old man to his ignorant points. Instead, Cuarón roots the show in Catherine’s long-term breakdown. The roving camera appears to chase Blanchett through her character’s London mansion and hip industrial office space, both impeccably rendered in contrast to Stephen’s shoddy terraced house by production designer Neil Lamont and set designer Pancho Chamorro.
Unfortunately, Blanchett is operating in a mode she has already perfected elsewhere. While another wealthy woman got her comeuppance, she won an Academy Award for “Blue Jasmine”; as a celebrated figure staring down the barrel of cancellation, she gave the performance of a lifetime in “Tár.” But like Catherine, she is doubly handicapped. First, Cuarón insists on using an extended, second-person narration – “Your misguided belief that you had the right to remain silent has condemned you” – by Indira Varma. (At least Stephen is allowed to express his own thoughts, though neither audio track is particularly additive.) Second, Catherine’s side of the story is strategically withheld until the final minute, a decision that fails to generate tension and yet takes its toll of the character. .
By the time Catherine tellingly proclaims, “It’s time for my voice to be heard!” do not represent objective truth. But “Disclaimer” delays the reveal until long after the tension has given way to aimless dread. The momentum of both Stephen’s pursuit and Catherine’s need to defend herself fades in a way that might not be possible in a compact feature film. If you’re tired of reading those criticisms of prestige miniseries, imagine how tired critics like me are of making them!
What “Disclaimer” builds upon, and what these shortcomings fatally undermine, is a failed attempt at feminist commentary. When “The Perfect Stranger” becomes popular, a bookseller describes the Catherine surrogate as “this terrible feminine character.” Like “Fleishman Is In Trouble,” another adaptation that struggled to translate its incisive perspective to television, “Disclaimer” couldn’t find a more artful way to advance its metafictional argument about women’s darkened viewpoints.
There is a surreal, Kafkaesque cast that shows how Catherine’s world turns completely against her and that ‘Disclaimer’ does not encompass enough to turn into pure allegory. The show just seems incredible, both in the behavior of its characters and, tragically, the real-life prejudices it tries to highlight. Cuarón creates a number of indelible images, but is unable to transform ‘Disclaimer’ into a functional vessel for his own story.
The first two episodes of “Disclaimer” are now available to stream on Apple TV+, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Fridays.
