DISCLAIMER Review: A Rare Misstep From Alfonso Cuarón
Alfonso Cuarón's Apple TV+ series stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kodi Smit-McPhee.
There were reasons to be surprised and disappointed when Alfonso Cuarón announced in 2021 that his next project was a television series for Apple.
After all, his last two films, Gravity (2013) and Roma (2018) amassed 20 Oscar nominations, won 10, and bagged Cuarón back-to-back Best Director wins. Gravity was also a global theatrical blockbuster. Cuarón was at the zenith of his asking price and could command any budget for any project he wanted to make.
An 'airport novel' mystery box series was the last thing on anyone's bingo card. Still, deference was due to such a prodigiously accomplished artist; his filmography includes Y Tu Mamá También and Children Of Men. Alas, that confidence was misplaced, as Disclaimer is calamitously terrible, entirely beneath him and a shocking waste of the numerous A-listers who joined Cuarón on this doomed endeavor.
Disclaimer centers on successful documentary filmmaker Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett). Twenty years ago, she supposedly had cheated on her husband by having a holiday fling with 19-year-old Jonathan Brigstocke (Louis Partridge) in Italy.
Subsequently, Jonathan drowned trying to save Catherine's then 5-year-old son Nicholas. Jonathan's parents, Stephen and Nancy (Kevin Kline and Lesley Manville), were devastated, and Nancy died of heartbreak, but not before writing a docu-novel about the 'evil' woman who seduced her son and caused his death.
In the present day, Stephen publishes the novel and sends it to Catherine, who is naturally alarmed. Stephen, driven by revenge, also sends it to Catherine's husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and now 25-year-old Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the same kid Jonathan had saved 20 years ago. Melodramatic consequences ensue.
On this precariously thin premise, Cuarón expends seven hours (more like 5.5, accounting for episode lengths, recaps and credits), a massive budget, and his considerable filmmaking acumen. Indeed, treating such a vacant, lurid story with such elevation brings its defects into sharper relief. It is like grooming a horse with a fine-tooth combl the instruments deployed are out of touch with the material. Cuarón, perhaps conscious of his station as an esteemed filmmaker, employs several tricks that make Disclaimer even more frustrating and distracting.
Disclaimer is segregated into three narratives: one following Catherine and her family, one tracking Kline's Stephen and the third dramatizing Jonathan's adventures in Italy as recounted in Nancy's novel. Cuarón also uses three different voiceovers: first-person for Kline, an omniscient third-person for Baron Cohen and Smit-McPhee, and an unprecedented and baffling second-person for Blanchett.
There is a reason that second-person narration is relegated to avant-garde fiction and juvenile choose-your-own-adventure Goosebumps-like series: it almost always alienates readers and viewers. Much of the narration is also delivered in a mannered, academic style by Indira Verma and is overly didactic and expository.
Several time shifts are also deployed within the individual narrative strands to make a whole soup of a fundamentally banal story. The twist, when it does come — and you can be sure it does because that is why these trashy beach reads exist — is in bad taste, offensively reductive, and the most tired, disingenuous trope you can fling at viewers to manipulate them.
Its contrivance is only bested by its predictability. Ever seen those viral listicles that proclaim '10 movies or shows that wouldn't happen if two characters had a conversation'? Disclaimer would handily claim the top spot. If Blanchett's and Baron Cohen's characters had a five-minute conversation, the entire series wouldn't happen.
The material is so comically protracted and stretched thin that it generates not suspense but impatience. Many, if not all, of the defects in Disclaimer originate in Renée Knight's novel, but Cuarón equally deserves blame for adapting it as faithfully and at this length. There is no reason Disclaimer couldn't be a two-hour film.
The actors try their best but struggle with the inadequate material. As the grieving, vengeful father, Kline is reduced to an unhinged kook, while Baron Cohen is forced to play a stridently dim-witted character. Blanchett can scarcely access her uncanny ability to illuminate characters from within, as Catherine is forced to be opaque and closed off to maintain the twist.
The younger Catherine during the Italian vacation 'flashbacks' is played not by Blanchett but by Leila George, presumably due to the nudity and sex required. Louis Partridge is a handsome presence, though he seems overly diffident during scenes with Leila George; after all, Jonathan is already shown to be sexually active and attractive to women. The much-discussed sex and nudity are rather on the tame side, a far cry from the freedom and exuberance of Y Tu Mamá También. Cuarón seems to have lost not only his filmmaking aptitude but also his edge.
The parade of A-listers continues behind the camera, with star DPs Bruno Delbonnel and Emmanuel Lubezki providing the cinematography. The scenes set in Italy are undeniably visually appealing; the beach scenes especially have spectacular photography.
The production design is also on point, with several handsomely appointed environments. The try-hard score is credited to the monumentally talented songwriter and producer Finneas O'Connell, Academy Award winner and brother of Billie Eilish, as he is beginning to dabble in scoring movies and TV shows.
Disclaimer doesn't quite sully Alfonso Cuarón's great name but is an uncharacteristic misstep. We can hopefully sweep it under the rug by the time his next great project arrives.
The first five episodes are now streaming on Apple TV+. The next episode will premiere Friday, November 1, followed by the concluding episode on Friday, November 8.
Disclaimer
Writer(s)
- Alfonso Cuarón
Cast
- Cate Blanchett
- Kevin Kline
- Sacha Baron Cohen
Do you feel this content is inappropriate or infringes upon your rights? Click here to report it, or see our DMCA policy.
