“Beware of narrative and form. Their power can bring us closer to the truth, but they can also be a weapon with a great power to manipulate.” These words are spoken early inDisclaimer’s first episode, when journalist and documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) is being presented with an award for having “cut through narratives and form that distract us from hidden truths.” They presage the way Catherine’s life is about to be dramatically upended, but the warning is also sincere. Writer-director Alfonso Cuarón is telling us to beware of how this story is told.
Cast
I suggest you think of that warning more as a recommendation –this show is best suited to wary viewers.Disclaimeris a seven-episode exploration of the power narrative has to manipulate us, and how that manifests in cinematic storytelling, through the vehicle of a slow-burn thriller. If we’re active enough participants, it also explores (as that same award speech goes on to reference)ourrole in that manipulation, and as someone who likes to think my way through things, I consider this its greatest virtue.
But it’s also just a damn good story, which Cuarón unfurls with skill. To keep that story intact, I’ll have to dance around its details, but thehowof it all is my chief interest.
Disclaimer’s Multi-Pronged Storytelling Is Its Great Experiment
Voiceover Narration Is More Than Just A Device
Disclaimerhas a very distinct shape, designed with Catherine as the enigma at its center. On the night of the awards show, she receives a book in the mail calledThe Perfect Stranger,sent anonymously. It bears the ominous disclaimer that gives the show its title: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.” She reads it. Shaken, claiming it’s about her, she sets it aflame in her kitchen sink.
Though everything leads back to her,Catherine’s story is just one strand among many.Hers is accompanied by an anonymous voiceover (Indira Varma) who narrates in the second person as if dictating Catherine’s own truth to her. We spend some time with Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen), Catherine’s husband, and Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee), their son, who have roles to play in whatever conspiracy has targeted Blanchett’s protagonist. The same voiceover narrates them in the third person.
Narration in cinema is a particularly fraught concept. A film or TV show with no voiceover still relates its story to us, and always with perspective.
We also meet Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline) on the day he retires from teaching at an elite private school. He is a widower, his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) having died nine years before. Their final years together were poisoned by the death of their son, Jonathan (Louis Partridge), at 19, many years ago. The pain of his grief is still fresh, perhaps from having been tucked away beneath a certain kind of decorum that Stephen was only now letting fall.
Buried with that grief, he discovers rage. We understand he blames Catherine for Jonathan’s death, and without his job to keep rhythm in his life, he’s no longer willing to keep calm and carry on as he has. He craves vengeance, of the life-destroying variety, and is willing to dedicate himself wholly to his pursuit of it. Kline narrates his own section in first person, speaking to us in his own words.
And finally, there are sections, likeDisclaimer’s opening scene, which depict Jonathan on a trip through Italy. These are distinct, visually, tonally, and in their lack of any voiceover at all. They are not, however, without a narrator.Narration in cinema is a particularly fraught concept.A film or TV show with no voiceover still relates its story to us, and always with perspective. There are things we’re shown and things we aren’t, and the way we experience events shapes how we feel about and understand them. The images themselves and how they’re edited are, in a sense, narrators.
Disclaimer Thrills By Keeping Us Mired In Doubt
The Payoff Is Worth The Patience Required
Wherever there is narrative, there is a mediator between us and the “truth.“Disclaimermakes us inescapably aware of that mediationand, by exposing us to a variety of narrators, allows us to consider how they make us feel. This show is thrilling not only because of our desire to learn what happened back then and what will happen now but also because we are constantly questioning the sources of that learning.
Robert and Nicholas just don’t have the agency that Stephen does; the statements of a third-person narrator feel factual, and the characters being narrated helpless in the face of them. Stephen’s grandiosity is infectious, and it’s hard not to share the sting of injustice or elation of a plan falling into place piece by piece. But the tone he strikes is somewhere between Shakespeare’s Iago and Poe’sThe Tell-Tale Heart, so how much can we really trust him? Are the you-statements of Catherine’s narrator observed truths, or imposed ones? And from what perspective are those Jonathan sequences?
Kline and Blanchett are truly great and only get better as the story reaches its crescendos. Both have us hanging on every minute gesture and expression…
If you can’t tell,I foundDisclaimera fascinating watch.Like Cuarón’s films, these episodes are dotted with stretches of virtuosity, often built on our experience ofduration. Some lengthy scenes in later episodes are so involving that, when they ended, I realized I had to consciously release the tension in my body. The cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel plays no small part in that, though the craft is strong at every level of this production.
I enjoyed everyone’s performances, thoughKline and Blanchett are truly great and only get betteras the story reaches its crescendos. Both have us hanging on every minute gesture and expression, which is exactly what this kind of thriller needs, given how much of my engagement is predicated on trying (following Catherine’s example) to cut through narrative and observe the truth for myself. It’s helpful to have someone of Blanchett’s talent when you need your protagonist’s behavior to keep people guessing but also be emotionally cohesive in retrospect.
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I saw the full miniseries at theVenice Film Festival in August, where the episodes were shown in two batches over two days. I’m curious to see how audiences respond to it when released weekly.The show’s pacing asks for patience, and that’s an easier thing to give when seated in an auditorium. Apple TV+ seems to know this — an amendment to their original release plan has episodes 3 and 4 now dropping together.
If you’re on the fence after the beginning, stick with it.Once enough momentum builds, I foundDisclaimer’sgrip on me relentless. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as the show progresses, that week-long wait between episodes gets harder and harder to bear.
Disclaimerepisodes 1 & 2 premiere on Friday, October 11 on Apple TV+, with the remaining episodes releasing weekly thereafter. The seven-episode miniseries is rated TV-MA.
