Disclaimer
“Be cautious of narrative and form,” is one of our characters, an award-winning documentary journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, played by Cate Blanchett, that Christiane Amanpour says in the earlier scenes of Apple TV+ new series ‘Disclaimer.’ “It can take you closer to the reality, but it is also a great means of deception.” Certainly, Cuarón is an author and director of the show, which is taken from Renee Knight’s 2015 novel and has been aired in a TV series format consisting of seven episodes, and is a work of art; the purpose of its narrative, of course, is to emotionally engage and manipulate. Not only the characters, actually, but the audience as well, gradually introducing a saturated story of revenge, and the pleasure that comes from both inflicting it and witnessing it. And it, like so many before this one Apple TV+ series, is just a pretty picture created by one of the greatest filmmakers, A list stars in front of and behind the camera while all that most likely will not be waged by the amount of people who will be able to watch it due to its streaming availability.
When we first encounter her, Ravenscroft appears to be a woman on the top of the mountain: she is married to a devoted husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen, emotionless and servile), her opinionated and instead of my son, weaves the text around her disheartened and turbulent young son, boyfriend Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and best mutual relationship. However, a storm is brewing and what seems like calm days at home will soon be disrupted when a new book ‘The Perfect Stranger’, along with a disclaimer that Catherine handles delicately, arrives on her shakes the pet: ‘Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.’
The more she reads, the more she appreciates how the fiction is based on real people; she is Sarah, reflecting on an embarrassing episode from twenty years ago when she (Leila George) was in an affair with a younger man Jonathan (Louis Partridge) whilst taking a trip to Italy with her son who was two years old. We learn that Jonathan later died saving Nicholas Dave’s Life, which presented Catherine with a good opportunity to hide her impropriety. Now, with this book, it is Mary who will pay the bill for the debacle and mortify the wholeness of her reputation.
And who could have penned such works full of contentions and contradictions? An aging private school teacher and followed by the name of Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), the father of Jonathan. In contrast to Catherine, who is elegant and full of life, he is tired and lives a deprived life, Nancy his spouse (Lesley Manville in retakes), died quite some time back and now he is surrounded by her remnants and pictures of nude Catherine and all the rest attached with stories. Those events are events which we all know belonged to Nancy, in other words the composition is based on our reasoning with the help of those photos and everything she knows about this incident. From the pile of trash, Stephen once fished it out and having thought well does indeed do so because it is something that he can hold over the woman who effectively ruined his entire family.
Attention all viewers: “Disclaimer” is not a film that has cuddly scenes. In the course of the seven chapters, we see an old man enjoying the dissolution of a woman. It is a delight for the enchanted old-timer. The old man looks forher in detail not for the love of her but purely to destroy her. As a writer, Cuarón also has a knack for assuming a predilection and playing around with the linearity of the script, making the audience feel one way before switching contexts rapidly. (We witness distant satellite images of Sandy’s washing up on the Italian shore as “Children of Men” does in its long lasting blackness of sights, camera operators seem to be passing off images.) Lift into watching an inquisition, every time the friends of Stephen get the copies of the book, or the lovers, or the colleagues the feeling is that one more atomic bomb fell into Catherine’s life. More and more, she becomes defensive and unable to articulate her extraordinary guilt in their eyes. And then there is Stephen with a smug smile already knowing how the events will unfold.
It is impossible, moreover, for any actor to overshadow Blanchett or Kline in their respective performances, considering they revolve around each other in a binary blackout of pure tension. It is impossible to say that Blanchett is not reminiscent of her character from “Tár”, an ambitious female figure taking extreme measures after being ostracized. However, Kline is careful not to overplay Stephen’s surrogate form of sorrow (wearing his dead mother’s favorite pink cardigan, now a torn shabby piece of clothing) when he goes for the long-term planned “Oldboy” style approach to his interactions with Catherine.
As already discussed, the topic of the film is rather painful itself, and it offers no catharsis there are no heroes, only victims. In this sense, both the authors and the characters are aware that this story has multiple layers, about Stephen and his fan followers, and most importantly, this ever-present thirst for retribution. Are we as bad? Absolutely, a couple of directors haven’t shied away from this self-reflection. Milka, Lech to simply contrasting Sosa, Stephen’s docu drama seeks to associate with the harsh reality of engrossing negativity, directed towards those who need to be ‘scorned.’ The professionally opressive nature of the story sinks into density and is made more intense in the virtually nihilistic humanity portrayed canon, that interprets loss, suffering and defeat. The irony here is however that it never ignores a single moment of this urged drama and instead pushes the viewer to sympathize with every character.
No one, however, goes to “Disclaimer’ expecting some tension, nor will one encounter it. Quite the contrary, it is an elegantly interlacing of two lives in trauma forcing you to witness their collision from an inexplicable pain that never relents. What is most shocking, however, is that you will witness first hand in excruciating clarity how the one being engulfed in desperation will drag everyone around them down with them. People do say, however, that before you take revenge, you should prepare two coffins.
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