‘Disclaimer’ Review: Alfonso Cuarón’s Thriller Is Must-See TV
In the past decade or so, there has been no shortage of “bodies in the water” shows. From Big Little Lies to The White Lotus, networks and streamers love making series that involve putting together the pieces of an untimely death, and viewers seem to love solving the puzzles just as much. Flashbacks, intersecting storylines, morally gray characters on all sides—it’s a tried and true formula at this point, but it’s one that Alfonso Cuarón makes new again with Disclaimer.
Adapted from the novel of the same name, Disclaimer follows a period of personal turbulence for Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett). An acclaimed documentarian with a seemingly put-together home life populated by her doting but wimpy husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and her underachieving son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Catherine’s world is upended when she receives a strange book, The Perfect Stranger, in the mail. On one of its first pages it reads, “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence,” and it doesn’t take long for Catherine to realize that she is one of those persons. The Perfect Stranger details a trip to Italy that she’d rather forget, involving a deceased young man named Jonathan (Louis Partridge) and the connection they shared just prior to his death. Of course, he couldn’t have written the thing, but this version of events is so compelling, sometimes so close to the truth, that it sets Catherine on edge.
She’s right to be nervous, as she’s the target of Stephen Brigstocke’s (Kevin Kline) long-simmering ire. Stephen has lost everything—his son Jonathan, and more recently his beloved wife Nancy (Lesley Manville)—and at the twilight of his life, the only energy he can muster up is resentment towards the woman he thinks ruined his life. The ways in which that anger manifests are best left unspoiled, but suffice it to say that Stephen gets plenty of glee out of causing Catherine’s life to unravel.
As the conflict between these two ebbs and flows, the events of The Perfect Stranger unfurl on screen. There’s naive Jonathan, on his own in the world for the first time and ready for anything, everything; and there’s a younger Catherine (Leila George), weary and unsatisfied with her life as a mother. There seems to be a spark between the two of them when Jonathan captures her on his camera, and things escalate from there. It’s a lurid, juicy story that has no qualms about being sexually explicit, and it sears itself into the imaginations of everyone who reads it. The woman at the center of the novel is universally derided as an awful, selfish whore, and Catherine finds herself feeling irrevocably tainted by this indirect attack.
There are an infinite number of nuances that Cuarón (who serves as writer and director for all seven episodes) and his cast wring out of this multilayered series. The dots are fairly easy to connect—there isn’t much of a mystery to solve here—so the real discovery is how committed each of these characters is to their own ideas of the truth. Their inner monologues spill out via voiceover or narration (done by Indira Varma), revealing every petty judgment and assumption. No one here is a particularly good person, but rather than revel in the variety of villainy on display, Cuarón always slips in moments that show his characters at their most vulnerable and self-loathing. There are emotional bits that will knock the wind out of you between the pulpier parts, elevating the show.
The cast also turns in some incredible performances throughout. Blanchett makes Catherine the perfect imperfect victim, eyes shining with tears and rage and cursed memories. Leila George is impressive as Blanchett’s younger self, and the two actresses are on the same wavelength in their characterization of this complex woman. George anchors the show’s very racy third episode as well as one of its thorniest reveals later on, announcing herself as a major talent amongst a cast of heavy hitters.
Meanwhile, as Stephen, Kline gets to be a bit off his rocker, a mad genius who parades around his house in his dead wife’s cardigan. He’s threatening and diabolical and decidedly creepy, a fitting antagonist determined to uphold some sense of justice for his wife and son. And who could blame him, after watching Lesley Manville’s Nancy? Though she gets some of the least screen time of the ensemble, Manville’s furious grief serves as the backbone of this show. It’s a powerhouse performance that haunts the narrative just as much as the death that kicks things off.
The character work is stellar, the story enrapturing, and the visuals stunning. Cuarón and cinematographers Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel use long takes and vivid colors to paint Disclaimer’s multilayered world, with the filmmaker’s signature visual style recognizable throughout. No one uses a camera like Cuarón, and the series reminds you of that often. The writing is superb (save for a social media subplot and a few oh-so-convenient beats), crafting an engaging, obsession-worthy thriller that also manages to push back on our own perceptions of the genre and storytelling as a craft. The show starts stronger than it ends, but it sets its standards high from the jump—standards that few other series from this year could even dream of reaching.
The first two episodes of ‘Disclaimer’ premiere on Apple TV+ on October 11th.