“Disclaimer” Review: A tale of revenge filled with hidden truths

In “Disclaimer,” which premieres Friday on Apple TV+, Cate Blanchett plays Catherine Ravenscroft, an award-winning documentary filmmaker married to Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen), a non-governmental organization consultant, and mother to Nicholas (Kodi Smit- McPhee). , 25, lives at home, selling appliances in a department store and a pale shadow of his high-achieving parents.

Presenting an award to Catherine, Christiane Amanpour (as herself) praises her films for cutting “through narrative and form that distract us from hidden truths”, even as they obfuscate, then reveal hidden truths through narrative and form is the real truth of creator and director Alfonso Cuarón. method Of course, you can’t get away from narrative and form no matter how hard you try, even in a documentary.

One day a package arrives addressed to Catherine, containing a pseudonymous novel that opens with the disclaimer that any resemblance between fiction and reality is intentional. She opens it and immediately (a disturbing montage of flash cuts) recognizes that the main character is herself.

This book, we have already seen, is the work of the late Nancy Brigstocke (Lesley Manville), a manuscript recently discovered, several years after her death, by her husband Stephen (Kevin Kline), an English teacher who is tired of his work , his life and the whole modern world. Written in secret by Nancy during years of seclusion after the death of her son Jonathan (Louis Partridge) 20 years earlier, it aims to tell the story of Jonathan’s seduction by Catherine and his drowning while saving the life of Nicholas, who was then 5 years, during a holiday in Italy. The truth of the text seems to be reinforced by a package of erotic photos discovered next to the manuscript.

Kevin Kline plays both young and old Stephen Brigstocke in “Disclaimer.” (apple)

Lesley Manville as Nancy Brigstocke, who writes a book that is central to the series. (apple)

Representing the manuscript as his own, Stephen is encouraged by a friend to self-publish; the book becomes his weapon of revenge, not so much for the death of his son, whom he was not close to, but for that death after having destroyed his beloved wife, whose voice remains the message outgoing to the answering machine. And he sets out to make Catherine suffer.

We first meet Jonathan in what is not immediately obvious as a flashback, vacationing in Venice with a girlfriend, Sasha (Liv Hill); she will have to cut her trip short, leaving him alone to be preyed upon by an older woman (Leila George as the younger Catherine) in scenes whose Penthouse-literal absurdity might raise a red flag, though the iris of the silent era ins The irises of these scenes remind us that we are watching a film. So does the narrative, which alternates between the main characters and an omniscient author, using the first, second or third person singular, depending. So we’re on shaky ground in terms of reliability, even though the experience of watching a movie, no matter how mercurial, delusional, or dreamlike, is to take it all at face value until you’re told that don’t do it This is how the “Disclaimer” wraps you up.

However, even the half-aware viewer will have questions about “The Perfect Stranger,” the novel within the novel, the events of which are played out on the screen as an established story, and what other characters accept as such, but that it is full of things Nancy. I couldn’t know. If some of these people had thought about it, it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble, but as the internet teaches us, and there is a story where Stephen puts Nicholas, it doesn’t take much to cause panic. And saving people trouble is not the point.

Louis Partridge as Jonathan Brigstocke and Leila George as the younger Catherine Ravenscroft in “Disclaimer”.

(apple)

The series is beautiful to watch, from first to last; Emmanuel Lubezki, Cuarón’s cinematographer on “Children of Men” and “Gravity,” and Bruno Delbonnel (“Amélie,” “Inside Llewyn Davis”) share credit as cinematographers. And you can’t argue with the cast. It’s great to see Kline, who rarely appears on screen these days, as both the older and younger Stephen, a sad out-of-time engendered by having this new project, engaging with it with more gusto how crazy . Manville, who seems to appear in every third series away from England, with good reason, has his usual gourmet meal at Nancy. And Blanchett, unsurprisingly, holds up well to these narrative forms and distractions, though she’s especially good when she’s asked to break loose.

Cuarón (“Gravity,” “Roma”) is one of the most lauded filmmakers of the century, and there’s no shortage of cinema in “Disclaimer,” which is stylistically attuned to shifting viewpoints and reality. It can seem a little pretentious, with its Roman numeral “chapter” titles, jittery zoom shots, and heavy voiceovers. (“You are overwhelmed with the sadness of things lost. Your childhood, your own child’s childhood, your mother’s strength and your belief that you have absorbed that strength into your bones… You know that your mother her name is Helen and that Helen must I have suffered anguish, loneliness and pain, but you really don’t know because for you, Helen has always been the mother.

But once you strip away the fact of falsehood, “Disclaimer” is a fairly straightforward revenge story, though whether or not the revenge is deserved is a central question of its contortionist plot. This can make the characters feel more like chess pieces than people you can care about, despite the excellent performances. A course-correcting monologue by Blanchett at the end of the game is a splendid performance that does much to bring order, and Cuarón’s stylistic devices make more sense in retrospect, though a brief epilogue turns them around again. You can take this coda as a salute to mothers and children, a comment on the squirrelly nature of fiction, or simply a wicked trick finale to a series that delights them. I haven’t decided yet.