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It took me a moment to process that last sentence, but once I did: Five stars.

Matt wrote: Mon Oct 14, 2024 4:03 am I’m two episodes into Apple’s lavish new series “Disclaimer” written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Cate Blanchett is reliably excellent, Kevin Kline is delightfully chewing the scenery as usual, and it looks fantastic thanks to cinematography by BOTH Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel. But as with so many Apple TV productions it’s a beautiful corpse, exquisitely art-directed to death, and most notable for how much money seems to have been thrown at it.

There is so much clumsy exposition, often delivered by a far-out-of his depth Sacha Baron Cohen as Blanchett’s husband in a very distracting wig. I know he is talented and yearns to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor, but I keep expecting him to turn to the camera and refer to Blanchett as “my wiiiife.” The curse of being known for an indelible comedic character.

I’ll probably stick with it because it’s only 7 episodes and seems to have interesting things to say about narrative and point-of-view. Also, Blanchett never disappoints—there is a scene where she plays her character as 10 years younger and it’s shockingly convincing. I expect there’s a little de-aging applied, but it’s more about the way she carries her body and her gestures. She’s so clearly in a league of her own. That scene is played against Lesley Manville, and it’s the highlight of the show so far, two acting titans doing incredible character work just sitting across a cafe table from one another.

Having watched the whole series, I agree, and it makes me wonder what possessed Cuarón to spend so much of his time and talent on this pulpy material. It exposes weaknesses as a writer, at least when working in the English language. Previously this was most evident in Gravity, which mostly relied on state-of-the-art effects and action scenes. But Disclaimer aspires to be a prestige drama, complete with obligatory literary voice-over, only the plot turns out to be as mechanical as it is manipulative, hinging on a series of implausibilities.

I also grew tired of the endless sex scenes, which slow down the pace of the middle section

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and feel out of place given the plot twist. When we finally see the story from Catherine's point of view, it turns out to have been a rape, so the endless lingering on Leila George's body feels exploitative. And would the mother of a son she is trying to rehabilitate have spent so much of her novel imagining his sexual proclivities? (My dead kid sure enjoyed going down on the ladies!) The lip service paid to #metoo feels tacky when its primary function is as a plot twist in a thriller.

For most of the series, Cate Blanchett plays a character too much like the one in Tár, a highbrow artist whose reputation and life come crashing down because someone delves into her sexual past. But would that many people read and be influenced by a self-published novel about a documentary filmmaker? This isn't Taylor Swift we're talking about, not even a Lydia Tár. During the revelations of the last two episodes, the film turns into a thriller, which, thanks to Cuaron's skill, is reasonably gripping, but comes with its share of tired tropes to generate suspense.

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We are still doing hastily crushed sleeping pills in a cup of tea?

This is kept just about watchable by the top-notch cast and the technical skill on display. I agree that Sacha Baron Cohen is pretty awful, but Lesley Manville is great as always and the

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malevolence

that Kevin Kline brings to his role is what makes the latter half of the series watchable.

Coming from almost anybody else I would have considered this to be an acceptable time-waster, from Cuarón it's a disappointment.

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