I admit I am easily drawn to film or TV shows by who’s in them or who made them. While I do love certain genres and stories, what drives me to watch something is, more often than not, who is in it rather than what it is about. So, when I heard AppleTV+ had an original series starring Cate Blanchett, I was in. But then I heard Kevin Kline was also in it and I didn’t even care what it was about. THEN I heard it was written and directed by Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón and I started counting the days until its premiere. Cuarón has written and directed some of the most prestigious films of the last twenty years, including Children of Men and Roma, for which he won Academy Awards for Directing and Cinematography, but, for me, he will forever be known for Gravity, which still stands as the most mind-blowing experience I’ve ever had in a movie theater.
Still, it was the idea of Blanchett and Kline together that got me most excited for Disclaimer, this new AppleTV+ series,
which premiered on October 11. Kline, the icon of stage and cinema, is very picky with his roles, so those of us who love him are incredibly grateful when we get a chance to see him on screen, and to see him opposite Blanchett, who is at the absolute peak of her powers, is exciting, to say the least. I was hoping this pairing would bear sweeter fruit than the last Kline coupling I had had my hopes raised and dashed by back in 2021 when Sigourney Weaver and Kline starred in The Good House, a film that was far from the Dave reunion I had hoped for. Kline has been long overdue for a renaissance, a la Michael Keaton, and I am totally here for it—but still waiting.
Well, hold onto your hats, kids, because Kevin Kline is back. And he’s making the most of it.
Disclaimer is not only NOT a disappointing pairing of Blanchett and Kline, it is another notch on AppleTV+’s headboard of prestige TV, as they are absolutely killing it. This series is as good as any film you would see in a theater, and you get it over seven episodes.
Seven grueling, engrossing, enthralling, VERY hard-to-watch episodes.
Based on the novel by Renee Knight, Disclaimer is about a journalist, played by Blanchett, who has an event from her past, which she had hoped would stay buried, brought to light by the father of a man involved in that event who died. The father is played by Kline and his character is obsessed with putting Blanchett’s character through the wringer, wanting to make her suffer just as much as he feels his son did, as he feels she bears all the blame for his son’s death.
But blame is a tricky thing, as are perspective, memory and point of view, as Cuarón crafts a brilliant screenplay that makes the audience thinks it knows what is going on but then slowly flips things around, shifting perspective, forcing us to realize that we’re now looking at the same thing in a completely different way. There is a tremendously effective use of voiceover narration that sets in motion the audience’s point of view, or perhaps manipulates it. Cuarón plays with the audience’s trust and willingness to believe what they want to believe—or are most likely to believe—which creates a fascinating study of human nature that the audience doesn’t even realize they are part of.
As for the elements of prestige TV, they are all there, from Cuarón’s elegant direction, to a pair of Oscar-nominated and winning cinematographers, Bruno Delbonnel (6 nominations) and Emmanuel Lubezki (3 wins), working in tandem to bring both the luscious warm pastels of an Italian seaside setting, as well as the cold, dank and haunting grays of modern London, and the effective and evocative score by Finneas O’Connell, who shows he is far more than Billie Eilish’s brother with this incredibly effective composition that sucks you into this twisty, dark and muddled story.
I wanted to give up on this a few episodes in, as it felt like it was going to be one thing and I wasn’t interested in seeing people suffer for seven episodes, but I promise you, stick with it until the end and you will be rewarded with a gift of storytelling that will leave you not only thinking about this long after the final credits, but you may even find yourself questioning your own perception of the world. It is a bit of a slog to get there, but the journey is well worth the destination, despite the dark tunnel it takes you through.
As for the performances, Kevin Kline has never been as good as he is here. And he’s always been good. He makes an absolute meal of this role, descending into madness almost gleefully, imbuing a combination of pathos, insanity, cruelty and heartbreak into one lonely, broken man who you truly don’t know whether to cry for or shout at. It is a performance that deserves every recognition and I cannot imagine won’t be awarded. His English accent is spotty and is where any real criticism lies, but its inexactitude is easily overlooked.
Kline’s performance reminds me a bit of Judi Dench’s performance in Notes on a Scandal, which ironically was also opposite Cate Blanchett in a similarly-themed film about exposing secrets. Blanchett knows she is in her wheelhouse playing the flawed protagonist forced to defend her actions, and when she’s paired with a veteran performer who counterpunches her with equal weight, the result is mesmerizing, even though Blanchett really could do this in her sleep.
Slightly less impressive are Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Blanchett’s husband, and Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays her son, as both choose to wallow in the melancholy of their roles, which gets really tiresome, but Lesley Manville is sensational as the despondent mother who’s lost a son.
Disclaimer is a difficult watch, there’s no going around that. It’s got difficult subjects, and it is very sexually explicit (NSFW or to watch with your parents). But if you are willing to endure all of this, and crave a really well-told story by artists who really know what they are doing, Disclaimer is worth the journey, it will satisfy your deepest craving for a real meal of adult, thoughtful (and disturbing) drama that dares to challenge its audience.
The first two episodes of Disclaimer dropped on October 11, with new episodes airing each Friday, through November 15 on AppleTV+.