‘Disclaimer’ review: Cate Blanchett and Alfonso Cuarón’s thriller series will shatter you

“Beware of narrative and form. Their power can bring us closer to the truth, but they can also be a weapon with a great power to manipulate.”

This statement isn’t just part of a speech introducing the work of Disclaimer‘s lead character, award-winning documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett). It’s also a direct message from Disclaimer writer and director Alfonso Cuarón (Roma, Gravity) about how to watch the show. A slippery psychological thriller, Disclaimer prompts you to question its every moment, all while digging into the devastation of long-buried secrets come to light.

What is Disclaimer about?

Central to these secrets is Catherine, whose documentary work tends to focus on exposing the dark secrets of others. But when a self-published novel titled The Perfect Stranger shows up on her doorstep, she recognizes herself — and a troubling moment from her past — within its pages. It doesn’t help that the book opens with a disclaimer that “any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.” Now, Catherine not only has to find the person responsible for writing the novel, she also has to stop its contents from imploding her relationships with her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and her son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog).

Disclaimer doesn’t hold back on revealing the “who” and “why” behind The Perfect Stranger‘s existence. Running parallel to Catherine’s panic is a revenge story rooted in grief. The avenger in question is retired teacher Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), who’s lost both his son Jonathan (Louis Partridge, Enola Holmes) and his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville, Queer). Jonathan passed away 20 years ago while alone on vacation in Italy, in an accident linked to Catherine (played in the past by Leila George) and infant Nicholas. Nancy died from cancer more recently, and upon going through her things Stephen finds a manuscript for The Perfect Stranger. It’s Nancy’s account of Jonathan’s accident and the events leading up to it, which she pieced together with the help of some explicit photographs. The discovery lights a fire in Stephen, and he’ll stop at nothing to burn Catherine’s life to the ground.

Disclaimer plays with time and form to create a story where nothing is as it seems.

Disclaimer unravels these many story threads over a variety of timelines, moving between Jonathan’s final vacation as it’s described in The Perfect Stranger, Catherine’s growing distress, Stephen’s revenge plan, and his and Nancy’s mourning of Jonathan. Each arc comes with its own specific stylistic flourishes to place you in the mind of the person telling or experiencing the story at that moment, hammering home Disclaimer‘s ideas of narrative manipulation.

These flourishes are at their most visible during Jonathan’s vacation scenes, which open and close with iris wipes to reflect both The Perfect Stranger‘s storybook account of these events and the movement of Jonathan’s camera shutter as he photographs the world around him. Long, mostly static shots in the vacation sections also evoke Jonathan’s photography, reminding us that we’re seeing these moments through a specific lens. Cinematographers Emmanuel Lubezki (who has collaborated with Cuarón on projects like Children of Men and Gravity) and Bruno Delbonnel (Amélie, The Tragedy of Macbeth) contrast these more fantastical trips through Jonathan’s past with cooler tones in the present, an effective reminder of the harsh reality Catherine and Stephen find themselves in.

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Cuarón also incorporates voiceovers into the present. Catherine’s flaws and worries are laid out to her in second person by an unknown narrator (Indira Varma). A guilty conscience, perhaps? Meanwhile, Stephen delivers his own internal monologue with chilling, poetic focus, the vengeful hero of his own story.

In lesser hands, this combination of different storytelling styles might be a confusing jumble, or simply too much. But with Cuarón to guide the way, every element of Disclaimer — from its varying narrators to the occasional near-preposterously heightened sex scene — fits together to build a devastating tapestry of how one event can shatter so many people’s lives. And with all these conflicting voices at play, Disclaimer asks, “Whose story do you really believe? Which narrative will you throw your allegiance behind?”

Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline are astounding in Disclaimer.

Guiding us through Disclaimer‘s labyrinth are Blanchett and Kline, whose performances dig up the raw pain at the heart of the show’s addictive thriller elements. As Catherine, Blanchett is a tight ball of nerves that gradually unspools as she reaches her breaking point. You may be tempted to draw comparisons between Catherine and Blanchett’s role as Lydia Tár in Tár — both are renowned public figures whose lives are coming under sudden scrutiny — but Blanchett’s Catherine is far more vulnerable and pained than her steely, commanding Lydia.

Kline’s Stephen is no less pained, but he gets some flashier chances to chew the scenery and does so with gusto. From Stephen’s increasingly nasty plans to his flowery inner monologue, Kline turns his character from a grieving man who wears his wife’s cardigans to feel close to her into a full-fledged villain. Or does Catherine actually deserve what’s coming her way? Everyone who reads The Perfect Stranger certainly seems to think so.

Cuarón’s direction and Disclaimer‘s excellent leading performances — as well as strong support from the ensemble, especially Manville and George, who’s tasked with a deceptively tricky part — help carry the series over the occasional clunky hurdle. Cuarón has referred to Disclaimer as being like a seven-hour-long movie, and that shows in some uneven pacing and bloat between episodes. Elsewhere, any exploration of the wider consequences of “cancel culture” — including a moment where Catherine is outright told, “You’re so canceled” — falls mostly flat.

Despite these blips, the overall effect of Disclaimer is one of intrigue and of questioning the layers of narrative you see before you. With its commitment to formal changeups and a brutal knockout of a finale, Disclaimer is a puzzle that gets under your skin and refuses to leave.

Disclaimer premieres Oct. 11 on AppleTV+, with a new episode every Friday.