‘Disclaimer’ is a sprawling thriller built for the streaming age

Ever since streaming became a thing, I’ve wondered why more people who make TV don’t take advantage of its freedoms.

Sure, creatives talk often about how they’re making 10-hour movies. But that’s frequently just empty bluster to cover for projects which feel like skeletal ideas stretched over too many hours, or a jumble of plotpoints shoehorned uneasily into episodes aimed mostly at boosting engagement.

And then a project comes along like Apple TV+’s Disclaimer. This seven-episode series uses the breadth and sophistication of streaming to tell a tale which evolves steadily, appearing to be one thing before morphing into something else.

In the process, it subverts expectations to ask pointed questions of both the characters and its audience.

A woman who has it all faces her deepest secret

It all begins with Cate Blanchett’s character Catherine Ravenscroft. She’s a journalist and documentary filmmaker successful enough to earn a high-profile award presented by CNN star Christiane Amanpour one moment, and credibly fool a co-worker into thinking Jodie Foster will star in a movie adaptation the next.

She is the sort of high-achieving, work-focused alpha female that Blanchett plays so magnificently – see 2022’s Oscar-nominated Tar – flanked by a well-meaning but feckless husband and an emotionally floundering son.

Living a glamorously upper middle class life, Catherine is a character easy to envy and suspect – so when a novel shows up in her mail which presents a lightly fictionalized story of her extra-marital encounter with a young man decades ago, it’s tough to find sympathy for a woman who seems to have betrayed everyone in her life.

The book, titled The Perfect Stranger, comes prefaced with an ominous, um, disclaimer: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.”

The novel paints a picture of horrific self-absorption Catherine is desperate to keep hidden. It details how a woman had an affair with a young man who later drowned trying to save her son, leading the woman to tell police she didn’t know him to cover up their connection.

A journalist renowned for exposing others’ secrets seems to have a terrible one of her own.

A story that moves carefully

It is difficult to explain the many twists this narrative takes without dropping spoilers that will ruin the experience. And some may feel the plot – crafted with an auteur’s flair by writer/director Alfonso Cuarón, based on a 2015 novel by Renee Knight – is too predictable and outlandish to land with the power he so obviously intends.

But I found myself swept away by Cuarón’s patient, attentive style. (You’ll spend way too much time wondering about the inner life of a cat which constantly pops up in Catherine’s home at the oddest moments, framed artfully by the director’s lens.) This is a story that moves carefully in revealing its secrets, but never completes an episode without delivering forward momentum, leaving you with new clues, bigger questions and a desire to learn more.

Cuarón, a Mexican filmmaker whose name is associated with ambitious movies like Gravity and Roma, assembles an ace cast here. Sacha Baron Cohen is convincingly emasculated as Catherine’s entitled husband Robert and Oscar nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee brings maximum emo energy as their drug-addled son, Nicholas.

But it is Kevin Kline who is the revelation, even though he’s turned in Oscar, Emmy and Tony-winning work for decades. An American often cast as the prototypical yank, here Kline expertly plays a quietly caustic British widower – retired private school teacher Stephen Brigstocke, devastated after the loss of his wife.

With an immaculate accent and disheveled style, Kline plays Brigstocke as a man grieving over a family life atomized by loss, stumbling on an ambitious, merciless plan for revenge.

He blames Catherine for the death of his son, which happened after the two met years ago. Brigstocke vows to make her pay, in part, by circulating the book.

Shifting narrators bring different perspectives

Even the narration is complicated here. While Kline’s character often reveals his thoughts by speaking directly to the viewer, Catherine’s ideas are rendered by an omniscient female narrator speaking about her, sometimes sounding like the voice of the book itself. (And yes, it can be confusing, possibly on purpose). There are also flashbacks featuring Kline playing Brigstocke as a younger man and a different actress, Leila George, playing the younger version of Catherine.

It all services a tale exploring the power of storytelling and the danger of assumptions leveraged to make us believe.

Yes, the ending is dramatic while spotlighting those ideas in stark terms – some may even find it overly manipulative and a little too pat.

But I reveled in a well-told tale that truly earned every second of its seven-episode length, allowing a master filmmaker the time, talent and resources to weave a story perfectly suited for the streaming space.

Here’s hoping a few other folks working in this industry are paying close attention.