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Oct 13, 2024 By Kyle Mullin Photography by Apple TV+ Web Exclusive

In an early scene of writer-director Alfonso Cuarón’s twisted psychological thriller Disclaimer, Kevin Kline, who plays villainous Stephen Brigstocke, a withering teacher at a stuffy British private school in the twilight of his career, is indifferent enough to zone out as a disgruntled parent berates him.

Though Kline’s character exudes icy apathy at first, it doesn’t take long for Cuarón to reveal Stephen’s issues. He’s grieving his wife, with whom he priorly spent years mourning the tragic untimely death of their son, Jonathan (Louis Partridge, Enola Holmes). While sorting through his wife’s belongings, Stephen comes across a manuscript she wrote and some lewd photos Jonathan took. He begins hatching a vendetta against his son’s lover, who he blames for his family’s misery. Once he drops off manilla envelopes of this evidence to the family of Jonathan’s long lost paramour, Stephen’s face stops drooping. At times he even pantomimes throwing a grenade into this woman’s life. Kline stops short of growing a mustache and twirling it, but only just so. He’s clearly relishing this eccentric role (the type that was his hallmark in the 90s). His sly charm is irresistible.

Kline seems part of a different story entirely compared to his castmates. His blackmail victim is Catherine Ravenscroft, a legendary investigative journalist and documentarian played by the formidable Cate Blanchett. When Stephen’s malicious envelopes begin arriving at the door of her showplace apartment (which Cuarón films in long wide angle shots to give it a palace-like vibe), Catherine is at the pinnacle of success, returning home from a ceremony where her latest documentary won an award. Her fawning husband Robert (a surprisingly subtle and heartfelt Sacha Baron Cohen, given his infamous Borat persona) pours her wine and sings her praises, blissfully oblivious that he’s about to be heartbroken by unearthed sordid details about his wife.

These scenes are peppered with voice over that surprisingly overcomes the on-the-nose pitfalls of that trope. Chalk that up to Cuarón’s savvy avoidance of godly third person narration in favor of the second person, so that the audience is thrust into Catherine’s shoes. Prime example, as she wraps her arm around her husband while he is uncorking a bottle: “You can barely taste the difference between red and white wine. But you enjoy sharing your husband’s pleasure. He wouldn’t admit it, but part of his pleasure derives from being able to afford it.”

Catherine’s seemingly blissful homelife is upended by Stephen’s book delivery. As she thumbs through pages, it dawns on her that the book is about her and whatever her apparent transgressions were (which Cuarón’s script skillfully withholds, building deft suspense). Blanchett conveys her protagonist’s panic, not only with agonized facial expressions but by flailing to the kitchen to burn the book over the sink.

Not that everything was perfect prior to her glamorous life being shoved to the precipice by Stephen. Cuarón weaves in stinging scenes between Catherine and Nicholas, her 20-something son. Played with effectively bratty angst by Kodi Smit-McPhee (fresh off accolades from his breakout in The Power of the Dog), Nicholas barely speaks to Catherine, but has an easy rapport with Cohen’s patriarch character. The most effective scene in this regard is an icy exchange between mother and son where her efforts to pry small talk out of him fail, but the instant dad calls he bounds down to the living room. A signature Cuarón tracking shot comes next, over Blanchett’s shoulder as she takes painful steps to the balcony of their exquisite home, until it already feels like an empty nest as she peers down at father and son hugging while they watch their favorite football team score. That camera work is only rivaled when Cuarón tries the opposite approach, letting Blanchett and Cohen step out a door and around a corner, just barely in view and in earshot, as he dutifully tries to calm her after she receives the book from Stephen, and is on the verge of revealing everything to her unsuspecting husband.

These authorly scenes are worlds apart from Kline’s campy, but undeniably fun moments as a long gestating schemer. His campiness clashes enough with Blanchett’s and Cohen’s sterner dramatic scenes to be disorienting. A better balance is struck when Kline grieves his wife while cleaning out her closet, before happening upon her manuscript. He smells some of her clothes to trigger memories, before donning her favorite frumpy pink sweater that is clearly a few sizes too tight. With that, Kline and Cuarón achieve a distinct eeriness for viewers to puzzle over this wiley yet achingly deranged villain’s motivations, powerfully captured in Kline’s performance.

Disclaimer feels torn between a self aware yet unsettling melodrama, and no-nonsense awards bait. This is not only true when the show cuts between top tier talent like Blanchett, who is achingly grounded and relatable, and a raucously maniacal Kline. Worse still: flashbacks to Kline’s son backpacking in Europe, when he was the same age as Nicholas is now. Partridge does his best to wade through one cringey scene after the next as he fumbles across picturesque Italy with his too-cute-by-half girlfriend, engaging in over-the-top public displays of affection that render their characters childish and cringey, especially as they swerve between giggly romance and tender drama. Few actors other than Kline have the gravitas and range to succeed in scenes with a tone as nuanced as what Cuarón has penned here. Sometimes even the veteran thespian can’t pull it off and goes way over the top, though at least it’s entertaining. It’s difficult to forget an ashen-faced Kline in a pink sweater that’s too small for him, seared into your brain by Cuarón’s deft direction.

Despite Disclaimer teetering between prestige drama and soapy psychological thriller in the first two episodes with which it premiered, Cuarón’s ambition remains admirable. This odd series is nothing short of engrossingly watchable. But if this one-of-a-kind auteur somehow threads the needle in subsequent episodes, then this show will rank among the year’s best as so far, its successful scenes are on par with Cuarón’s most famous work. It’s just a shame that some of his unflinching big swings result in numerous misses in these debut episodes. (www.tv.apple.com/us/show/disclaimer)

Author rating: 6/10