Disclaimer sags a bit but remains emotionally powerful

What is Disclaimer about? For Stephen Brigstocke, it’s about vengeance, a desire to destroy the life of someone who he believes ruined his. For Catherine Ravenscroft, it’s about a life lived unpacking the secrets of others through her documentary filmmaking, which almost seems like an act of karmic penance. (She digs out the skeletons in the closets of others because she can’t reveal her own.) Combining the two makes for a complex story of loss, grief, infidelity, and distrust told through the lens of one of our best living filmmakers with as A-list ensemble as any streamer has assembled this year.

And yet it’s not perfect. It turns out that even a great show like Disclaimer can suffer a bit from the epidemic of streamer bloat. You know what I mean: How so many streaming shows sag at least a little in the middle as the narrative spins its wheels to justify the episode order? It’s a plague that afflicts nearly every Netflix show and most Apple ones. And you can feel it a little in this two-part mid-section of Disclaimer, although it doesn’t completely grind to a halt. It’s more that it takes its time allowing us to feel the oppressive misery of Nancy Brigstocke, the vibrant sexuality of a young Catherine Ravenscroft, the heartbreak of her husband Robert, and, eventually, the terror of the final moments of Jonathan Brigstocke’s too-short life. Once again, cinematographers Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel are the unsung MVPs of this show, giving these episodes a striking visual language that you just don’t see that often on television. 

Again, the plot plays out from three perspectives with very different tones. In this pair of episodes, it’s primarily the days of the affair, the days after the death of a child, and the days after the discovery of both by Robert Ravenscroft. It’s hard to overstate the impact of the difference in narrative styles. We hear Stephen’s inner monologue, but we watch Catherine and Robert from a distance, being told a story by an unseen narrator. We feel his emotions; we’re told theirs.

And that leads us to an important question: Who is telling the story of Jonathan and Catherine? Is this what actually happened? Or is this Nancy Brigstocke’s theories on what happened? Is this The Perfect Stranger? Is it Catherine’s memories flooding out? It’s something to consider as these episodes unfold. It feels like the flashbacks should be taken as truth, but it’s worth questioning how that’s being shaped, especially if it’s through a grieving mother or a woman racked with guilt.

It starts where the second chapter ended: with Robert racing off into the night. He’ll get drunk, pass out in his back seat, try to read the book he knows now truly is about his wife, and struggle through a day at the office. During all of it, he’ll ignore Catherine’s calls to explain or try to understand her side of something he’s only seen in photographs. There’s an interesting bit of narration that claims Catherine didn’t tell her family “for their own safety.” There had been enough suffering, so why add more? Is there ever something morally right about keeping a secret that can no longer do harm? Catherine and Robert were happy for a generation, and there’s no implication she cheated more than in that one fatal fling. How much should she suffer for keeping that secret? Of course, Robert doesn’t know how that affair ended. He will.

The tragic arc of the third episode belongs to Nancy Brigstocke, played by Lesley Manville like an open wound. Kevin Kline is very good in these scenes in which Stephen and Nancy learn about the death of their only child and go to Italy to identify and retrieve his body, but it’s Manville who devastates, trying to drown herself in a bathtub to know how Jonathan felt in his final moments. From the minute both are told about Jonathan’s death, Nancy and Stephen look like ghosts, pale reminders of what they once were. 

We need to talk about Catherine’s seduction of Jonathan in Italy. It’s the centerpiece of the episode, and it’s directed in a manner that’s supposed to be a bit off-putting in its amplification of the age/experience difference between the two. It starts with Catherine playing into Jonathan’s fantasies about a pop star (Kylie Minogue), and it’s impossible to think that he looks like anything other than a boy, a teen fumbling through a sexual encounter. He’s nervous and twitchy as she asks him questions about fidelity and attraction, mumbling things like “she’s fit.” There’s a vibe here in his discomfort that’s meant to make it clear that this was more of a seduction on Catherine’s part than an affair between adults. How much should she be blamed for that? And how could she have known how it would end?

The most striking imagery in the third episode comes at its close as two parents stand in the crashing surf of the Mediterranean, knowing they’re close to the place where their son took his last breath. They hold hands and take the waves as they crash into them, realizing they’ll never be the same.

The fourth episode has more of the midseason streaming sag than the third, but the filmmaking remains strong enough that the slack storytelling can be forgiven. Once again, Disclaimer divides its energy across three timelines, although Stephen’s is catching up to Catherine’s. A lot of this episode consists of young Catherine and Jonathan’s steamy Italian affair, including the time he chose to photograph the new object of his affection. (Imagine how different everyone’s life would be if he didn’t!) 

Most of the threads of the third episode get pulled forward in the fourth as we learn more about Nancy’s descent over the last years of her life, ones dominated by grief and then cancer. She moved out of the room she shared with Stephen into her dead son’s space, and every molecule in their house was filled with pain. Is it any wonder that Stephen has devoted so much to destroying the woman he blames for all of it?

As Robert starts to piece together the book, the photos, and the truth, his anger grows. He wonders what young Nicholas knew about the affair and resents being little more than “the husband” in The Perfect Stranger. It’s a very smart beat in that it feels like the impetus to get him to kick Catherine out of the house.

The key to this episode is the death of Jonathan Brigstocke. It really starts the night before when Catherine tells Jonathan they’ll share the beach but pretend not to know each other. The roleplaying turns both of them on as Jonathan photographs Catherine across the beach, ultimately leading to a bit of action in the beach restroom. As she pulls away to go back to her son, she learns that Jonathan is getting a bit obsessed already. He wants to go to London and be with her, and she’s startled to discover that he thinks she might leave her husband. This never meant anything more than passion to her. He’s already bought a ticket! Is that why she doesn’t shout when she senses he might be drowning? Does she let him die so he won’t tear her life apart?

Both nap on the beach as the wind rises on the surf and wake up to find Nicholas far in the sea in his inflatable boat. She runs into the water, but it’s Jonathan who runs past her to save her son. He does exactly that but can’t make it back himself. The camera bobbing in the water is terrifying and brilliant, putting us right in the horror of the moment. After saving Nicholas, people on the beach eventually realize that Jonathan needs help too. They race to save him. We know it’s too late. 

Stray observations

• • It’s an interesting choice to leave episodes unnamed, merely going with roman numerals like chapters in a book.
• • Whenever a show this calibrated does something more than once, it’s for a reason. The first chapter closes with “Ti Amo” by Umberto Tozzi, which can be heard again in the flashbacks to the sex between Catherine and Jonathan in the third. Why? It’s about a worker who has committed infidelity who chooses to return to his family. Did Catherine make that choice when she let her lover die?
• • If you want to read that amazing poem that Stephen recites in the narration, it’s “Warm Summer Sun” by Mark Twain.
• • People are constantly talking about the shocking ending of the book within a show. “I was not expecting that ending. It really took me by surprise.” Are they foreshadowing the ending of the show? Or setting viewers up for disappointment?
• • On that note, they’re also constantly deriding the woman in Stephen’s book who we know to be Catherine, implying she deserves a dark fate. Consider how this impacts the way we look at Catherine. But what if the book is wrong?
• • What Almodovar film do you think the Brigstockes are excited to see on the day they find out about their son? The book’s timing is a bit different than the show but let’s presume the adaptation takes place in 2024, which means something in the mid-‘00s. 2006’s Volver fits the timeline. And it’s a masterpiece.
• • Like every tech element on this show, the score rules. It’s often very subtle but comes to the fore when it needs to, such as in the death notification scene. It’s composed by Finneas O’Connell—yes, the one who often goes by one name and is related to Billie Eilish. He’s done a few scores, but this is easily his best work to date.