“You’re managing the idea of me having been violated by someone far more easily than the idea of that someone bringing me pleasure. It’s almost like you — you’re relieved that I was raped. And I just…Sorry, I…I don’t know how to forgive that.”

Catherine Ravenstock is talking to her soon-to-be ex-husband Robert in the hospital waiting room, while their son Nicholas recuperates from his stroke nearby. She’s explaining to him that despite his contrition over having falsely accused her of infidelity is, in its way, worse than the accusation itself. So long as she could be blamed for the crime of enjoying herself illicitly, he could stay angry. One he finds out that she was merely brutalized for three and a half hours by a knife-wielding stranger, he can love her again. And that’s not a love Catherine Ravenstock wants. 

But Catherine isn’t just talking to Robert. She’s talking to the audience.

I reviewed the finale of Disclaimer for Decider. I thought it was very good.

Her son is on death’s door. Her husband won’t spend more than two seconds in her company and refuses to listen to a word he says. The man who’s ruined her life has more access to her child than she does. But Catherine Ravenstock is a storyteller by trade, and her story is going to get told, one way or the other.

So she flips the script on Stephen. She breaks into his house, violating his personal space, to let him know what really happened. (The rattling we keep hearing in the background of her flashbacks is actually his malfunctioning freezer, which has been on the fritz since before Jonathan’s death.) Writer-director-creator Alfonso Cuarón shoots her in blazing white light, like an alien visitation. I think that’s a key visual indicator, personally. I think she’s an avatar of the truth.

I reviewed this week’s Disclaimer for Decider.

Now please forgive me as I say something corny: The real star of the show is the camera. Disclaimer is stupidly lovely to look at, a rejoinder to anyone who says all TV is color-graded digital shit. Watch how the light shifts from grey to gold when Nicholas receives the DM that proves his new friend Jonathan died years ago, echoed several scenes later as Stephen stands in his house pondering what he’s done to the young man. Look at the bright grey rainy afternoon light seeping into Stephen’s house when Catherine comes calling, demanding for him to listen to her side of the story. (For our sake I hope he acquiesces!) For crying out loud, look at how well-lit the dinner scene is. It’s not a big orange glow, there are actual light sources, there’s contrast, there’s shadow…this is basic stuff, but it’s worth calling out. 

I reviewed this week’s Disclaimer for Decider. Maybe next week I’ll review Decider for Disclaimer.

All of this is set against some of the most astonishing gorgeous ocean cinematography I’ve seen in my life. From Children of Men to Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón has long been a “Where does he get those wonderful toys?” director, pushing the envelope of everything from long takes to IMAX. What I don’t know about how he does what he does could fill a book. But man, all that time with the cameras in the water, lit so brightly by the sun that you want to squint just from looking at it on your television, capturing actual nuanced human expression at the same time as conveying the backbreaking, breath-shortening labor of bringing even a child back to shore through rough seas…it’s a technological marvel is what it is, grim though what it’s showing us may be.

I reviewed episode four of Disclaimer for Decider.

Disclaimer does two very worthwhile things here: It finds the big red button marked SEXUAL AROUSAL and the big black button labeled GRIEF and leans on both of them as hard as it possibly can. This is almost certainly bound to displease the segment of the audience that can handle the tearjerking but not the regular jerking, and vice versa. It’s a big risk, in short. Why else watch television? Why else make television?

I reviewed episode three of Disclaimer for Decider.

I’m sitting here trying to collect my thoughts on the sexual confidence of Catherine Ravenscroft. Young Catherine Ravenscroft, that is, the one played by Leila George on the Italian seaside on a fateful day years ago. I’m trying to capture the confidence with which she approaches, discomfits, flirts with, and effectively seduces smitten young amateur photographer Jonathan Brigstocke before so much as touching him. The best I can come up with is this:

She approaches this young man from the sea with the towering swagger of the invincible.

I reviewed the second episode of Disclaimer for Decider.

Displaying many of the visual and storytelling strengths brought to his acclaimed and (it’s fair to say) beloved films across an array of genres — coming-of-age, fantasy, autofiction, science fiction, literary adaptation — creator/writer/director Alfonso Cuarón’s Disclaimer grabs your attention right from the outset. I don’t mean because it opens with a sex scene, although yes, that too. I mean that each of these opening scenes is a thing worthwhile in itself — the variety in the tone of the performances and color palettes and emotional tone across the three storylines, all of them executed to a nicety. 

I’m covering the new show Disclaimer on Apple TV+ for Decider, starting with my review of the first episode.