Disclaimer
Disclaimer is a complex show about how we as individuals and as a society apportion blame and deal with our own trauma. With these weighty subjects it feels as if at times it's fighting with itself by using cheap gimmickry. The main stumbling block which you surprisingly do indeed get used to is the voiceovers. Kevin Kline and Cate Blanchett both narrate their inner thoughts in the first person. Which, can sometimes be annoying, sometimes enlightening, and sometimes humorous. The problem is the second person narration done by Indira Varma in, one can only assume, the worst echo chamber ever conceived for recording in the history of mankind. Indira acts as narrator for Cate Blanchett's character Catherine Ravenscroft at the beginning of the miniseries while she narrates for Kevin Kline's character Stephen Brigstocke at the end, and an inconsequential bit inbetween for Catherine's husband Robert played by Sacha Baron Cohen. The shift is when Catherine reclaims her voice and faces her trauma while Stephen retreats into himself after realizing his horrible misapprehension. So, kind of cliched, but if the sound hadn't been so bad it would have kind of worked. But this show is just a mess in all things auditory. Horrible music choices are clashing and drowning out dialogue. Everything is just cacophonous. And if it was done on purpose to be more "real" well, "real" here doesn't equal enjoyable. Yes, programing should challenge the viewers, but intellectually, not physically. Plus, the way the cats just roam free and do whatever they want is delightful and gives the show a realness without any pain. In fact, while Kevin Kline could easily get an Emmy for this, the three cats are the stars. I mean, why aren't these cats credited on IMDb!?! I need to know who they are, what their names are, and what other things they have starred in. And again, the cats ground it in reality unlike the nauseating handheld camera work whenever Catherine Ravenscroft's husband Robert is the focal point. We don't care about Robert. And we sure as hell don't want to see him if that janky camerawork is coming. The sound, the camera, the voiceovers, all these are just amateurish and then you watch Kevin Kline and he's so amazing you kind of forget the bad and focus on the good. He sets out to destroy Catherine Ravenscroft's life because he believes that she is the reason his son died in Italy twenty years previously. And the thing is, he's right, in the bigger picture, but he gets the details so wrong and while combating the trauma of losing his son and then his wife to Cancer he foists all the blame on Catherine. Whom he destroys. Utterly. And this destruction is a joy to behold. You WANT him to succeed. He plays a kind, doddering, old man to get close to Catherine's husband and son. He creates a finsta to push her son over the edge. And each shift starts subtle and blooms into that mischievous grin that hasn't changed in over forty years. Damn, I've missed Kevin Kline! But when he realizes that truth. When Cate Blanchett delivers the real truth bomb in the final episode, you see why she has two Oscars. They play and fight off against each other across a shitty kitchen table and it's the meeting of two acting geniuses. But I think Kevin Kline gets the last gutpunch in when he realizes the trauma his son inflicted on Catherine and he, in turn, spares her son. That hospital bedside scene should be studied as a masterwork. This series though? Is kind of a mixed bag of perfection and amateurism, much like life itself.
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