The Apple TV + Series “Disclaimer” and Its Relevance in This Trumpian Time
In fiction there is a technique referred to as an “unreliable narrator.”Although it is not used as often in films or on TV, the recent seven-part Apple TV+ series ‘Disclaimer” pivots around this method. It is crucial to the series, and the full brunt of the unreliable narrator is fully revealed only in the final episode—each of the seven episodes vary from 43 to 56 minutes. (Whether this volte-face is convincingly presented or not is most significant; but despite a few nagging doubts, I think it is.)
In the series, much of what we see in the first six episodes is taken from a book written by Nancy Brigstocke, excellently portrayed in early episodes, before her death, by Lesley Manville. (The whole cast are first-rate, especially Cate Blanchett as Catherine, Kevin Kline as Nancy’s husband, Stephen, and Sacha Baron Cohen [of Borat fame] as Catherine’s husband, Robert. )
The basic story hinges around a series of events that occurred about 20 years earlier when Catherine and her pre-school son Nicholas were on vacation in Italy. The boy’s father (and Catherine's husband) had been there also, but for business reasons Robert had to fly back to London. Also at that same Italian vacation spot was Jonathan, son of Stephen and Nancy Brigstocke. Originally there with his girlfriend, but she also left earlier than planned.
Cate Blanchett
Where the “unreliable narrator” comes into play is that not long after these vacation happenings, Jonathan’s mother writes a novel, The Perfect Stranger, about that time and place involving her son Jonathan and the young mother Catherine. At the time of Nancy Brigstocke’s death from cancer, the novel is only in manuscript form; but her husband discovers it, along with some erotic pictures of Catherine that Jonathan took, and has the novel published under a pseudonym. He also sends a copy to Catherine. And in Episode 2 he provides her husband, Robert, with a copy (as well as duplicates of the erotic photos)—he also delivers the novel to her son, Nicholas.
In Episode 3 Robert reads parts of the book, but before doing so the knowing series narrator tells us that Robert “knows that whatever he’s about to read has happened.”
Although Catherine objects that the work is fiction, Robert (and many of the viewers of the series) are caught up in the novel’s narration, and when erotic sexual scenes between Catherine and Jonathan are shown in Episodes 2 and 3, they are taken as truthful.
In an interview on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” the director of the series, two-time-Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón, emphasized the importance of narratives in our lives, that we’re invaded by and addicted to narratives, and it’s very difficult to operate in such a world. For narratives might have no correlation with truth. The director added that politicians sometimes created false narratives and manipulated people. And he gave as an example the recent Republican claim that immigrants [in Springfield, Ohio] were eating cats and dogs.
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The recent presidential campaign of Donald Trump—and his election to another presidential term—brings the whole problem of narratives and truth into the headlights. But already in 2017, very early in Trump’s first presidential terms, I emphasized the issue in “Where Are the Truth-seekers?” The essay began, “In our contentious political times, we are either pro-Trump or anti-Trump. Sincere truth-seekers are rare. The rot starts at the top. A recent New Yorker article noted: ‘Trump has brought to the White House bully pulpit a disorienting habit of telling lies, big and small, without evident shame.’”
In 2018, my LA Progressive (LAP) essay “Trump’s Lies vs. Truth’s Defense” again took up the issue of false claims and narratives vs. Truth, and in the 2020 election year, my “In This Election Year We Historians Need to Insist on Truth-telling” appeared on the History News Network. It quoted one source that declared that even before becoming president in 2017, Trump’s goal “was to annihilate the distinction between truth and falsity . . . to overwhelm people with misinformation and disinformation.”
More recently, the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has created new concerns about distinguishing truth from false narratives. A little over a year ago, on this LAP site, I quoted a PBS Newshour segment on AI in which Martin Baron, outgoing editor of The Washington Post, said, “the fact that the public can't agree on a common set of facts and can't agree on how to even establish that something is a fact is clearly the biggest challenge that we [journalists] face.”
Finally, just a few weeks ago on LA Progressive, I cited a Washington Post fact-checking team’s conclusion that during his earlier presidency Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims. With his new presidency soon to start, as well as with the growing influence of social media (including Trump’s ally, Elon Musk’s X) and the continuing strong influence of Fox News, truth is more precarious than ever. Thus, “Disclaimer” and its director Cuarón provide an important reminder of just how crucial narratives can be—and that they can often be false.
But besides that reminder, and the excellent acting and directing, there is also much more to like about this seven-episode series. Partly because I don’t want to reveal “spoilers” that will deprive viewers of the constant suspense of the series’s episodes, I’ll limit my revelations. But Nancy Brigstocke’s death from cancer has already been mentioned, and coping with death is an underlying motif in the series.
Especially convincing as someone who copes badly is Kevin Kline playing her husband Stephen. Symbolizing this coping failure is his attire—he often goes around wearing his long-dead wife’s misfitting sweater. He also becomes convinced that Catherine is evil and sets out to hurt her and her family in various possible ways. (It should be mentioned that the young Catherine on vacation in Italy is played by a convincing Leila George, and the continuity, or lack thereof, between her and the later Catherine as portrayed by Cate Blanchett is important for the series. Throughout the first six episodes, one has some doubts about the similarities between the erotic young Catherine and the career-focused—and more icy—later Catherine, who is an award-winning documentarian and journalist. But the surprising revelations in Episode 7 force us to rethink our previous doubts.) Stephen’s various plots to hurt Catherine and her family provide much of the series’s suspense.
Besides dealing with death (and the nature of such sinister actions as those of Stephen), marital strains and family dynamics are other motifs handled well in the series. Robert’s belief and discovery that Catherine may have cheated on him two decades earlier is especially important. And many episodes deal with the consequences of his reading The Perfect Stranger and examining the erotic photos that Stephen passed on to him. (Married viewers can only wonder how they would deal with the probability that their spouse once cheated on them.)
Besides the strains placed on the marriage of Catherine and Robert, their relationship with their son Nicholas, who has drug and other problems, is also important. So too is Stephen’s intention to hurt Catherine by harming Nicholas, which he attempts to do by various methods.
Everything considered, “Disclaimer” is well worth watching and thought-provoking. As to the problem of false narratives and truth, political and otherwise, there are no easy answers. But a start would be reading the column of Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post, “Democrats need to reclaim reality from the right-wing disinformation machine.” In it she states, “Donald Trump was returned to power by the most badly informed electorate in modern American history. . . . Pro-democracy funders would do well to organize a comprehensive study of the right-wing ecosystem and its impact on the electorate. Then they can support fact-based local media, help recruit new media influencers, sponsor nonprofit investigative journalism and construct well-moderated social media platforms. Getting the truth out to the wider electorate will require a new, culturally relevant media ecosystem firmly rooted in liberal democratic values.”
The present “ecosystem” she writes of goes far beyond traditional newspapers, magazines, and television, and includes podcasts and all kinds of Internet social media disseminators and speakers—influencers about which many of us older progressives know too little.
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the Hollywood Progressive.
