Disclaimer

disclaimer toys with moral complexity but ultimately doesn't quite commit, leaving me hooked and frustrated at the same time. i love how cuaron's stylism enriches the story with the way he drops subtle clues and trusts the audience to connect the dots. cate blanchett's performance as catherine is inxredible, as always. i truly think she's the only actor in the industry that can portray complex characters with this much depth. her ability to embody both icy detachment and the cracks beneath it kept pulling me in, even as her character's selfishness and desperation began to alienate me.  for most of the show, catherine intrigued me. she's monstrous, terrifying even, but I couldn't stop wanting to peel back the layers. as the show went on, as horrifying as the revelations were, the story felt like a test. how far could cuaron push her and still make us feel for her? i was ready to see him re-humanize her, to blur the lines between monstrous and human. instead, he reframed her coldness and cruelty through victimhood, and something about that feels cheap. the story doesn't complicate her, but explains her. that's why i think it misses an opportunity to explore a layered internal conflict and turns it into a matter of missing context.  disclaimer works best in the micro level, in the unspoken tensions between characters: the way their flaws impact their relationships. on a larger scale though, it simplifies what should've been morally ambiguous into something black abd white.