We stayed up late last night to watch all four of the remaining episodes of Disclaimer*, so I rose late-ish and — with a view to letting my leg muscles have some respite — I had a walk-run-walk morning miles. I would job a few steps, maybe run a few, but slow to a walk as soon as any muscle, joint, or anything felt stressed. I don’t like deviating from my usual pattern, but (especially as I begin to acknowledge my age) it seems worth treating my body a bit more gently than I have been.
As to Disclaimer*, Margaret and I agree that there’s a lot there to think about; it warrants taking seriously, whether one admires it or not. Many of the details we had picked up became relevant in credible ways, and although we had picked up the wavelength of the plot twist, the way it played out was still gripping. And Cate Blanchett gets a devastating line toward the end (though overall, the ending sails a bit close to ‘pat’, given the strength and imagination of the rest of the series). Being an old clergyman, I was impressed by the amount of very direct sexual content; remember, I grew up watching television sitcoms wherein married couples always had twin beds. While on one hand, I’m inclined to think that there must have been a way to make the cinematic point without veering so close to the pornographic, I can see arguments both cultural (so much sexual content in visual arts, one has to push the boundary in contexts where the sex is integral to the point) and narrative (a great deal of the series’s force hinges on the effect of watching, or squinting at while averting a direct gaze, the sexual passages) for Cuarón’s decision, but it made for some extremely awkward watching.
And as I say, in the end the provocation was much less about the sex scenes than about the project itself. We found many, many subtleties and grace notes and a range of deeply affecting dimensions of the project, along with moments of clunkiness and very intense sex. Though it’s difficult to execute a seven-hour thriller without characters making some con convincingly dumb decisions, Cuarón allowed only a few. Cate Blanchett is tremendous. Kevin Kline always reminds me of my wish that he appeared in more films; he did a great job with a role that slid occasionally into the over-egged. Sacha Baron Cohen aptly conveyed a feckless husband/father, and Lesley Manville reaches a peak as Kline’s wife. And the number of resonant themes the series invokes (the question of truth, parent-child relationships, marriages, and others I’m deliberately omitting) add up to a series that one can either fault for not doing everything well, or celebrate for having dome so much so well, and we definitely opt for the latter.