When Alfonso Cuarón approached Apple with his idea to turn Renée Knight’s 2015 novel “Disclaimer” into a five-and-a-half-hour psychological thriller, he was very clear about one thing. “Don’t know [how] doing television.”
“For me, it’s a little too late in the game to start learning,” he says, recalling that first pitch as he prepares to screen “Disclaimer” at the Toronto Film Festival, following its critically acclaimed debut in Venice . Instead, Cuarón says he and stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen chose to “approach it the way I make a movie.”
And there were precedents he points to in film history for this kind of sprawling, narratively dense work; “Reds,” “1900,” “Fanny and Alexander,” “Once Upon a Time in America” and even “Twin Peaks” served as inspiration for what he hoped to achieve. Many of those films were set in the past and used historical settings full of wars and revolutions to justify their epic length.
‘Disclaimer’ is a deeply modern work that addresses contemporary concerns with the story of Catherine Ravenscroft, a veteran documentary filmmaker and journalist (Blanchett), whose chic life is turned upside down after she receives a book that threatens to expose parts of her life that she desperately wants to keep hidden. Cuarón’s series moves back and forth in time, following Catherine as she grapples with a crisis that could destroy everything she’s built, and a past encounter with Kline’s character’s deceased son, Stephen Brigstocke, a grumpy and conniving widower with a grudge. It’s a show that works as a propulsive thriller, but also as a thorny examination of prejudice and public shame.
“One aspect that was very important to me was how we perceive stories and how we create our own stories based on those stories,” Cuarón said. Variety Toronto Film Festival Studio presented by J.Crew and SharkNinja. “The whole question of story is obviously relevant in fiction. But I think now more than ever we are experiencing a period where stories are taking over. You see it more and more in politics.”
To illustrate his point, Cuarón refers to something Christiane Amanpour says during a scene in which she presents Catherine with an award and an awards ceremony: “Beware of story and form. Their power can bring us closer to the truth, but they can also be a weapon with great power to manipulate.” It’s not hard to see how this could apply to everything from the rise of authoritarianism and political extremism to the dangers of deepfake videos.
Cuarón is one of today’s most acclaimed directors, having won Oscars for ‘Roma’ and ‘Gravity’. That allowed him to build an A-list ensemble filled with actors best known for their film work. He knew Blanchett from the festival circuit and from her collaborations with fellow “three amigos” Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro G. Iñárritu on films such as “Nightmare Alley” and “Babel.”
“We discuss our laundry together,” Cuarón jokes, when asked if he’s reached out to his friends to find out more about working with Blanchett.
Then there was Kline, one of the biggest stars of the ’80s and ’90s, who hasn’t been as active in films (at least major films). “One of the sins of cinema is how neglected it has been in recent decades,” says Cuarón. For Stephen, the director wanted to cast ‘someone unexpected’. When Blanchett introduced Kline, Cuarón reflected on the enormous range the actor displayed in projects as diverse as “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Big Chill” and “A Fish Called Wanda.”
As for Baron Cohen, the “Borat” star was a longtime friend of Cuarón. “We’ve always talked about working together and… we’ve bounced ideas back and forth, but it was all comedies. So when I sent him this, he said, “Well, I’m a little discouraged because this isn’t what I do.”
“Disclaimer” reunited Cuarón with Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, his longtime cinematographer, who had been busy with other projects when it came time to film “Roma,” having operated the camera on almost all of the director’s previous films. But the staff decided to add another talent to the mix and brought in Bruno Delbonnel, a favorite of the Coen Brothers and Wes Anderson, as co-cinematographer. And while “Disclaimer” contains many of the long, fluid, almost documentary-style shots that characterize Cuarón’s previous works, those are mostly reserved for the scenes involving Blanchett. To capture Stephen’s plans and plans, Cuarón opted for tighter framing and did not let the camera run for so long. “It’s a lot of cuts,” he says.
Like ‘Y Tu Mamá También’, Cuarón’s latest version also uses a voiceover to reveal the characters’ motivations and thoughts, and to provide sly commentary on the action. But the form here takes surprising turns: Stephen’s narration has a Machiavellian flavor, while Catherine’s alternates between the narrative omniscience of the second person and a kind of third person.
“Each of these voices leads to a completely different understanding,” Cuarón said. “You approach a conversation differently depending on the voice in which and the tension you are told.”
When ‘Disclaimer’ premiered at the Venice Film Festival alongside Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Queer’ and Halina Reijn’s ‘Babygirl’, it was seen as part of a new wave of sexually progressive films and shows. For example, the series opens with a scene in which a couple has enthusiastic sex in a train carriage. Cuarón isn’t averse to eroticism, but he’s not entirely sold on the idea that “Disclaimer” is part of a revolution in on-screen sexual candor.
“Since silent cinema, we have created great works that deal with eroticism,” he says.
“Eroticism is part of humanity,” Cuarón adds. “And as long as it’s used to convey that human experience, I think it should be used and embraced.”
Creating the series proved to be a bigger struggle than Cuarón anticipated, taking him more than a year to film, partly due to COVID restrictions and delays. That was something he admits was “really exhausting” for the actors, who had to pass on other jobs to complete the project and live with their characters for much longer than they expected.
“My miscalculation is that it took a long time to shoot,” he says. “I’m not the fastest shooter in the world when I make my movies, and this was, you know, five and a half hours.”
What’s next for Cuarón after creating his version of a “Reds” or “Fanny and Alexander”?
“I would love to make a 90-minute film,” he says.