‘Disclaimer’ Episode 6 Review: Cate Blanchett Fights for Her Truth (Finally) — Spoilers
[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Disclaimer” Episode 6 (“VI”). For other coverage, read IndieWire’s previous episode reviews and spoiler-free full-season review.]
And she speaks.
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After five increasingly fishy episodes featuring everyone’s version of what happened in Italy except for the two people who were actually there (three people, if you count Nicholas), “Disclaimer” Episode 6 (“VI”) opens with Catherine (Cate Blanchett) finally sharing her version of events. It also, literally and purposefully, starts with three telling words: “The truth is.” Immediately, not only do we hear directly from Catherine (with Blanchett providing narration over the character’s fateful trip to Italy), but writer-director Alfonso Cuarón frames her story as the truth — not a book written by a grieving mother, not a set of photographs taken by her dead son, but the truth, straight from a primary source.
Catherine’s sun-baked vision of the past, visiting many of the same locations seen in the book, loses a bit of its color in this telling. There’s less vibrancy to the hotel bar, less of a rosy tint to the beach, and less romanticism entirely. A cloudy shimmer dulls the morning when Robert leaves his wife and son, and a darkness lingers over Catherine (Leila George) as she takes her glass of wine back to her room, refusing to engage with Jonathan’s (Louis Partridge) silent advances. She is alone, and she didn’t want to be. She is “unsettled,” as she puts it in the opening line, and even if she weren’t, there’s no harm in feeling flattered by a young man’s advances.
“Did I flirt with him when I saw him looking?” Catherine asks. “I don’t think that I did. But I have to admit that little smile, that little connection, it did give me a boost.”
The implications of that statement, whatever they may be, won’t be revealed until next week’s finale, but after randomly cutting to Catherine’s explanation of what happened in Italy throughout Episode 6, the ending does explain who she’s talking to and under what circumstances. Catherine has had enough. She’s done waiting for Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline) to sit down with her. Instead, she shows up in his backyard, late at night, holding a knife. She’s going to force him to listen — to finally listen — and it seems safe to assume that she’s been speaking to him all episode while narrating her flashbacks.
“Now I can start,” Catherine says, having just slapped Stephen in the face and gulped down the tea he’s poisoned with sleeping pills. “It’s time for my voice to be heard.”
Will it be? Can she get out what needs to be said before the drugs kick in? Can she convince this vindictive old man to leave her alone — to leave her son alone — once and for all? And, perhaps most importantly, should he? Does Catherine deserve the fate that’s befallen her? Or is she the misunderstood– check that, the unheard victim she’s always claimed to be? Tune in next week! But for now, let’s determine who to trust by deciphering “Disclaimer’s” narrative, one last time.
Stephen
In case Stephen’s bone-crushing heel-turn last week wasn’t clear enough, his monstrous behavior continues in Episode 6. It wasn’t that Stephen was always trustworthy, but he successfully courted sympathy for nearly half the series. His son died before reaching the age of 20. His wife died after icing Stephen out for many of her final, bitter, angry years. His job was basically a torture chamber — surrounded by kids who didn’t appreciate how lucky they were to be alive, to have a future, unlike his own child — and his own end was creeping up on Stephen without ceremony. Before the photos and the book, he was a pitiful figure, preparing to quietly rot, entombed in a house of painful memories.
Now, he’s filled a syringe with drain cleaner and plans to inject it into a comatose drug addict. Somehow, in Stephen’s trauma-riddled mind, his revenge can’t be complete unless Catherine suffers exactly “the way Nancy and I did.” If that means killing her son, so be it, and it very much appears to mean that as we head into the finale.
Setting aside the basic logic that insists anyone who went through what Stephen went through should never, ever wish a similar fate upon anyone, it’s still shocking to see just how aware of his actions the distraught, disturbed old man remains. Via voiceover, he admits to knowing that Nancy’s book isn’t entirely true. “She played around with some facts, of course,” he says. “That is what writers do.” Then, in flashbacks, we see him listening in on a pair of incriminating phone calls.
First, before Jonathan’s death, Nancy (Lesley Manville) gets a call from his girlfriend’s mother, Emma. While it’s unclear exactly what was said, the other parent’s claims infuriate Nancy, who accuses Sasha of “exaggerating” her “very extreme” claims. After hanging up in fury, Nancy refuses to tell Stephen what really made Sasha abandon their vacation early. In the book, her aunt died, but Stephen knows that’s not true. He suspects the real reason is something he doesn’t want to know, given Sasha never spoke to the Brigstockes after that trip. Even when Nancy tried to call and tell her that Jonathan was dead, there was no returned call, no sympathy gifts, no funeral attendance. Whatever sent Sasha running from Jonathan had to be bad enough that she didn’t feel any sorrow or guilt over his death.
Do you remember who else doesn’t feel any sorrow or guilt over Jonathan’s death? Who said she “wanted him to die”? Catherine, of course. Might Catherine and Sasha have suffered the same fate?
Despite all this, Stephen still defends his wife’s story, along with his own actions driven by it. “The book was a work of fiction, but it released the truth from its ballast, allowing it to float up to the surface.” If that’s true, then why does Stephen have to keep lying? Sure, he probably needs to lie in order to get away with murder, but why not let the truth set him free instead? He almost killed Nicholas already, using the narrative Nancy cooked up, and letting it sit and simmer with a troubled kid who already hates his mom isn’t likely to improve matters. But he feels an urgency to act, and his lust for vengeance is completely out of control.
Watching Stephen practice asking to see Nicholas is agonizing. Using his frailest voice, he hunches over and shakes slightly, miming harmless enfeeblement to seem all the less suspicious to the hospital staff. To make sure he gets it right, he studies himself in a mirror. How does he not see what he’s become? How can he not see what he’s become? Why is it so hard, sometimes, to see the truth staring us straight in the face?
“Disclaimer” would have us believe that hurt people hurt people. Stephen is suffering, and he’s been suffering for so long that he’s become it, and it’s become him. Whether that explanation seems a little far-fetched when Stephen is filling his syringe with Draino, well, that’s up to you, dear reader. But the series isn’t hiding who he is. Not anymore. He’s a hitman, and he’s not to be trusted.
Trust Level: 0/10
Robert
Jesus Christ, Robert. Can you do one friggin’ thing right and not invite a sad, demented old man to meet your son while he’s still at the hospital and, oh yeah, still in a coma?!
I’m sorry, maybe Robert deserves a more nuanced examination at this stage of “Disclaimer,” but I don’t think he’s developed or deepened since Episode 4. That’s not a criticism of the series — there are more important characters to focus on, and Cuarón acknowledges as much by having Stephen label Robert “an irrelevant dimwit” — but it is why I’m sticking with my earlier, abbreviated prognosis: This dude sucks.
Trust Level: 0/10
Catherine
Catherine doesn’t just tell the truth in Episode 6. She acts on it. Done giving her family space, done hiding out at her mother’s house, done letting Stephen Brigstocke dictate the terms of how her story is told, Catherine finally takes control. She storms into her home, waking up a sleeping (hungover) Robert and insisting they find their troubled son. She takes the lead at the hospital, talking to the doctors and sitting bedside with her boy. She doesn’t care about her previously avoided phone calls from HR — this time, they inform her of an investigation and forced time off — because she’s laser-focused on what matters: her son.
Most striking, of course, is when Catherine physically fights back. She doesn’t waste any time pushing Stephen away from her son, and she doesn’t let any sense of decorum or deference stop her from knocking him into a trash bin (where he belongs). Was she spurred on by the anguished mother she watched earlier, screaming in agony as her son was wheeled into emergency care and the rest of the waiting room looked on? Perhaps. Or perhaps, as she says herself, she doesn’t care about any of that anymore. All she cares about is Nicholas.
And after the encounter at the hospital, it’s clear she needs to pay a visit to Stephen in order to protect her son. So she does. And when he makes a crass remark about how “remarkable” his wife was for “writing so convincingly about so many things without having been there when they happened,” she smacks him across the face. Hard. Seeing the mix of shock, trepidation, and genuine hurt flash across Stephen’s oft-smug mug is surprisingly satisfying. It’s hard to argue with action and, in Episode 6, there’s no reason to doubt what Catherine does or why she does it. It’s all happening in the present, and everything in the present is depicted as a shared reality. Catherine and Stephen are playing things out together, from her first message left on his answering machine to her open-handed message lodged on his left cheek.
She’s set the tone. Catherine is talking now. And we’re going to hear her out.
Trust Level: 8/10
Grade: B
“Disclaimer” is available on Apple TV+. The finale will be released Friday, November 8.
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