Cate Blanchett and Alfonso Cuarón on the Shocking Twist at the End of ‘Disclaimer’: ‘I Just Wanted to Get It Off My Chest’

variety.com:

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from “VII,” the finale of “Disclaimer,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

The final beats of “Disclaimer” utterly upend what had come before. Up to this point, we’re given to believe that Stephen (Kevin Kline) is on a misguided but fundamentally fact-based mission to avenge the death of his son, Jonathan; his belief is that Catherine (Cate Blanchett), whom he is stalking, had allowed his son to drown after the pair had a romantic liaison on vacation in Italy years before.

His vision of events — shared with his late wife Nancy — exists in a novel Nancy wrote, one that Stephen has wielded as a cudgel to ruin Catherine’s reputation within her family and in her professional life as a documentarian.

Jonathan did die in Catherine’s presence, but what evidence Stephen has is misleading; as Catherine explains to Stephen, in a stunning sequence that took days to film, she had been systematically assaulted by Jonathan over hours, and has been carrying with her not only the shock of Jonathan’s death and the guilt that he died in trying to rescue the son she’d allowed into the sea unattended, but also the trauma of an assault.