The act of being silenced isn’t one that’s always easily seen. Often, the silence isn’t coming from a physical place, but from a trauma that forces one to feel like they need to keep things unspoken. Such is the conflict at the center of Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple TV+ limited series “ Disclaimer ,” which streamed its final episode this past Sunday.
In the show, Cate Blanchett ‘s journalist/documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft is confronted with a past dalliance that resulted in the death of a young man. While initially, we are led to believe Catherine courted this boy, the series finale reveals that it was he who went after her and that he in fact sexually assaulted her at knifepoint. “I felt very strongly, as did Alfonso, that we didn’t want to trick the audience,” Blanchett said in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter regarding the finale’s twist.
“That the truth, as is so often, is hiding in plain sight. And the way in which we avoid acknowledging it reveals a lot about who we are. So it was to allow the audience to confront perhaps the way they absorb narratives or information or stories, or whether they like or dislike the actions of a character that they’re watching and who they naturally would side with, and that they can sit comfortably uncomfortable in those unexamined prejudicial points of view that I guess we all naturally have.
If they were to go back and watch a second time, they might be able to see, rather than someone who is no.
