The true 'Disclaimer' of the new series from Apple TV+ was already done by its screenwriter and director, Alfonso Cuarón, when he admitted at the Venice Film Festival - as if it were a matter of pride - that he doesn't know how to do television. "And probably at this point in my life, it is too late to learn how to do it," he added.

The Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker (Roma, Gravity) has made "a seven-hour movie". What does he mean exactly by that, you may ask? Does it mean that he approached the filming in a cinematic way? The answer is yes, and that doesn't make it special. Many series are shot artistically and technically like movies, without the form affecting the substance and ceasing to be an episodic narrative.

The problem here lies in that Disclaimer is, literally, a long movie, and by long I mean elongated.

"I read Renée Knight's book and immediately in my mind I saw a movie, but it was too long." His solution was to make it even longer, how? according to him, by being inspired by "his predecessors, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, David Lynch, and Krzysztof Kieślowski".

Based on the result, he simply did this by putting filler in between. Believe me when I tell you that you can watch the first two episodes and skip to the seventh (if by then you are curious) and at no point will you feel like you have missed something.

Not even the pleasure of seeing Cate Blanchett on screen for a longer period of time.

The two-time Oscar winner plays Catherine Ravenscroft here, a documentarian whom we meet the night she receives an important award for her work at a gala where she is the honoree.

That same night, Catherine opens an envelope that has arrived in her name, in which there is a mysterious book that she starts reading immediately to discover horrified that it recounts, in astonishing detail, her most hidden secrets. Those she has never told anyone.

You might think that part of the mystery of this psychological thriller will be to discover who sent the book, but no. We know that from the beginning: a man full of resentment with a stinky cardigan who wants to avenge Catherine because he blames her for the indirect deaths of his son and his wife. "I was the one who was going to destroy her real life, but first she had to suffer, like Nancy and I suffered."

We hear this in voiceover, because this story, in addition to being elongated, has voiceovers. There are series and movies that we cannot conceive without their voiceover. In this case, they come from the original material, but there are many moments where they feel redundant or simply unnecessary, because the actions are eloquent on their own.

Disclaimer may be more satisfying in its original form, the novel. In the series, although "beautiful to watch", as it had Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel as cinematographers, it becomes, and I can't find a better way to describe it: unbearable.

I believe that not even the certainty of seeing Cate Blanchett (and two cats) in every episode compensates for the grandiose and false transcendence airs of Cuarón. Or how unbearable and unpleasant the rest of the characters played by Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Kodi Smit-McPhee are.

"I really feel sorry for the actors, because they were stuck with the characters for too long," Cuarón said at the Venice press conference, mentioning that the filming lasted a year. One year. Blanchett laughed, saying they are "still recovering." If you decide to watch the entire Disclaimer, I hope the same doesn't happen to you.

*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence