Alfonso Cuaron broke through with Children of Men. Haunting with an original aesthetic. The film of an auteur. Disclaimer is much the same stylistically. Toys with camera angles, audio fades in and out, internal narratives are aired in juxtaposition. Artistic.
What disappoints here is the ending, when everything is reversed and (spoiler alert) the woman emerges as the hero and all the men are revealed as vile trash. The dead son is a rapist. The living son is a junkie. The husband is an emotional child. The old man is a vindictive would-be murderer.
It's as if Cuaron had a really good story going and then realized he had to demonize the men and make the woman their victim, so he inserted a new ending that delivered the zeitgeist-satisfying finale.
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