OnScreen Review: "Tár"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
So out of touch am I with the world of classical music, I was under the impression that Tár was a biopic about a real-life composer. Todd Haynes film, his first in sixteen years, set me straight early on where there is a conversation about the effects of the pandemic. Since I went in expecting a biopic, I was delightfully pleased to discover that Tár was something completely different than my expectations: a complex, character driven psychodrama.
The film opens with an extended, on-stage interview between Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) and writer/essayist Adam Gopnik. Lydia is an accomplished and world-renowned conductor; not only is she the first female conductor of a famous German Philharmonic, but she is also a EGOT winner (!?!?!?). She jets frequently back and forth from Berlin to New York, dropping in to teach aspiring musicians and composers at Juilliard, undertaking an ambitious plan to conduct an unprecedented concert at the Philharmonic, and barely maintains a family life with her wife (and first chair violinist) Sharon (Nina Hoss) and their daughter. Seemingly on top of the world and in control of all that she surveys, the film slowly reveals that appearances can be deceiving as all is not well below the surface in the world Lydia Tar has carefully crafted for herself.
One need not be a connoisseur of classical music to get into Tár, though it probably helps. What is reassuring is that the film feels like it has a mastery of its primary subject matter. From the opening scene, the film establishes that Lydia has a keen understanding of classical music and is an unparalleled master of her craft, speaking eloquently of the nuances and subtleties of composing and conducting. Her line about how a conductor controls time is just one of many inspired lines of dialogue in the opening scene with Gopnik. It is also slyly revealing of Lydia’s hubris and sense of control. She also does not suffer fools, real or perceived, as the subsequent two scenes reveal during a dinner with her banker (and amateur conductor) Eliot (Mark Strong) and when she belittles a student during her Juilliard class.
Lydia’s world is shown to be one that is highly compartmentalized, but also something of a house of cards. While there is some crossover between her work like and domestic life due to her relationship with Sharon, she keeps and maintains an apartment in Berlin that she had when she first arrived in Berlin and was still on her own. She goes there for the solitude, but it’s also suggested that this is possibly also kept as a place for affairs on the side. She also has a very close personal assistant, Francesca (Noémie Merlant), that she counts on for an exceptionally high degree of discretion with regards to her personal life. Lydia has mixed business with pleasure, and she has an over-inflated sense of her ability to maintain control of it all. She plays office politics with the best of them.
Eventually, Tár reveals itself to actually be an archetypal Greek tragedy set in the 21st century, a fall from grace of Lydia’s own making, and a carefully composed commentary on cancel culture and the grooming stories that have come out in recent years about people in positions of power. A personal relationship from the past threatens her career and she also finds herself tempted by the arrival of a Russian cellist wunderkind, Olga (Sophie Kauer). Her subtle and not-so-subtle behavior toward Olga informs the audience how it should perceive the relationship from her past that poses a threat to her carefully crafted world. Another scene where she confronts and intimidates a bully at her daughter’s school also provides an important warning about Lydia, employing the “no one will believe you over me” psychological intimidation to chilling effect.
Writer/director Todd Fields is on record as saying that he wrote the part specifically for Blanchett and that it would not have been made if she had said no. We should all be thankful that she said yes. She is in complete command as a performer in this role. It is a very demanding role, too, as it is so Lydia-centric (I believe she is in every scene). Blanchett plays the role to perfection, and it is a character few could pull off as effectively and powerfully as her. Her need for control eats away at her. During a lunch scene, she notably looks away to someone at another table eavesdropping on her conversation, almost to the point of distraction. In the midst of belittling the Juilliard student, she reaches out to stop his anxious leg bouncing up and down. When she is driving her daughter to school, an audible shaking in the vents catches her attention. As a conductor, anything out of place or out of the ordinary is palpable to her.
While the film slowly reveals who Lydia Tár truly is, it slowly unravels the character as well. The film layers in the possibility of her being haunted by her past or some kind of mental breakdown approaching. She receives a gift from an unknown person that she promptly tears to shreds and discards. She hears a woman screaming off in the distance while she is jogging. She wakes up in the middle of the night to strange noises, a metronome running for no reason. Items go missing in her home. Whether these are actually happening or not are open to interpretation, but they provide an insight into deterioration and fall. To paraphrase Hemingway, things fall apart slowly, then all at once.
Tár is expertly crafted and nothing short of a tour de force performance from Cate Blanchett; in a career full of potential career-best performances, this might actually be her career-best. I do not know how much of the previous sixteen years it took for Fields to craft this film with Blanchett in mind, but it was definitely worth every minute of it. Tár is sure to be an Oscar contender and one of the most talked about performances from one of our most gifted actresses.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
(Tár comes to theaters with a limited release on October 7th and will have a wide release on October 28th.)