The world famous conductor Lydia Tár is breathing strangely in the wings. As she inhales and exhales forcefully with tiny staccato bursts of her facial muscles, the image of a rock star hopping in place, self-hyping before their concert is conjured. Will Tár's elite audience devolve into hysterical screaming teenagers at the first sight of her?
Conductor as rock star? It's a rare and incredulous notion. Gone are the days of monoculture when a "Maestro" like Leonard Bernstein (emphatically name checked) could become a household name. But in Todd Field's TÁR we believe it, surely in part because one of the most famous movie stars in the world is playing her. In the year of our lord 2022, Cate Blanchett needs no introduction; Lydia Tár is a different story, and her introduction -- an exhausting recitation of her many diverse accomplishments as she turns 50 -- is a doozy...
Despite the hoopla we're not here for a concert, but an on-stage interview. Nevertheless two points are boldy and quickly made: Lydia Tár is a rock star in the rarified world of classical music; Lydia Tár is an absolute believer in her own hype.
By the time the title card comes up, putting TÁR in all caps feels exactly right. Lydia would demand it.
As the interview progresses, the maestro waxes profoundly and charismatically about Time. She thinks of the conductor (i.e. herself) as, essentially, the God of it. While her words have both a poetic beauty and the ring of aesthetic truth, they feel like a blasphemous dare. Even the way she jokes about herself, self-identifying as a "U-Haul lesbian", is double-edged, amusing but off-putting from the rehearsed self-deprecation masking her narcissism.
The next time we see Lydia with a large audience the scene is even more loaded with the kind of inexorable dread you'd more normally associate with a horror film than a character-based drama about a classical musician. As a guest instructor at Juilliard she becomes annoyed with a student about his disinterest in the great composers because they're "old white men" and attempts rather forcefully to browbeat him into appreciative submission. When that doesn't work she shifts tactics 'Would he want to be judged solely based on his ethnicity once he enters the musical profession?' Her words are convincing until they aren't; she takes it too far belittling his intelligence and 'social media based personality' in front of his classmates who are as offended as he is.
We have every reason to believe that Lydia Tár is the great and influential conductor the movie posits her as. But she's also definitely an asshole. And why is she tempting fate at the peak of her career? Even before Lydia begins to unravel, we can feel it coming. The film's haunting sound work (featuring a score by Oscar winner Hildur Guðnadóttir along with many classical pieces) foreshadows that something awful is around the corner as Lydia hears noises on occassion that feel almost supernatural in their irregularity and origins. A conductor can stop the music with a simple gesture but Time is no one's plaything. It doesn't stop and Lydia's peak cannot last. Once you've reached the top of the world, there's only one way to go.
Surprisingly virtually no one who has followed her long career, Cate Blanchett is up to the task of this incredibly demanding role. Lydia is both a feminist trailblazer and monstrously self-serving, especially when it comes to her career ambitions and sexual conquests. It's a towering and daringly confident performance, perched on a razor's edge between legitimate genius and emperor's new clothes hollowness. Blanchett's work is so robust she allows you to lean towards either interpretation or accept that all of your conflicted feelings about Lydia are earned. She's a recognizably human mess of contradictions underneath the tailored suits and elite sophistication.
Still, for all the bouquets and hosannas that will be tossed Blanchett's way it's worth noting how masterfully Todd Field sets her up for success. His world building specificity, inspired choice of craft collaborators, and sensititivity to performance provide the sturidest springboards for the cast. TÁR may be Cate's show, but it's no solo. The supporting players including Nina Hoss as Lydia's complicit wife, Noemi Merlant as her longsuffering assistant, Allan Corduner as the thorn in her side, Sophie Kauer as a new cellist she lusts after, and Julian Glover as her mentor are all marvelous.
Field's screenplay, too, is a thing of ingenious construction. That intro we began with, Lydia breathing in the wings, is recalled perfectly in an alarming pivot point when Lydia behaves more like a feral animal uncaged than a rock star emerging from behind a curtain
Nevertheless to call Tár a "downfall" movie is wildly simplistic. It also feels reductive to describe it thematically as a response to current social conversations about "grooming" (not quite in regards to age -- they're all adults here -- so much as power imbalances and sexual ethics), "cancel culture", generational shifts around identity, and the never-ending battle about when and why and how to separate the art from the artist. In short, TÁR is loaded with ideas and provocations.
At 158 minutes this challenging barrage won't be for everyone and Field risks overstuffing the picture. But risks can also bring rewards. His duet with Blanchett is so suffused with fine scene work, thrilling performance flourishes, and impressively thorny ideas that the film flies by. Even the arguably meandering epilogue brings new understanding if not resolution to Lydia's undoing. The maestro fashioned herself a master of time until her time was up. But the most satifsying takeaway when it comes to the clock might be how willfully Todd Field has bent it in his favor to start anew. Despite vanishing from the cinema after just two features (In the Bedroom, Little Children) his third film, fourteen years later, might well be his best. At the very least its inarguably his most ambitious. Lydia herself, so hard to please and opinionated about ART, would approve. A-