Oscar Season: Tár (2022)
Tár is a brilliant fake-memoir about a top conductor, played by Cate Blanchett, who falls from her pedestal because she finally succumbs under all the weight she has been carrying with her for too long.
The film opens in an unusual way. It begins with the end credits, followed by a 15-minute interview in which protagonist Lydia Tár (Blanchett) is introduced on stage at the New Yorker Festival.
We see Lydia at the height of her fame. She is adored by the interviewer and the audience. It feels like an ego-stroking contact high. Lydia has a loyal assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant), who follows her everywhere and ensures that she only has to concentrate on the most important things: being a brilliant conductor and composer.
But in the taxi on the way to the hotel and the airport, the first cracks in the facade begin to show: Lydia needs pills to sleep and there are some desperate e-mails from a former protégé who feels left out in the cold.
Back home in Berlin, Lydia’s wife Sharon (Nina Hoss) has an anxiety attack and their adopted Syrian daughter appears to be having problems at school, which Lydia immediately solves the next morning by mercilessly intimidating another girl of about ten.
It all helps to create a portrait of an ambitious, successful and ruthless career woman, who does not realize that she has risen so high that she can only go down from here.
As her predecessor at the Berliner Philharmoniker subtly points out over dinner, he spent his entire career making sure he couldn’t be faulted.
It's not that Lydia is devoid of feeling, otherwise she would never be able to deliver top artistic performances. It's more that she's gotten so used to everyone and everything giving way to her ambition, that she can't imagine people wanting to see her fall.
Still, you never get the idea that Lydia is a monster. The film makes it an open question whether she is guilty of the things she is accused of over the course of the film. Thus the enigma remains.
Lydia could be both perpetrator and victim, which creates the image of a complicated and (mostly) complete human being.
Writer and director Todd Field made a name for himself with the Oscar-nominated movies In The Bedroom (2001) and Little Children (2006). I believe that this is his best movie yet.
It is currently nominated for six Academy Awards: best picture, director, original screenplay, cinematography, editing and of course Blanchett for best actress.
All of the nominations are richly deserved and Blanchett could win even though Michelle Yeoh is seen as the favorite for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Tár is many things. It’s about power and the things people do to get and keep it. There are elements of social satire, and it is definitely made in the time of cancel culture. But most of the time Field plays it straight: it is a visually splendid character study that happens to take place in the world of classical music.
Music is ofcourse important to the movie, but the use of sound, often in unquieting ways, is even more instrumental to the whole production.
The promise of a live recording of Mahler’s No. 5 runs as a red herring through the film, but in the end the preparation is more important than the actual performance.
But that’s not really a criticism, but just the way the story plays out. The movie is entirely worth the 158 minutes it takes to tell it. Five stars.
Note: Tár (2022) is or has been in general release in most of the world. This week it opens in Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden, followed next week by Norway and Taiwan.