The finest orchestras in the world are filled with musicians skilled and fortified with a lifetime of practice and discipline who play their instruments to the peak of perfection; but who plays the orchestra? In a long dialogue that opens Tár – Todd Field’s first movie in sixteen years – the titular Lydia Tár (a ferocious, unconscionably good Cate Blanchett) explains what it is she’s doing as one of the world’s foremost orchestra conductors. If you wanted to be reductive, you could say she is a human metronome, but with the power of keeping time also comes the power of controlling it, she explains to an eager interviewer (Adam Gopnick, playing himself). And with that control, an abundance of decisions must be made and a wealth of opportunities await. In his first film since 2006’s Little Children, Field tries his own hand at controlling time, crafting an intense, meticulous, oftentimes hilarious portrait of an enigmatic artist forced to confront the mortality of her own prestige.
Cate Blanchett, herself an artistic master with an imposing reputation, gets perhaps the meatiest role of her career in Lydia Tár. She’s not only in every scene of this stellar but taxing 158-minute movie, but Field gives her no breaks, supplying the Australian actress with lengthy monologues and persistent, ever-growing inner turmoil. Tár is an EGOT-winning composer, about to complete the Mahler symphonies by performing his fifth with the Berlin Philharmonic, the first ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra. In accordance with this event is the release of her much anticipated book, “Tár on Tár”, filled with her many musings, both humorous and severe. Listening to her talk for a few minutes, you can see how casually – and lethally – she can transfer between the two.
She lives in Berlin with her wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss), who is also the first chair violin player in her orchestra. They have an adopted daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic), who worships Lydia and makes little orchestras with her stuffed animals. She keeps a separate apartment in town for isolated work purposes, mainly tinkering with her own theoretical symphony that never seems to materialize. Her main focus is on Mahler’s Fifth, and perfecting it in time for a performance meant to be the crescendo (oof, sorry for the pun) on a monumental career. Her dedicated assistant and protege, Francesca (Noémie Merlant), keeps her on time, schedules her rehearsals and meetings, and more than anything, keeps crises at bay. One such crisis is the continued messages received from one of Lydia’s former students, an at-one-time exciting young talent who has grown disillusioned and has been harassing Lydia and Francesca through email. Lydia chooses to completely ignore it, and advises Francesca to do the same.
Like most great films, the less you know about the plot the better, but Tár is defiant in its construction, undoing expectations and challenging the audience with its unorthodox first act (in a daring move, Field puts the entire bank of credits at the start of the film). To the degree that there even is a standard plot, it does not begin until nearly an hour into the proceedings, forming nebulously, patiently putting itself into place with exacting detail. With editor Monika Willi, Field crafts the film like a metronome (a metaphor that’s shown literally in the film without ever being pretentious), imperceptibly getting faster and faster, before all control is lost. As it unfolds, the script evolves from an indefinite sprawl into a rigid suspense, as the walls of protection Lydia has built begin to fall around her with stunning speed.
Takes on cancel culture in a #MeToo world can be distressing to even think about – especially in a movie. Lydia Tár has no problem elevating the canon and the patriarchal establishment it sits upon because she has climbed her way to the top of it. It accepted her and she finds herself fighting for her life to keep the status quo. Tár never tries to argue that Lydia being a woman somehow absolves any of her behavior, but instead makes the much more radical observation that accrual of such enormous cultural power would corrupt any person, man or woman. Tár does not side-step controversial topics, but it doesn’t provide its audience with easy answers either. That you may feel sympathetic of Lydia in one moment and disdainful of her in the next is by design, with Field forcing you to reconcile with the multitudes we all contain.
Which brings me to Blanchett, an actress with a grand reputation for maximalist portraits. That she’s earned this without ever being plausibly accused of overacting is a testament to her unimpeachable skill and an alluring (perhaps even underrated?) screen presence. Blanchett has played comedy successfully in films like Bandits and Thor: Ragnarok, but in Tár, Field gives Blanchett a full palette to work with. Much like the precise timing of her conductor, Blanchett herself shows remarkable discipline in how to play each moment and each line, tight-roping between the sharp ferocity that makes everyone fear her and the loose sarcasm that makes everyone love her. Early in the film, she converses with a student about the legacy of Bach, and the way his treatment of women reflects on his work. Blanchett makes Lydia’s contempt known and the daggers of dismissal that she throws are beyond what anyone could possibly survive, but the level of wit is infectious, seductive, and brings Lydia completely alive.
I live in fear of absolutist statements like “the best Cate Blanchett performance”, but Lydia Tár is a performance worth having that conversation about. In that same vein, Tár is a film worth mentioning not only amongst the best of the year, but amongst the best portraits of genius artists hoisted upon their own petard. Todd Field’s two films in the early 2000s (the first being 2001’s In the Bedroom) were moving, if ponderous dissections of human behavior with great ensemble performances. Tár is much more studied and refined, its filmmaking ambition is more robust and its execution is exquisite and enticing. It’s his longest film and somehow feels like his most compact and driven. I was completely rapt from beginning to end, fully hypnotized by the spiraling narrative and the incredible performance at the center of it. Its conversations about preeminence and personal responsibility are nuanced and engrossing, but it never denies the brilliance of Lydia’s skill behind the podium, as I cannot deny the greatness of this film.
Written and Directed by Todd Field