Gay Night at Hollywood Chinese – Los Angeles Blade
The only thing you need to know before going to see “Tár” is that it is not a true story.
Lydia Tár, the acclaimed female conductor profiled in Todd Field’s newest film, is entirely fictional, despite confusion online from people who mistakenly believed otherwise. It’s easy to see why; a story about a respected cultural figure’s fall from grace might easily be drawn directly from current headlines, and the world depicted onscreen – an exclusive, insular environment in which high art, big money, and base motives exist eternally in uneasy tension with each other – comes across as completely authentic, down to each granular detail. It feels real, even if it’s not – and that, of course, is one of the things that make “Tár” such a singular film.
This shouldn’t surprise those familiar with writer-director Field, whose short-but-eloquent resume – he’s made only three films in 21 years, perhaps mirroring the less-than-prolific pace of former mentor Stanley Kubrick, and “Tár” is the first since 2006 – speaks volumes about his mastery of cinematic craft. His earlier works – “In the Bedroom” (2001) and “Little Children” (2006) – were distinguished by a literary instinct for finding big truth in tiny details and for a keen, almost merciless understanding of the psychology of their characters. In each case, too, there was a focus on the uncomfortable corners of our lives – grief, adultery, domestic violence, pedophilia, murder – and on the way that our intimate secrets spin webs into our public lives. Above all, perhaps, those films were about the masks we wear to disguise the desires we don’t want others to see.
Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is the natural legacy of these previous explorations, a culmination of all those potent themes in one enigmatic character. As maestro of the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic, she’s at the peak of an already monumental career; she’s renowned for her interpretations of the classical canon and an accomplished composer in her own right, a respected musical theorist and practitioner who has achieved world-class fame and success as a woman in a field overwhelmingly dominated by men. She’s also a lesbian, raising a young daughter with her wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss).
None of these biographical facts, however, tell us anything about who she really is. To learn that, we have to watch as Field’s intricately crafted movie unspools her for us.
More a montage of slice-of-life episodes than a traditional narrative, “Tár” introduces us to its title character through a series of text messages about her between unknown others, just enough to imply that something about her is not what it seems. From then on, everything we see is tinged with suspicion. Field examines her life like a researcher documenting observations, drawing us in with a perspective heightened by specificity – more hyperreal than surreal – as he reveals the gradually widening cracks in her inscrutable façade.
At first, she seems an aspirational figure – brilliant, poised, and supremely confident; gradually, her personal interactions – with overworked PA Francesca (Noémie Merlant), or fawning associate-and-rival Eliot (Mark Strong), or promising young cellist Olga (Sophie Kauer), among others – reveal glimpses of more questionable qualities, perhaps even a hint of narcissism; finally, a pattern emerges, and we begin to recognize, even before she does, that Lydia’s compartmentalized life is about to come crashing down around her.
It’s an intensely visceral experience, a twist on the “unreliable narrator” motif that invites us to identify with a character that will later be revealed as a fraud. It’s hardly a new tactic, but in Field’s provocative movie, it strikes a hauntingly dissonant chord – in large part because of the cultural moment in which it comes.
Without revealing too much detail, it’s clear enough that sexual misconduct is part of the equation in “Tár,” so it’s not a spoiler to discuss the way the film subverts the all-too-familiar narrative around that sensitive subject. We are now, sadly, so saturated with scandals around men who use their power as a vehicle for sexual predation that they are dangerously close to becoming a trope. By suggesting that a woman might be the predator, Field challenges our assumptions about that dynamic; yet, far from diminishing the culpability of male abusers by showing females are capable of the same behavior, he reminds us that “toxic masculinity” is a systemic phenomenon. Lydia Tár is the product of a long-established order in which the road to professional success is both paved and defined by male-centric hierarchy; though that order may have become more inclusive, the hierarchy remains unchanged – and the gender lines around sexual predation have become blurred.
Some queer audiences, it should be said, may find further controversy in the film’s presentation of the queer woman as victimizer – an old and toxic bit of coded subtext that has been a part of cinematic storytelling ever since the days of the silent vamp. While this might feel particularly tone deaf when current conservative rhetoric includes terms such as “grooming” in its effort to stigmatize LGBTQ people, there’s no homophobic agenda in “Tár” – only a cautionary assertion that real life is not subject to the expectations of the bubbles in which we find safe haven. More than that, Field arguably accomplishes the fairest representation possible by allowing its queer protagonist – and despite whatever moralistic judgments his movie may invite us to explore, that’s what she is – to be as imperfect a human being as anyone else.
There are many other perspectives, as well, through which to view “Tár” – much has been made by commentators about its focus on “cancel culture,” for example, and the influence of social media and virtual discourse over our social mores and ethics. It’s a testament to the genius – yes, we’ll use that word – of Todd Field that all of them are valid, but none of them define his film.
Great as his talent may be, though, none of what works about the movie would be possible without its star. Field has said he wrote the role for Blanchett – if she had declined it, the movie would never have been made – and she gives a career-defining performance as Lydia Tár; her dedication goes much further than simply learning the necessary musical skills required – which she did, in order to flawlessly play piano and conduct a live orchestra onscreen – to realize a monumental and multi-faceted character from the ground up. Fierce yet vulnerable, tender and loving yet cold and compassionless, she’s a walking contradiction, subject to the same hubris as the rest of us; because of this, we are able to find empathy for her no matter how far out of control she goes – and without that crucial element, the film would fall flat.
It doesn’t. Instead, it’s an engrossing, even thrilling piece of cinema that keeps us wrapped around its finger for a two-and-a-half-hour-plus running time that feels far shorter than that. It’s also the kind with which one must sit for a while before deciding whether we loved it or hated it, and the kind for which there can really be no response in between.
That means we can’t guarantee which side you’ll come down on, or for what reason – but for our part, “Tár” might just be the best film of the year so far.