TÁR
Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár in TÁR
Have you ever felt so on top? Like the earth shakes beneath your very feet?
For the highly acclaimed and handsomely decorated chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), she’s the Everest of the music world, and her unshakable presence could bring a grizzly bear to heel. As she’s interviewed at the New York Festival by Adam Gopnik, everyone is there for her. “Time is the thing” she explains, “You cannot start without me. I start the clock”.
There is, however, one small, tiny little thing about being on top: one small push could cause a great, bombastic fall. For Lydia, TÁR is the fall.
This extremely well-received film has had critics and award voters buckling at the knees as five star upon five star reviews (spoiler: this writer intends to keep that pattern going) flood in from one publication to the next, and for good reason. Todd Field (Little Children, In the Bedroom) has crafted a deeply sad, but ultimately unforgiving, tragedy layered with intricate and interlinked scenes on the dynamic of power, art, and exploitation.
Blanchett is a powerhouse to behold as Lydia Tár, carrying every single scene perfectly with verbose intention, unflappable attitude, and outstanding delivery. A character study like this needs a strong lead, but Cate goes above and beyond here to mark herself firmly in place as one of our greatest working actors. The relatively heavy two-hour thirty minute runtime flies by as you linger on every single word, helped of course by the beautifully realised screenplay by Field, as Blanchett grasps our attention alongside the correspondingly impressive Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, and co.
Many have lauded this as a film tackling the ins and outs of “cancel culture” and “separating the art from the artist”, validly so, but the real core of the film isn’t in these familiar talking points, but the feeling of Tár’s real, inescapable guilt, amidst the unfurling of her career. As we become more enveloped in the unfolding of our protagonist, and as we (like Tár) start to blend reality with fantasy, the emotionally nauseating and fittingly humorous climax of the film brings the entire trail of control and influence to a splendid close.
Formally, TÁR is gorgeously put together with Florian Hoffmeister’s cinematography, encapsulating gradual isolation amongst cavernous music halls that we become transfixed by. It would be a disservice to also not recognise the stupendous sound design that dips from time to time, like the imagery and frighteningly so, into the realm of psychological horror.
At the beginning, Tár boldly claims that “you cannot start without me”. By the end, she’s at the precipice of her social extinction. Tár learns that, unfortunately, the music doesn’t stop when your world unravels. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing for or what you’re playing; the music doesn’t stop. As Tár watches an old tape of Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic, he exclaims: “Didn’t you feel triumphant?”. Watching through broken, tear-filled eyes, Tár knows she did, though she never will again.
TÁR is available to watch in the UK in cinemas, and to rent on various platforms.
