Cate Blanchett is the female actor version of Daniel Day-Lewis. Daniel Day-Lewis is the male actor version of Cate Blanchett. Tomato Tomahto. While Day-Lewis may be a little more selective in his roles than Blanchett, resulting in fewer Oscar nominations (six – all in leading roles) than Blanchett’s seven (four in a leading role, three in a supporting role). Day-Lewis has won three Oscars, to Blanchett’s two (The Aviator and Blue Jasmine). Day-Lewis (65 years old at the time of this post) has said he is retired, finishing his career in 2016, carrying an Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread with him. However, Blanchett is anything but finished. In the discussion for the best in her craft, Blanchett is a sure-fire lock for her eighth Oscar nomination and the early leader for her role as Lydia Tar in Todd Field’s (Little Children, In the Bedroom) meticulous-crafted and timely TÁR.
Blanchett is better than ever, starring as Lydia Tár, a world-renowned composer and conductor. The movie begins with a 15-minute interview between Lydia and New Yorker journalist Adam Gopnik. If you are unfamiliar with Gopnik or his interviewing style, think of a James Lipton Inside the Actors Studio, with the first female conductor for the Berlin Philharmonic rather than an established Hollywood A-lister. Inside a packed New York City auditorium, Gopnik gives the audience (both those sitting in the studio as well as the moviegoer) an extensive introduction, consisting of a list of accomplishments, one which includes a part of the exclusive EGOT club, which consists of a short list of individuals who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award.
She has composed all over the world with the most outstanding symphony companies. The interview with Gopnik is one in which she is there to promote another career milestone, a live recording of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. In these 15 minutes, we come to know Lydia as a virtuoso pianist, a master of ethnomusicology, and a versatile conductor, her skills, abilities, and accomplishments are only upstaged by her pretentiousness and ego. Is Field foreshadowing Lydia’s tragic flaw? We can’t help but think so.
Watch my video review of TÁR above.
She is a professor at Juilliard. We watch her in that realm as she first ridicules and then belittles one of her students in her Advanced Conducting seminar if for no other reason than that, he doesn’t model his technique after Bach due to the composer’s patriarchal lifestyle. At home, she finds that her young daughter Petra is the victim of bullying at school. Rather than telling school administrators, Lydia had Petra point out which girl was doing the bullying. She threatens the girl, warning her what will happen to her if the bullying continues while also cautioning her to keep the conversation between them. Lydia unequivocally operates under her own rules, allowing her moral compass to be her governing body.
Lydia appears to have an icy hold on everything in her career and personal life. She has a supportive wife in Sharon (Nina Hoss – A Most Wanted Man, Phoenix) and a dutiful assistant and aspiring conductor, Francesca (Noémie Merlant – Paris, 13th District, Portrait of a Lady on Fire). In addition to being a once-in-a-generation musical maestro, she is an intense lover, a fervidly protective mother of an elementary school-aged daughter, a benevolent patron to causes she supports, a volatile narcissist, a transactional colleague, and, as we soon discover, an alleged sexual predator. Her relationship with former protege Krista (Sylvia Flote) resulted in suicide. As a result, Lydia finds herself under a microscope for this and other actions, all in an attempt to cancel her because of these allegations. Even as Lydia is concealing her tracks from this affair by deleting electronic communication while pressing Francesca to do the same, she cannot help but continue her avaricious tendencies, this time setting her sights on Olga( Sophie Kauer), a promising young cellist in her senior-laden orchestra.
TÁR’s timely narrative draws from evolving stories of the #MeToo movement that deal with the explorative behavior of influential people in industries such as, among many others, performing arts. More often than not, men make the headlines, using their influence and power to exploit and abuse others. As a society, we’re quick to try to cancel these predators from culture by boycotting them and dismissing their career successes because of such malicious intent in taking advantage of others for their gains. And, rightfully so. I could give an extensive list of celebrities we’ve canceled since the #MeToo movement began. This would not be new to anyone reading and would be a misuse of this review. Field went a different route with his film by pinpointing his abuser as a woman. TÁR feels equally skeptical of the culture from which someone such as Lydia rose to fame as it does the cultural strain that then tries to expose her.
Blanchett’s performance is worth the price of admission alone. She immerses herself with an avaricious intensity in this fictional character. It feels like this is the biopic of a master of their craft and someone whose smug arrogance makes her both admirable and incredibly difficult to like in the times that we admire Lydia and the times when her behavior is so abhorrent that we look forward to seeing her pay for her actions.
Field doesn’t treat his movie as an interrogation. Instead, he leaves much for his audience to consider as the film progresses, sometimes at an agonizingly slow pace and, at others, excruciatingly frantic, that we have to play catch-up trying to piece everything together. There are intentional holes in each act, and these primarily involve Lydia’s interactions with different characters in various areas of her life.
TÁR is a well-crafted movie highlighted by its lead character’s performance. However, the film isn’t for everyone.
Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 10/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 7.5/10
Sound 10/10
Hook and Reel 7/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
87%
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