Film Review: Tár

 

 Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

There are those who will like the slow-burn and stylized dialogue of Tár.

I am not one of them.

Tár is the story of Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett).  She is a world-renowned conductor whose star is still on the rise.  She is celebrated throughout the world and is about to engage in a great coup in her career by conducting Mahler's Fifth Symphony.  For the first part of the movie, she appears to be in absolute control of her world with her sycophantic assistant (Noemie Meriant), her romantic partner Sharon (Nina Hoss), adoring college Eliot (Mark Strong), and mentor Andris (Julian Glover).  She strides into each situation and conflict with absolute confidence.  But there is something slightly unnerving her when she is contacted by an old acquaintance.  As the story unfolds, Lydia is accused of use her influence to gain romantic favors from those working for her.  This causes a slow and methodical disintegration of her life.

Blanchett has been getting a great deal of accolades for this performance and rightly so.  The success of this movie comes from the command of her performance and the power of her charisma.  Everything she does is fascinating.  This is also a performance that is tightly controlled until it needs to boil over.  She completely embodies this character in a way where she disappears completely into the part.  The supporting cast is also very good.  I particularly like Strong in a role that is different from his usual characters.  His Eliot is so demure and desperate that it took me a second to realize it was strong.

However, writer/director Todd Field has a major flaw that is apparent as the movie progresses: his need to show off.

The movie begins with a LONG interview with Lydia about the area of conducting.  Instead of dumbing down the jargon, Field expects you to keep up and throws you into the deep end.  This actually works incredibly effectively.  You feel like you have been invited to a high-level discussion of the art.  When the scene ended, I turned to my wife and said, "I only understood about 20% of that, but it was so interesting."  

Later, Field writes the best scene of the movie.  Lydia is teaching a class on conducting and one of the students complains that he cannot relate to the music of Bach because Bach is a different race and sexual orientation.  Lydia, who is homosexual, is appaled by this idea and tries to get the student to listen to the beauties and subtlties of Bach.  When the student still refuses to listen, has two of the best lines of the movie:

"Don't be so eager to be offended.  The narcisssim of small differences leads to the most boring kind of conformity."

and

"The problem with enrolling yourself in an ultrasonic epistemic dissident is that if Bach's talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country
, religion, sexuality, and so on, then so can yours."

These two scenes hooked me into the character, but the rest of the movie never lives up to this first act.

Instead, of getting the story moving at a nice pace, Field keeps diverting his story, especially with long dialogues that keep throwing his knowledge of music in your face.  What at first seemed like a fascinating window into a different world soon becomes an educated person hitting you over the head with $10 dollar words as if to shout to you "I AM SMART ABOUT MUSIC.  LISTEN TO ME!!!"  It almost feels like a test:  if you don't keep up with all of this, then you are not smart enough to appreciate this movie.  While I can imagine that there are those who understand everything and even those who pretend to understand for the sake of appearance, that is not me.  

The glacial pace of the plot also did not help.  Although I am not one that needs to be spoon-fed the information, Tár drags its heals to the point that the half-way point of the film felt like 2-hours had gone by.  As I said, there are those for whom this style of writing will not be an issue and that they will enjoy the subtle shifts in the story.  But I think that the film makers are there to be at the service of the audience and that when it devolves into showing off, then you've lost the thread that holds the audience to you.

To be sure, there are some interesting ideas presented and to its credit, the movie leaves a lot of the moral judgments up to the audience?  Is Lydia a monster or is she being unfairly railroaded?  Is she a jerk or is she merely a genius in pursuit of perfection?  The movie does not put its thumb on the scale, but instead lets you decide.  And there are a lot of flaws in the main character, both large and small, that are open to severest judgment.  But once again, Blanchett's performance humanizes Lydia enough so that you still want her to find some kind of redemption.  There is enough sin presented here to make a Catholic watch this with caution, but almost all of the sin presented results in a bad consequence.

But because the fascination of the first half-hour fades from the film, I cannot recommend it, unless you have an appetite for this style of film.  

Perhaps I am not smart enough or not pretentious enough to truly grasp this film.  I will let you decide.