Tár

Todd Field’s high-minded and sophisticated mastery carries on with his third feature film, Tár, a dense and deeply layered saga that has a lot to say about artistry, cancel culture, artistic genius, cult of personality, narcissism, and the legacy of art and artists. Cate Blanchett’s mesmerizing performance captures the psyche of the modern-day artist and celebrity who utilizes their celebrity status for opportunism but is brought down by their own flaws as we live in a society that no longer separates the person from the art as our mores in the culture change in the information era. The film’s acting, writing, themes, and execution are all masterful. Not too often do we get films that earn the right to be compared to the great Stanley Kubrick, but in terms of execution and scope, Todd Field’s latest film deserves that comparison.

Tár, Field’s elegant and effectively cerebral drama, is a portrait of a renowned musician’s tumultuous, passionate, and creatively infused final days leading up to an orchestral concert she is to conduct. It’s an artful film that channels the boldness and scope of Kubrick in so many ways. Shot with striking compositions and set during our modern era of the international musical scene in Berlin, Germany, it is a flowingly modern and exemplary contemporary work of art. Field, the filmmaker of such masterpieces as In the Bedroom (2001) and Little Children (2006), has elevated his filmmaking in the most artful way, all to achieve something that feels essential and elemental. Field is out to dissect artistry intertwined with celebrity with a gripping and thought-provoking immediacy.

The sheer brilliance of Tár doesn’t pretend to hold definitive answers. It’s neither for nor against cancel culture. It’s a layered drama about our modern world and how artistic expression is evaluated in the information age. It’s a drama about artistic egos and of the narcissistic tendencies of celebrated artists, an ode to artistic genius, and how its protagonist, Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchet), is a haunted soul trapped in a battle between her own mental breakdown and the consequences she must face for her past actions. Field’s vision is about one woman’s determinism faced with her own flaws, her demons, and a talent that is unabashedly complex and layered. It’s a spellbinding portrait of an artist’s life and psyche spiraling out of control. It raises many fascinating questions about art and culture as well as the ethics of the spectator in the modern world, an ongoing feud between the old guard of separating art from the individual and the new guard of evaluating the artistic legacy that is not just measured by their creative choices but by their individual choices as well. Field deserves high praise as he takes on the self-destructive character study by weaving a measured and complex vision of a renowned artist, an artistic genius whose pleasure in the creative process dissolves into a tapestry of anxiety-induced consequences.

In one of her greatest onscreen performances of her career, Blanchett as Lydia is one of the most memorable and interesting onscreen characters to emerge in cinema as of late. Lydia is an artist who is many things. She is a composer and conductor, and the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Symphony. The film chronicles Lydia’s training and building up for an upcoming live performance with the orchestra as accusations from her past relationships with younger women arise. On top of being a renowned conductor, she is also an instructor at Julliard, a mother, an author, a lover, and a celebrity. Field examines this flawed character with intricate precision, and he artistically showcases her world through rich abstractions, striking imagery, and distancing sounds.

In the film’s opening sequence, which takes place in an auditorium filled with attendees, we see the New Yorker journalist Adam Gopnik as himself, listing off all the accomplishments of Lydia in front of a crowded audience. We find out that she is part of the exclusive EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) club. He also lists off her other accomplishments in her remarkable career, and you can sense that Lydia is just itching to get the microphone. It’s a greatly staged sequence where Field lays the groundwork for many other astonishing set-pieces to come.

We also get another greatly staged scene in a long take of Lydia having a debate with a pangender Black student (Zethphan D. Smith-Gneist) at Julliard who isn’t interested in listening to or studying music by dead white male composers like Johann Sebastian Bach. It’s not only a greatly constructed scene visually where Field stages the scenes like a symphony of Lydia’s bottled-up anxieties and psychology. This intense scene lays the groundwork thematically in the film as well as about legacy. In the digital information age, one could easily dismiss or begrudge an artist of their time based on race, gender, and social status. Bach was a white guy who fathered twenty children, and his legacy is now viewed through that lens over his brilliant artistry. It becomes the core of the film about how artists’ art may be neglected due to being an easy target for ostracism.

Lydia’s life is a constant go where life never feels like it is slowing down for her. In between teaching Juliard, she travels back to Berlin to prepare for a live recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. She is also about to release her autobiography, Tar on Tar, and she released free music to the public during the COVID lockdown. She’s also the lover of the orchestra’s violinist, Sharon (Nina Hoss from Barbara), with whom they are adopted parents to their 6-year-old daughter (Mila Bojeveck). With so many accolades and endeavors, Lydia is also going through her own crises of sleep deprivation, an addiction to Sharon’s sleeping pills, and she hears other strange background noises that occur at unusual times that recall Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria. We hear bizarre sounds of ticking clocks, door knocks, rain drops, a humming sound from the freezer, and ongoing screams coming from the forest when she goes on her daily jogs. This is all heightened by cinematographer Florian Hoffmestier’s (The Deep Blue Sea, A Quiet Passion) artful and hallucinatory images that echo Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky.

In between the dreams and illusions, Lydia notices the potential of a young Russian cellist named Olga (Sophia Kauer), in which Sharon notices Lydia has an attraction and fondness for her. As Lydia begins to spend time with her and gives her greater opportunities in the orchestra, Olga certainly capitalizes on the opportunities and agrees to meet up for lunch and flirt back. In a particular Andrei Tarkovsky-inspired scene, after Lydia drops Olga off at a decayed apartment complex, Olga forgets a stuffed animal in her car. Lydia goes to return it and we hear the lush sounds of raindrops with a menacing dog in the background that startles Lydia. Her face is bruised and bloodied after a hard trip where she landed on her face. This also happens in between many elliptical images and dreams where Lydia feels helpless in a bed on a river.

Lydia’s assistant, Francesca Lentini (Noemie Merlant), who conceals Krysta’s relationship after she commits suicide. Yet she is mentioned throughout the film and stories begin to resurface about how Lydia would groom younger women and promote them within the orchestra to sustain her psychical urges.We never see the intimacy onscreen or see any flashback dialogue scenes with Kyrsta. But we see how Lydia acts in front of Olga and how past relationships with younger women can emerge in her circles. Disposition cases follow suite, and Lydia has a legal team that safeguards her from any rumors jeopardizing her career.  Eventually, all of this catches up to Lydia and her psyche, and her relevance begins to reach its demise.

In one particularly powerful moment, Lydia is listening to Leonard Bernstein’s speech in between his concerts, where he empowers children about the importance of music and how it reflects life. It’s there that Field brings nuance and humanism to the deeply flawed character of Lydia. She begins to tear up. Really, she is a woman who is in love with her art. The outside world and celebrity status that she abused are what led to her demise. She doesn’t understand how to live ethically or within boundaries outside of the auditorium where she is conducting music. Field understands the folly of celebrity culture and how accusations become normalized in society, but Lydia is certainly a flawed character that often uses people for her own selfish gain. Blanchett’s performance makes Lydia compelling, and her acting in just about every scene is a tour de force.

Yet there are thematically rich ideas and sophisticated visual motifs throughout the film (like the use of a tunnel where Lydia drives under that feels like a portal out of the modern world where her old guard is stacked against her). And Field’s writing in his own screenplay is quite erudite and thematically dense as well, from Lydia’s passionate debates on music with her students to her exchange with how Olga listens to music through YouTube videos over actual albums, and music seems to be more about activism and making a social statement on modern feminism than learning the virtues of music. It’s there where Lydia begins to realize her old, guarded traits are overpowered in the modern world. As cancel culture and #Metoo scandals erupt from her own undoing’s, Lydia’s inner pain and the legacy of her artistry remain uncertain. She is on the verge of becoming an exile from the thing she loves.

Lydia’s inner pain is that she is an artist of the past, before the digital age where artists were more celebrated for their art. The finale of the film, which takes place in an unknown country in Asia, unfolds with abstractions of people dressed in cosplay with headpieces that are listening to the music as they play videogames. The narration begins, and Lydia has come a long way from being celebrated for her music to now being just background music that isn’t the center of the attraction. It’s there that Field’s film becomes a deeper portrait of ego and persistence. Like anyone that’s in the public eye, big or small, it’s our egos that keep artists and individuals going.  The persistence and passion take us to the most unusual places, which can attest to Field’s plight, who persistently waited 16 years trying to make his third feature. Ultimately, it’s the passion that remains sincere. If anything, Field’s Tár is about a woman who has a deep passion for her artistry. Field frames Lydia almost as if she’s invincible, though full of many complexities, her journey reaches a purgatory, all in favor of her ego that fulfills her sincere love of music. Field’s unerring vision is a journey into the mind and soul of an artist and an austere portrait of facing the consequences of our actions while also highlighting the relationship between art, ego, persistence, and legacy. The film is a work of towering maturity and assurance.