Review: Tár (2022)

Tár

Rating

Director

Todd Field

Screenplay

Todd Field

Length

2h 38m

Starring

Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong, Sylvia Flote, Adam Gopnik, Mila Bogojevic, Zethphan Smith-Gneist

MPAA Rating

Original Preview

Click Here

Review

Fame not only brings with it adoration and adulation, it can also bring enhanced scrutiny, a force that can sometimes bring down even the mightiest of people. Tár explores fame in the orchestral world and shines a bright, but harsh light on the struggles of fame, the amplified ego of the famous, and the risks inherent with both.

Todd Field’s lengthy absence from filmmaking was never felt more heavily than upon the release of another strong film. In only his third outing, he’s managed to deliver a third solid, if not striking effort. The film follows Lydia Tár, a composer and conductor who has managed to shatter the glass ceiling in snagging a gig to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, showcasing Mahler’s 5th Symphony. As the event closes in, her behavior begins to irk her compatriots until her life starts spiraling out of control with one concerning event after another risking the destruction of her career.

Cate Blanchett stars in the film and brings the full force of her acting talent into the character, making her sparkle in each scene whether she’s berating a student for excluding cis straight white male composers from his studies, caring for her adopted daughter, or lashing out against her attackers. It’s a tour de force performance that few of her generation could so effectively deliver. The film paints Tár as a brilliant, narcissistic, forceful, exclusionary, and passionate conductor and composer whose voluminous knowledge of music has helped her along her career.

The film also expertly weaves in sexism as an undercurrent to the events. Although Tár is doing no more or less than her male counterparts have for centuries, she’s reaching her zenith in the midst of a social movement that decries the type of behavior that power too often elicits. While many of her fellows would have little problem fending off the assault she receives, her gender only helps to amplify the events and erode her base of support.

Brilliance can only carry one so far and while other male conductors and composers were still getting away with their exploits, Tár is struggling to avoid being brought down by them. It would be easy to suggest that the film is on the side of anti-woke culture warriors, it makes the case that women and minorities face an uneven playing field where behavior that their contemporaries can get away with, they cannot, which only highlights the challenges faced by these individuals coming to prominence in an era of accountability. It’s a double-standard that makes her an easily disposable scapegoat rather than giving her the benefit of wagons being circled to protect her as they would have for many others.

What Field has done with Lydia Tár is not only castigate those who allow their fame to increase their sense of entitlement, but also to question the lengths and depths to which the public as a whole will go to tear those people down, warranted or not. Tár‘s brilliance is in its many layers and it’s a commanding lead performance, but the subtle supporting performances of Nina Hoss and Noémie Merlant add depth and humanity to a film that could otherwise have mired itself in the superficial degradation of its lead. Tár is both directing her own fate, and downfall, and helpless to watch it all unravel when the best things about her life recede to the background as a result of her own inattentiveness.

Oscar Prospects

Guarantees: Picture, Directing, Actress (Cate Blanchett), Original Screenplay
Probables: Film Editing, Cinematography
Potentials: Supporting Actress (Nina Hoss)