Tár, now available on Blu-ray and 4K, is one of the three best films of 2022 in my estimation. The only question for me is whether it is better than either The Fabelmans or The Banshees of Inisherin, both of which I have previously reviewed. It well may be in the long run, but for now, my rankings are The Fabelmans in first place, The Banshees of Inisherin in second, and Tár in third.

All three films interestingly look at family life, albeit in completely different ways.

The Fabelmans, which begins in 1952 and ends in the early 1960s, is an old-fashioned, straight-forward narrative film with a beginning, a middle, and an end, the kind of film of which Spielberg’s idol, John Ford, would have been proud. It is a thinly disguised autobiographical film of Steven Spielberg’s childhood love for movies and how he navigated that love through innovative experimental home movies into his teens and beyond, work that eventually paved his way into the film business.

Like many of Ford’s films, Spielberg’s The Fablelmans gives special attention to the mother of the family at its center. Unlike Margaret Mann in Four Sons, Una O’Connor in The Informer, Jane Darwell in The Grapes of Wrath, Sara Allgood in How Green Was My Valley, or Olive Carey in The Searchers, to name a few of Ford’s saintly mothers, Michelle Williams as the mother in The Fabelmans is no saint, she is a modern woman with flights of fancy that eventually get her into trouble. If she resembles any of Ford’s mothers, it’s Henrietta Crossman in Pilgrimage, whose betrayal of her son leads to a terrible outcome. Nothing like that occurs in The Fabelmans but once shaken, the love between mother and son is difficult to restore. Crossman, playing one of the original Gold Star Mothers from World War I, had to go on a pilgrimage to France in search of her son’s grave to find redemption. All Spielberg’s mother had to do was go to the movies.

The Banshees of Inisherin, on the other hand, is not a biographical film. It is another dark comedy from writer-director Martin McDonagh who previously gave us two classics of the genre, In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The emphasis in this one, which is set in 1920s Ireland, is on the relationship between two lifelog friends, one of whom decides he doesn’t want to be friends with the other anymore. Equally important as the relationship between Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as the lifelong friends, is the relationship between Farrell and his sister, Kerry Condon. There’s also a third familial relationship explored, that of the one between Barry Keoghan as the village sad sack and Gary Lydon as his father, the local policeman. There are several other relationships explored, including one involving a man and his donkey. Most audiences identify most clearly with the one between brother and sister.

Tár is directed by Todd Field. It’s his first film since 2006’s Little Children for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, having directed Kate Winslet and Jackie Earle Haley to Oscar nominations for their performances. Little Children was his first since 2001’s In the Bedroom for which he was nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, having directed Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, and Marisa Tomei to Oscar nominations for their performances.

Tár is a complex film about the various relationships of Lydia Tár, a world-renowned conductor/composer, played by two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett. Lydia is an EGOT, having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony.

We first meet Lydia, now the first female principal director of the Berlin Philharmonic, giving an interview to the New Yorker. We next see her in action as she berates one of her students in front of the class at Juilliard where she is a guest lecturer. It becomes abundantly clear that Lydia is a manipulator, but it takes a while for those in her orbit to see her true colors.

As the story progresses, we will learn that Lydia is a lesbian with a loving wife named Sharon who is played by the always brilliant Nina Hoss. They have a daughter who is the center of Lydia’s being even though she does not spend nearly as much time with her as she should.

Lydia’s daughter is being bullied. In one of the film’s key scenes, Lydia tells the bully that she is not the girl’s mother, she is her father.

While Sharon loves Lydia unconditionally, Lydia takes Sharon for granted, practically flaunting her latest escapades with younger women at her. Soon her world will turn upside down and she will have nowhere to turn as her secure world suddenly veers out of control. In the end, she is compromised both professionally and personally, having become in her eyes what she always rallied against – a robot.

The plot is a joy to watch unfold so I don’t want to give away too much detail. I can only reiterate what I said at the outset. Tár is a complex film. Lydia Tár is a complex character, and Cate Blanchett plays her to the hilt in her bravest and best performance yet.

The film also features strong supporting performances by Nina Hosss as Sharon, Noémie Merlant as Lydia’s first assistant, Sophie Kaur as a gifted cellist, and Mila Bogojevit as Lydia’s daughter.