Talent may get you to the top, but it doesn’t mean you’ll stay there. After a sixteen-year absence from the big screen, American director Todd Field takes the viewer on the downward spiral of his protagonist Tár, a celebrated virtuoso conductor, wonderfully played by the great Cate Blanchett.
Todd Field (In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006)) knows how to stir up controversy. A lover of complex female roles, Field throws a grenade into all the debates surrounding the #MeToo movement. Tár is a genial, bossy, beautiful composer and conductor of a philharmonic orchestra in Berlin, who shares her life and adopted child with German violinist, Sharon Goodnow. With his low-angle shots of the main protagonist, Field actively participates in the development of the hero cult with a conventional but refined way of filming, as Stanley Kubrick, Sergio Leone and other predecessors have done before. Tár, however, is not the great person everyone thinks.
In the space of a few weeks, her life falls apart in a singularly contemporary way. What emerges is a searing examination of the mechanisms of power and their impact and persistence in our society.
Blanchett plays a Lydia Tár who can be charming in front of the press and warm with her daughter, while also scathing towards her assistant or students. She dresses in fashionable designer clothes, takes great care in her appearance, and trains every morning in the streets of Berlin, but is not afraid to let go of her oldest advisor when it suits her. The precision of dialogue and Cate Blanchett’s extraordinarily lively performance make it clear that for Tár, the role of the conductor is essential. She leads. She leads, she commands. From her vantage point, everything seems to be going well for Tár, until an old affair with a young musician who ended up committing suicide catches up with her. In the space of a few weeks, her life falls apart in a singularly contemporary way. What emerges is a searing examination of the mechanisms of power and their impact and persistence in our society.
And there are other conflicts to add. While in New York teaching a course at the famous Juilliard School, Tár finds herself drawn – and filmed – into a discussion with a student who refuses to listen to, let alone play, works by Johann Sebastian Bach because of the allegedly misogynistic behaviour of the composer, the father of twenty children. The conductor’s long tirade, not in defence of the artist but in favour of separating the man from his art, leads the student to call her a “slut” and to leave the room.
If the film does not sink into simplicity and prejudice, it is mainly thanks to the complexity of its main protagonist who stubbornly refuses to believe that the laws of men apply to her, and who continues to behave like God himself. Tár is not just a capricious, authoritarian conductor; she is a woman, rare among conductors in general, and a lesbian. There is no macho, predatory male lead character, as many conductors in history are. With this portrait of a fascinating yet repulsive woman, Tár goes beyond gender dichotomies. By elevating Lydia Tár to the status of the untouchable feminist heroine, the world has given her the power to crush others. Todd Field strategically reverses gender roles to better practise his autopsy of power and its abuses. The study of power allows him to bypass mediocrity.
If the film does not sink into simplicity and prejudice, it is mainly thanks to the complexity of its main protagonist who stubbornly refuses to believe that the laws of men apply to her, and who continues to behave like God himself.
Can we really separate the man from the artist? In principle, the idea is that works of art or cultural productions should be appreciated independently of the judgement we make of their creators, in order to ensure that our aesthetic evaluation is impartial and objective. We are then asked to judge the work, not the man who produced it, and the man is supposed to disappear behind his achievement.
Despite Tár’s eloquent and meaningful argument at the Juilliard School, Todd Field refuses to give a clear and simple answer. He knows, without saying so, that on the one hand, we would be depriving ourselves of some of the greatest artistic works in existence. On the other hand, we cannot allow ourselves to go against certain ethics for artistic freedom. It would be a shame to reduce Tár to a film about cancel culture. By keeping his intentions in doubt, the director deliberately delivers an intellectual and imperfect work, hostile to a single interpretation. Conversely, the film opens in several interesting ways, as its ambiguous ending shows. To reveal the complexity of our modern world, the director torments his character without judging her. It is not about praising or blaming her: Tár is still only an allegory of the harmful influence of power on herself and others.
By keeping his intentions in doubt, the director deliberately delivers an intellectual and imperfect work, hostile to a single interpretation.
The film is 158 minutes of descent into hell and social collapse that pushes a world-famous musician to the edge of madness – a deafening symphony. Without judging her, the director shows us a genius who shot herself in the foot. The societal culture in Bach’s time was different to that of today; it is now impossible to behave like him, even if you are a woman with a unique talent. Even if you are Lydia Tár.
