A Conductor Has a Famed Career, Then a Long Fall from the Podium

Cate Blanchett in "Tár"
Photo Credit: RottenTomatoes.com

The opening scene of writer-director Todd Field’s psychological-drama, “Tár,” makes a promise as to what kind of movie this is going to be, and delivers on it.  Unfolding as a lengthy Q&A segment between renowned composer-conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) and “New Yorker” staff writer Adam Gopnik (playing himself), we’re shown that this is going to be a film that’ll dive right into the mind of its main character and provide you with an unfiltered look at who she is.  Right from that introductory scene, it’s impossible to not want to know more her.

The story follows Lydia as she prepares her orchestra for a live recording of Mahler’s 5th Symphony.  When some unsettling allegations come to light about Lydia, she must face what’s being said about her as her life and career begin to fall apart.

Blanchett gives a career-defining performance as Lydia Tár.  In another fall-from-grace performance that calls to mind her work in “Blue Jasmine” (although two VERY different stories, Blanchett shows Lydia's troubled conscious as she tries to hold on to what she’s built for herself when the truth about her past begins to surface.  She gives Tár an unsettling blend of an obsessive need to be knowledgeable and a need to be controlling, showing an individual who might be more unstable than she lets on.  Blanchett also provides Lydia with an authoritative and intimidating presence for the first half of the movie when her character’s life is still on track.  This is an original character, so we don’t have prior material that shows how this person might portray herself.  However, as we get to see who she is, we remain a bit on edge.  This is evident in a segment early on in the film, about which I’ll go into a little more detail later on, which is a long take where Blanchett is shown to have memorized her lines and movements in such a masterful way.  It’s a scene that plants us right into Lydia’s headspace, and is a sequence that proves once again why she’s one of the modern greats of screen acting.  

Nina Hoss gives an emotional performance as Lydia’s concertmaster and wife, Sharon.  She exhibits her character as someone who loves Lydia and shares her passion for music, which makes it all the more painful when Sharon begins to feel a distance growing between them, only to then feel an intense betrayal of trust when she realizes the kind of person Lydia really is.  Hoss shows the heartache that such a betrayal has on her, and you feel the life that they’ve made come crashing down as Sharon must figure out how to move on.

Noémie Merlant provides equally great supporting work as Lydia’s assistant, Francesca.  Merlant displays her character’s unwavering attentiveness to her job, while also showing hints here and there of what could be resentment towards her boss.  Oftentimes, Merlant seems as though her character’s holding back her true feelings for the sake of staying on good terms with Lydia.  However, once she finds out about Lydia’s past, Merlant exhibits her character’s disillusionment as she starts to see her boss as a very different person, offering a compelling turn for Francesca that has you ponder in which direction this professional relationship will go.

Field’s screenplay offers many scenes that play out for pretty extensive lengths, oftentimes being discussions between two characters that offer tremendous detail into their knowledge of music or their inner selves.  It’s sequences like that this that sink you right into the characters’ lives and are significant discussions that fit into a much, much bigger picture.  What’s remarkable is how Field’s narrative’s able to allow us to learn so much about Lydia without the story feeling the need to offer large chunks of backstory.  Instead, he allows us to absorb what’s going on in Lydia’s present and glean from that the details from past events.  By keeping the whole story linear, this helps maintain the momentum of the course of the film as we experience Lydia’s decline becoming more and more intense.

The cinematography by Florian Hoffmeister uses factors like mirrors, darkness, and the cavernous spaces of Lydia and Sharon’s apartment to unsettle us and invite us further into Lydia’s state of being and her ongoing unraveling.  He also often uses long takes to allow the camera to explore spaces uninterrupted, or let layered discussions unfold without edits, so that we see constant movement from the characters.  One such scene where this technique stands out tremendously is an early scene in which we see Lydia teaching a class at Juilliard.  The camera follows her around as she talks with her students, a scene that leads to her and one of her students having a disagreement.  The tension builds into what’s one of the best scenes of the film and keeps you wondering what the next two hours have in store for you.

This is only Field’s third film as a director after 2001’s “In the Bedroom” and 2006’s “Little Children,” so it’s impressive to see his ability to construct a two-and-a-half-hour character study that maintains an epic feel with its length, visuals, and deep dive into its titular character.  He keeps a persistent tension as we experience everything falling out of place in Lydia’s life, and her scramble to keep it all together, as well as some effective creepiness as Lydia’s psyche begins to show cracks.  The full command that Field has on display when working on this level of dramatic scope has you bear witness to another example of a filmmaker who, despite having not directed many films, clearly knows what he’s doing when trying something different.

“Tár” is the best film of the year so far, being a blazing example of a filmmaker and actress working together to push their talents further, with Blanchett as the first chair, and Field as the conductor.

Grade: A