Tár had me in its clutches from the overture. In it, we see world-famous conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) in conversation with The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik (playing himself, expertly I might add).
This scene establishes so much. For one, it gives us a chance to hear a bit about Tár’s background—an apprenticeship with Leonard Bernstein, postings at world-class symphonies, a teaching gig at Julliard, her current position as principal conductor of the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic, an EGOT (!). It also shows us director Todd Field’s trust in his audience—the scene goes on for a solid 20 minutes, as though we are watching the interview unfurl in real time.
Every detail is correct—from the Voss water bottles resting on stage to the slightly chummy, “we’re all on the same liberal team” asides Gopnik keeps making to the audience. Most of all, the scene gives us a chance to see Blanchett as Lydia Tár in all her glory. We see her confidence, with a touch of haughtiness; her austere beauty; her brilliant mind and singular takes on not just conducting (“it’s keeping time”) but being a female conductor (“I hate the word ‘maestra’—do we call a female astronaut an ‘austronauta’?”). She puts the audience under her spell.
The film also casts a spell. Field has only made two films before this one, In the Bedroom and Little Children. Both were quite good. This one is on another level. With soaring aesthetics and keen intelligence, it beguiles and mesmerizes for its entire 2 hour and 38 minute running time.
The next scene reveals even more about Tár. She’s teaching a master class at Julliard and is appalled to discover a young conducting student who has no interest in that “cis white misogynist” Bach. This allows Tár to go off, raging against how quick young people are to be offended, referring to the “narcissism of small differences”—imagine summarily rejecting the work of one of history’s great geniuses! She continues to embarrass the young man, who is clearly getting uncomfortable. His leg begins to shake nervously—at one point, she slaps it still. The scene ends with the boy storming out of class and calling Tár a bitch. It’s hard to disagree with either of them.
She then goes back to her home in Berlin, where she lives in large, handsomely appointed flat with her wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss), the concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, and their young daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic). Tár would never be described as “warm,” but she becomes something close to that around Petra, whom she adores, and occasionally around Sharon, although their relationship can be frosty at times, too.
Tár also has a personal assistant, Francesca (Noémie Merlant) who was a student at the all-female Accordion conducting fellowship that Tár runs. (At one point, Tár suggests that a female conducting fellowship is antiquated—it doesn’t reflect her real feelings on the nature of her own success, which she believes was strictly on the merits. But the idea of making the fellowship co-ed is tabled as a bad PR move.) Francesca does everything for Tár—keep her schedule, book her flights and hotels, make sure her matcha is waiting for her every morning. It’s not a job for a promising young conductor, but Francesca has her reasons—the Berlin Philharmonic’s assistant conductor, Sebastian, is a bit doddering at this point and Tár is planning to fire him. Francesca seems like a natural successor.
There is something else that keeps Francesca tight with Tár—the mutual relationship they shared with another conducting fellow named Krista. The nature of this “threesome,” as it were, is never made clear—was Francesca just an observer? Was she an intimate participant? One of the best things about Tár is that it doesn’t feel compelled to fill in all the blanks; it encourages interpretation. But what is clear is that Tár had an inappropriate relationship with Krista: either Krista was in love with Tár and became obsessive (as Tár suggests) or, more likely, Tár was in love with Krista, who rejected her. Either way, Tár made it her business to ruin the young conductor’s career by rattling off a series of merciless letters to every major symphony in the country where she called the girl poison.
If Tár sounds like a monster—well, she is. But a supremely gifted one. And her talent, success, and preternatural self-possession give her a powerful magnetism.
As the film goes on, we discover that Tár has a practice of seducing young female musicians. If they succumb to her sexual advances, it can lead to career progress. If not, well, we see what happened to poor Krista. And when Krista’s story becomes public, Tár is at risk of being “canceled.”
So yes, Tár is a gender-swapped take on a real crisis in the classical music world right now where major international stars—James Levine, Placido Domingo, Charles Dutoit—have been accused of sexual harassment and abuse. At one point, Tár has dinner with her Berlin Philharmonic predecessor, Andris (Julian Glover), and they both seem somewhat dismissive of this #MeToo culture. (Andris affectionately calls the late James Levine, who had been credibly accused of molesting young male students for decades, “Jimmy.”) In their world, talent and genius are the most important things. The only things.
Tár is mostly grounded in the real world of rehearsals and practice studios and monied restaurants and hotels, but it has a haunted quality as well. Tár keeps hearing noises—the ticking of a metronome, a scream in the woods, an irritating telephone chime. Things go missing or are out of place. A strange symbol recurs—in the jacket of a book that is anonymously left for her, on Petra’s notepad doodles, next to the metronome. Is it her guilty conscience or something more sinister?
As a cellist, I’m always a bit skeptical when watching a film set in the world of classical music, but I must say, Field and co. really nailed it here. All the musicians look like they’re really performing—it turns out that Sophie Kauer, playing a young cellist who enchants Tár, is an actual musician. (Not sure if that was actually her playing the Elgar Cello Concerto, but she certainly faked it well.) Similarly, Nina Hoss convinces on the violin. At the podium, Blanchett doesn’t have the baton work of a true conductor—how could she?—but she certainly captures the way maestros coax sound through motion. Her physicality and expression are totally on point.
Much as I adored Tár—it’s literally the kind of film that made me want to become a film critic—I do take some issue with its politics. A gender flip on the #MeToo movement seems clever in theory: Why can’t a megalomaniacal female artist do the same thing as a man? Well, sure she can. But that’s not really the story, is it? Like, why tell the story of the outlier when the norm hasn’t been fully explored? For that matter, Tár herself is an anomaly. In that New Yorker interview, she talks explicitly about how she wasn’t held back by her gender, how the days of the glass ceiling are over. Tell that to the 99-percent of first tier symphonies that are conducted by white men.
And then there is the Marin Alsop factor. Look, perhaps I’m a bit sensitive to this because the wonderful maestra was the artistic director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for 14 years. But Tár borrows liberally from the life of Alsop, to say the least: Alsop was also a protegee of Bernstein’s, she is also a lesbian with a child and a musician wife, she has also run a fellowship for female conductors. In college, she started an all-female orchestra called Concordia which doesn’t sound all that different from Accordion? I mean, what the hell? I assume this is less a grudge against Alsop than a failure of imagination on the part of Todd Field, but let me state for the record that Alsop is a wonderfully warm and generous musician and person who is definitely not a predator and has committed herself to paving the way for female and BIPOC conductors. (Alsop gave an extremely diplomatic interview about the film here.)
Still, these gripes are just more to chew on. Tár rocked my world. This film had my head spinning with so many thoughts and emotions, I couldn’t fall asleep after I saw it. It is, indeed, a magnum opus.