TÁR: Complicated Character Study Considers Cancel Culture
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A-
Brainy, talkative, full of ideas and questions about contemporary culture and human nature, writer-director Todd Field’s TÁR is a character study of a talented, flawed character. It’s also a comment on cancel culture though it could be the other way around: a film about cancel culture wrapped around a complicated character.
The complicated character at the centre of the film is Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), a hugely accomplished artist and intellectual at the pinnacle her career. She’s the conductor of a major Berlin symphony who specializes in the works of Mahler, a member of the EGOT club (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), and a published author about to release a new book.
Highly educated, a renowned pianist, a protégée of Leonard Bernstein and on and on, she is also, of course, a successful woman in a world still dominated by men.
She lives a trans-Atlantic life. In New York, among other things, she co-administers a fund supporting aspiring women conductors. She also teaches at Juilliard. Her main digs are in Berlin, where she lives in a stunning modern flat with her wife Sharon Goodnow (superb German actress Nina Hoss), who is also first violinist in the orchestra, and their daughter Petra (Mile Bogojevic).
Tár is getting ready to conduct Symphony No. 5, the final in her recordings of Mahler’s symphonies. Tár has a lot of power and influence, and the film centres on how her life unravels as she handles — and mishandles — a series of personal and professional relationships that constantly veer into muddy territory.
Tár is strong-willed, educated, driven, focused, thoughtful, but also vain and self-interested, sometimes dishonest, and there is a cold, vindictive streak there.
As the film goes on, we get the sense that Tár likes the power she has, but is sometimes oblivious to her own actions, or seems compelled to do things that puzzle her. Watching her assistant, Francesca Lenten (Noémie Merlant, wonderful) react to her is instructive.
Ultimately when accusations are made against her, and social media gets into the picture with its mob affect, we get that there aren’t a lot of people lining up to defend her.
Blanchett won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere, and it’s easy to understand why. The performance is a masterclass in subtlety and nuance. Blanchett is a formidably talented actor who throws herself into her roles with commitment.
For this film, for instance, she learned to play piano, conduct credibly, and to speak some German, all of which contributes to the veracity of her projects. To my taste, there are drawbacks to her exacting style. Blanchett’s precision of craft can come across as too actorly at times, with a too-obvious technique that can give her characters a sheen of artifice.
In TÁR though, that artifice is deliberately deployed as part of the character’s public persona. Tár is often putting on a front. At the same time, Blanchett breathes an inner life into her characters and revealing them subtle ways.
Her character here presents as confident, but is more complex, has anxiety issues, and seems to be questioning herself. Tár the woman and the artist might be a difficult, even awful person, depending on your point of view, but as Blanchett plays her, she’s also charismatic and intriguing.
For his part, Field has built this film around this complicated lead character without delving into a huge backstory. There are things that happen in the film that are based on what we suppose went on. He also doesn’t rush. That subtlety can be frustrating at times, but in the end the film is deep and rewarding. It’s a movie that follows you out of the theatre.
Early in the film, while teaching at Juilliard, Tár challenges a student’s preconceptions and attitudes that cause him to reject a classic composer. Their debate is what we’d expect goes on in a classical music school, where you’d assume that the idea of intellectual exploration is part of things. To some extent the film asks us whether that notion, that an artist’s role can be to challenge accepted norms, is in danger in the era of cancel culture.
We yearn for artists who will dig deep into themselves and the material to produce work that will move us. But when those artists end up being human, we toss them and their work out the window too quickly. That may not be the centre of TÁR, but it’s hard to watch this movie and not wonder where we are.
TÁR. Written and directed by Todd Field. Starring Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, and Noémi Merlant. In theatres October 14.