This review first appeared for Jumpcut Online on September 2nd 2022 as part of Venice Film Festival 2022
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Lydia Tár is a bitch.
That’s what a student calls Lydia (A wickedly excellent Cate Blanchett) the sociopathic lead of Todd Field’s visceral psychological thriller Tár. They’re not wrong. She is the sort of damaged soul that has hit the heights of her conducting profession, who flies so close to the sun and still refuses to believe her wings will melt. Lydia’s megalomania is justified, what with her EGOT status, her soon-to-be-finished autobiography “Tár on Tár,” and the respect she automatically acquires in the community as a leading gold standard for conductors. So, when the student, at whom she contemptuously sneers for their proclamation of being a BIPOC Pansexual Non-Binary, calls her a bitch, Field sets about proving them right.
Lydia is a few weeks away from finally completing her masterwork, a rendition of Mahler’s Symphony Number 5 with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. As this looms, Lydia’s lust for power and control derails her life and she must face the consequences of her actions after she orchestrates her own fall from grace.
At one point in Tár, Lydia verbally attacks a student. She postulates exasperatedly that his beliefs are wrong, that the student’s disaffection for Bach’s infidel and misogynistic lifestyle is preposterous. Lydia, in a gloriously long single take that weaves around the classroom, waxes lyrical about the absurdity of cancel culture and how this student is the crux of society’s problems, citing that their entire personality is social media. She has a disdain for viewing art based on the artist at the brush.
This artist/art cultural quandary is a hot topic in 2022 and Field very much sets his film in the contemporary. The
Covid-19 pandemic is mentioned as something they have moved beyond – note the distinctive lack of face coverings – and makes a joke about Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, instantly placing this in a 2022 time capsule. This quandary is one that Field is adamant to get across in this story – much to the appreciation of a highly responsive Venice audience who responded to her vitriolic ‘anti-woke’ comments with sickening applause. Tár doesn’t indulge its lead’s beliefs as something to be jovial about; Field composes Lydia as an antagonist. Her views and lifestyle are not to be emulated, though if audience reactions are to be believed, it’s here where Field doesn’t quite hit the mark.
What is fascinating about Field’s choice for Lydia to be so venomous against cancel culture is that she herself is a perpetrator of the exact actions that could get one “cancelled”. She is projecting, these actions are fully selfish and rooted in self-preservation. She knows what she is doing to her assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) as the added edge of sexual tension between the two is noticed by Lydia’s partner Sharon (Nina Hoss). Lydia also displays acts of grooming students, one such victim infiltrates the various dynamics that hold the structures of Lydia’s power in place. Foolishly, Lydia believes her actions are for their benefit, and not a flex of her power.
Alas, when Field introduces quite obviously “fake news” regarding Lydia’s behaviour, it becomes clumsy. Is Field implying that when a person is falsely declared a sexual deviant, they are still deemed as such? Should we be wary of “cancelled” celebrities who have gotten their fame back à la James Gunn? Field’s analogy translates flimsily to real life. Why is Lydia, a queer woman, the one to be cancelled, when usually cis white men who refuse to believe the status quo has changed are the perpetrators of such sexual deviance? Does he want its audience to sympathise and feel sorry for Lydia because of this?
In a film that is very rigid with its tight framing and intense sound design, Tár becomes maladroit and unsophisticated. To its credit, the film’s achromic political bias gives a level of intrigue to the film. Had it been more straightforward, it would not have been anywhere near as compelling or challenging.
Field’s first film since 2006’s Little Children brings together extraordinary performances from its support in Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) and Hoss (Phoenix, Homeland) but it is Blanchett who is, unsurprisingly, an absolute revelation. She commands the screen as the mighty Lydia, appearing in every scene of Field’s 158-minute eccentricity. She is a tour-de-force in her ability to captivate the audience, to be enthralled by all her wild movements, and to believe in the emotional and physical pain she feels – and probably deserves. She never lets Lydia become sympathetic either, as Blanchett – along with Field, Alexandra Milchan and Scott Lambert’s script – pits her most vulnerable moments as a poisoned chalice, caught in her own hubris.
While it outstays it is welcome ever so slightly – a satisfying character arc resolution takes its sweet time – it’s consistently compelling. Blanchett rules the screen and Field’s eye for the bodacious, striking visual means this Icarus journey is a hell of a ride, despite its cynicism and contempt.
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