Tarred and Feathered

Movies: Tar

Before we get started, look guys, I know she has an accent over the "a" in her name, but I couldn't figure out how to do that (and if you stick with the review long enough, you'll find out why she doesn't deserve that accent anyway) so I'm just calling her "Tar". 

***

Tar is Todd Field's first movie in 16 years. He previously directed Little Children and In the Bedroom, both of which are great. Tar is something else...something that feels monumental or bigger than "just" a movie. For one thing, the film begins with reverse credits. In other words, the first few minutes of the film (which is 2 hours and 37 minutes, by the way) are the credits, but in reverse order so that the artists and experts who are least likely to be noticed in traditional end credits are front and center. You might even notice a mention of Monster Hunter, which is a fantasy role-playing video game, in the credits and wonder what the fuck that is all about. Well, if you stick with this review long enough, you'll find out! 

Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tar, an orchestra conductor who is at the peak of her game. The film opens with her being interviewed by The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik (playing himself) and he lays out all of Tar's achievements. She is currently the chief conductor for the Berlin Philharmonic (the first female to be in that position, although Tar doesn't like to lean into the "first female" aspect of anything in her career) and she is about to oversee a recording of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. 

(Oh, by the way, Lydia Tar is fictional, in case you didn't know)

This film is what I might call unapologetically intelligent. It drops the audience right into the world of orchestras and composing, a world which not many of us are very familiar with--at least, I'm not very familiar with it--and does not hold our hand for a minute. The jargon, the references to famous composers and conductors and classical musicians are all there and if you don't understand those references, oh well. Of course, you can gather a lot from context. We gather that Tar is incredibly talented. She's a composer in addition to being a conductor. She speaks German fluently and plays the piano. She did graduate work among indigenous people about how they make and experience music. 

In other words, Lydia Tar is extremely intimidating. We quickly see that she is all about control and image. We see her getting fitted for a suit tailored to her body. We see her edit her own Wikipedia page with a quote that makes her look good. Cate Blanchett is absolutely the actress to take on this role--as an actress, she exudes control, intelligence, elegance, coolness, beauty, and talent. The role of Lydia Tar fits her just like that bespoke suit and I really hope she wins an Oscar for it!

But like many people who have a lot of clout and power, Lydia is a manipulator and an abuser. There are cracks in Lydia's life and water is starting to leak in. It's only a matter of time before the dam bursts. 

Lydia has a wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss, excellent), who works with Lydia's demands. Sharon is not a trophy wife--she plays violin in the Berlin Philharmonic and advises Lydia on all matters. But it's clear who "wears the pants" in this relationship. Lydia is in charge and Sharon knows this and agrees to their unspoken rules: Sharon will turn a blind eye to Lydia's affairs with younger women as long as Lydia seeks Sharon's counsel and makes sure that she never does anything to harm the family, which includes Sharon and Lydia's adopted daughter, Petra.

Lydia has a similar relationship with her assistant, Francesca (Noemie Merlant, who was in Portrait of a Lady on Fire--highly recommended!). Francesca is an aspiring conductor herself and is the perfect assistant for Lydia. She is always right there with everything Lydia needs and when Lydia doesn't need her, she disappears into the background. It's also pretty clear, though never explicit, that Lydia and Francesca occasionally have sex. We don't know the exact nature of this affair, but when Francesca says "I need someone to hold me" after receiving some horrible news and Lydia answers flatly "this isn't the place", we know something is going on.

That horrible news, by the way, is that a young woman once acquainted with Lydia Tar has killed herself. Over the course of the movie, we see and hear references to Krista Taylor and we're not sure if Krista was a former lover of Tar's, a student, a member of an orchestra, or what. After getting word of the suicide, Tar opens her email and looks at a ton of emails where other conductors were reaching out to ask if Tar would recommend Krista and in each one, Lydia tells them not to trust Krista, that she is "wholly unsuited" and "disturbed". Basically, Lydia groomed Krista to be her lover and at some point things went sour and Krista began demanding more. In return, Lydia blacklisted her and ruined her career, which was probably a factor in Krista's suicide. Krista left a note detailing these allegations and now Krista's parents are suing Tar.

But Krista is not Lydia Tar's only indiscretion. She has a clear history of giving preferential treatment to young, pretty women. Her orchestra knows this--it's basically an open secret. Her latest conquest is a new cellist named Olga (Sophie Kauer), who immediately disarms control freak Lydia Tar by being casual and even rude to her and around her. Though Olga is invested in her own career, she doesn't seem scared of Lydia or all that impressed with her. She's happy to take advantage of Lydia's attraction to her, though.

But the walls are starting to crumble around Lydia's tightly controlled world. During an early scene in the movie, Lydia teaches a class at Juilliard where she dresses down a student who self-identifies as a "BIPOC pangender person", which is why they don't like Bach--an old white guy who had numerous affairs. Tar asks the student whether they would like it if someone reduced their talent down to their race and gender. And, she sort of has a point. But in her desire to be right, she is tone-deaf to the changing attitudes in culture. Someone in the class secretly records this interaction and then edits it in a clearly ridiculous way that twists Lydia's words. Lydia points this out to her lawyers, but they inform her that this video is the least of her worries. The news about Krista Taylor is out and the open secret of Lydia's favoritism and abuses of power is even more open now, and she's going to pay for it.

What's ironic about the scene with the student at Juilliard is that Lydia makes the point that a person should not be judged by their race and gender, but by what they DO. In this case, she means their art and their talent. When Lydia's fall from grace happens, it's not because she's a woman or because she's a lesbian--it's based on what she DID. One video I watched points out that Lydia is playing by old-school rules, which are basically "if you're talented and powerful enough, your actions don't matter". But the world is changing and the new rules are "it doesn't matter how talented and powerful you are, your actions DO matter". And she ignored the changing winds of society to her own detriment. 

So, Lydia is fired from her job as chief conductor. She makes one final, horrible choice, which is to attack her ex-friend Eliot Kaplan (Mark Strong), who has taken over as chief conductor during the live recording of Mahler's Fifth. She is dragged out of the room screaming. This control freak has lost all control. 

On top of that, Sharon seeks a divorce and custody of Petra. The only relationship that was free of bullshit--Lydia's relationship with her daughter--is now destroyed. 

Lydia temporarily moves back to her childhood home, where we see some awards on the wall of her childhood bedroom: her name is "Linda Tarr". She apparently changed it as part of her effort to get away from her humble roots. She has an interaction with her brother, Tony, who basically writes her off the way she surely wrote him off as she climbed the ranks of success.

Lydia's crisis-management team gets her a job in Southeast Asia. It's unclear exactly what she's doing there at first--maybe conducting a small-time orchestra? The final shot is a punchline to the film: Lydia conducts a show for fans of the video game Monster Hunter (basically, she's conducting the soundtrack to the game)--they're all dressed up in cosplaying outfits. And that's where the movie ends. If you don't know what Monster Hunter is, you'll surely be scratching your head at the end.

The final scene shows Lydia in her own worst nightmare. This pretentious, arrogant woman who is used to jet-setting between Europe and the United States, maintaining multiple nice apartments in multiple cities, and being in complete control of her orchestra, is now wearing headphones with a click track (which shows that she's not even in control of keeping time for this performance) and conducting for an audience of Asian teenagers who are obsessed with a monster video game. The movie could be read as saying "ew, Southeast Asia? Icky.", but I don't think the film is saying that the humble place where Lydia ends up is inherently bad, just that to an elitist like Lydia, it's hell on earth. 

So, what is Tar about? Is it about cancel culture? Sort of! The conversation between Lydia and the student at Juilliard is designed to raise hackles among different types of people. Someone describing themselves as "BIPOC pangender" is going to make some people roll their eyes. But if you agree with Lydia's subtle humiliation of the student, you'll find that you're siding with someone who is a hypocrite, a manipulator, and an abuser. Maybe she has a point in that conversation--that Bach's work transcends his race, gender, and any indiscretions he committed. I tend to agree! I love Bach! Also, that was hundreds of years ago, who gives a fuck?! And the student barely seems to understand their own argument. I admit I had a chuckle at this Gen Z kid trying to go up against Lydia Tar. Plus, as the student leaves, they call Lydia a "fucking bitch", WHO'S SEXIST NOW!??

But it's not just this one student vs. Lydia. This scene, which is just an expertly filmed scene all around, is a sampling of Lydia's worldview. She doesn't deserve to be "canceled" for just dressing down a person of color in a classroom. It's the many, many, many wrong things she does that bring her down. Someone in a film discussion group I'm in pointed out that the film is a rather accurate portrayal of so-called "cancel culture" because the canceling of someone includes both the frivolous stuff, such as the wildly edited video of Lydia's interaction with this student, as well as the deadly serious stuff, such as her blacklisting Krista Taylor.

I don't think Todd Field is interested in coming to a solid conclusion over what we should make of Lydia Tar. Yes, she deserved consequences for her actions. Does that mean we throw out her entire body of work? If we were to look closely at nearly any artist, we would find evidence that they weren't very nice people. So where is the line? How bad does someone have to be in order to dismiss their art? Also, should a queer woman from humble roots who worked and clawed her way up the ranks on her own talent and grit be subject to the same level of scrutiny as a white man who perhaps had more advantages? 

These are questions that cannot be conclusively answered because every person is going to have their own opinion. And I would venture even further to suggest that every person will have their own biases and come down harder on certain artists than others, based on that artist's identity, the power of their work, and the person's own individual tastes. Everyone I know who who refuses to watch/read/listen to the art of one bad artist makes exceptions for other artists who have done equally bad things (including me! Example: I don't watch Woody Allen movies anymore, but I do watch Roman Polanski movies). Why is that? Because humans are charmingly, and damningly complex. Tar's favorite insult to lob at people who disagree with her is to call them "robots". And it turns out that while Tar certainly isn't a robot, neither are her accusers, her victims, and the many people who kowtow to her. Tar's theme seems to be that people are complex, their lives are complex, their decisions are complex. And so if we're inclined to be like Lydia Tar in the sense of wanting total control and wanting to perfect our public image, we do so at our own risk. 

Tar is undeniably a monumental film. The attention to detail is dizzying. Comparisons can be made to Kubrick's movies, which were also detailed, yet stylish. Cold, yet fascinating. Orderly, yet with a madness simmering just below the surface. Tar isn't a horror movie, but it is deeply unsettling for reasons that are hard to grasp--there is just an air of ominousness, of inevitability, that permeates throughout the film. 

Call Todd Field a Maestro, because he has conducted Tar to absolute perfection.

Grade: A