Review of Tár, directed by Todd Field

Back when I had a subscription to my local national theater chain, AMC, and I moved abroad for my Fulbright, I would go to movies often. It was my way of destressing throughout graduate school, especially as the content I was consuming, which was often on genocide and settler colonialism, started getting to me.

So I went to the movies a lot, and I remember exactly when Tár came out, as that was towards the beginning of when I had acquired my subscription to AMC. I heard the buzz about Blanchett and the fact that she might get an Oscar for this movie, which she ultimately lost to Michelle Yeoh’s brilliant performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I kept telling myself that I was going to see this movie, and I kept booking the tickets. I really did. But then I kept cancelling them and just never ended up seeing it.

What convinced me in the end is that I found a DVD copy of the movie at my local library, and I checked it out. I do better when I have deadlines with everything in my life, and this gave me a deadline in two weeks.

Here are my thoughts on the film! I procrastinated on this blog post for a while, but here we finally are.

A deeply passionate conductor is accused of misconduct by those around her.

In this film, Blanchett portrays Lydia Tár, a hotshot in the world of music. She’s the chief conductor right now, at the beginning, of the orchestra in Berlin. Everyday, she relies on a personal assistant named Francesca to make sure that she gets around to the right schedule, and she has a book out recently.

So Lydia prepares for book promotions and a new recording that will be released soon. First, she meets with Eliot, an investment banker and music lover who founded an organization called the Accordion Foundation with Lydia. They want to support female conductors, and they have a lot to say during this meeting.

Next, Lydia heads to her masterclass session at Juilliard with their students. One student named Max dismisses Bach, such a legend in the music world, and she reacts poorly. She openly challenges him and leans borderline humiliating the kid, telling all of the students to just focus on the music and not identity.

Right after, she receives a copy of the novel Challenge from 1923. She rips out the title page, throws the book away after seeing a Romani dedication that’s pretty condemning. After that, she goes back to Berlin with her wife and adopted daughter.

Auditions for a vacant cello position are happening, and Lydia becomes enamored with a young Russian woman, Olga, in the bathroom. She manipulates her results to get Olga into the orchestra, and her wife notices how Lydia is now becoming obsessed with this young woman.

Next, a woman named Krista kills herself, leading to a ripple effect. Krista was blacklisted after getting on Lydia’s bad side, despite Lydia being her mentor. She killed herself because of the fallout, and now her parents want to sue Lydia for the loss of their daughter. Lydia tells her assistant to delete all of their emails, and then prepares to dismiss one of her other employees.

He tells her though that everyone knows about her behavior, and she decides not to give her assistant a promotion because of it. She then begins suffering from hallucinations, pain, and sound sensitivity—some of which resembles what Krista would suffer from. As she begins declining, cell phone footage of the Juilliard goes viral, and Lydia is accused of being a predator by the New York Post.

Francesca, her assistant, resigns and begins working with Krista’s lawyer. Lydia goes to Francesca’s home and discovers it was abandoned minus proofs of the book, which has been renamed to Rat on Rat. She heads back to New York City with Olga, the Russian girl, and is met with protests.

When she heads to court, she discovers Francesca gave the supposedly deleted emails to the court. Lydia is fired from her job as conductor because of everything going on, and her wife forbids Lydia from going anywhere near their daughter. Lydia reacts poorly and becomes depressed, then heads to the live recording she was supposed to head.

She tackles her replacement, and then she heads to Staten Island, where she grew up, because of the media frenzy. She sees all of her young achievements on the wall there, and even tears up watching a VHS of Bernstein. Her brother then comes to visit and tells her she forgot about her roots.

Lydia finds a job in the Philippines, and she’s sent to a brothel when she asks for a massage. She sees a woman wearing the number 5, which was the symphony she was supposed to conduct before everything fell apart. Lydia throws up, and then conducts a video game score for cosplayers.

Overall Thoughts

This is such a good movie if you’re trying to track an antihero’s fall from grace, as it’s pretty obvious that Lydia is obsessed and consumed by her passions. She’s a morally grey character who forgot where she came from. You’re not supposed to connect with her.

Blanchett is just so good in this as well. She always delivers such a good performance, but this certainly is one of her best. I have seen quite a few of her movies throughout the years, and I think this is one of my favorites from her, too.

That said, I didn’t love this movie. I can admire its qualities, but I didn’t find myself wanting to watch it again beyond Blanchett’s performance.

Go watch this one though if you’re interested in it and have not already!

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