Tár

The 2022 Academy Awards showed the world that casuals audiences weren’t enamoured with Hollywood anymore as very little attention was given to it. While it had its landmark moments for Asian representation with the massive success of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, nothing about the event or even the winners created much buzz in the industry or in the public space, mainly because most hadn’t seen or didn’t care about the movies that were up for contention. The only category that got people actively talking was the Best Actress category, with the debate being whether the award would go to Michelle Yeoh for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, or Cate Blanchett for her role in the psychological drama, Tár. While the film was nominated for other categories, this singular nomination was the only point that got people actively talking about it outside of the critical space, painting a pretty clear picture as to how the general public viewed it as opposed to critics and Academy members, who seemed to eat it up. Lydia Tár (played by Cate Blanchett) is the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and has been rewarded with several different awards, titles, and positions. She is currently working on a live performance of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and is thinking of shuffling around her orchestra, firing her current assistant conductor, Sebastian (played by Allan Corduner), and acquiring a new celloist, which she finds in the form of the young and attractive Russian candidate, Olga Metkina (played by Sophie Kauer). As this symphony starts to come together, Lydia finds herself caught in several scandals that could damage her career, including being sued by the parents of a former student whom she actively blacklisted to the point of pushing her to suicide, being accused of granting privileges to her assistant, Francesca (played by Noémie Merlant) in exchange for sexual favors, and her clear favoritism coming to the surface again as she becomes attracted to Olga and gives her all the leading positions, which is noticed by her wife and concertmaster, Sharon (played by Nina Hoss). Spiralling into a madness that concerns her family as well as her work team, Lydia Tár discovers how quickly someone’s fame can be ripped away the second their true self comes to the surface for all the world to see. Being adored by critics but failing to make a splash at the box office, Tár presents a style-over-substance project that saves itself from unbearable pretentiousness through its lead actress and occasional sprinkles of talent within the directing, writing and visuals, but doesn’t stick the landing well enough to ignore the film’s obvious faults.

From the trailers alone, you get a pretty solid idea of what kind of movie this is going to be and how it’s going to go about conveying itself. It will feature a stable presentation matched with a tense, almost disturbed tone to cause imbalance, it’ll give off the vibe of a biopic despite not being about a real-life person, and it will be entirely run by its lead performance with everybody else essentially being salad dressing for the main course. You can feel this not just from the trailers, but also from the information provided by the film’s director, writer and producer, Todd Field. With only the films, Little Children and In the Bedroom, acting as his past experience in the directing chair, Field made it pretty clear how reliant this film was on featuring Cate Blanchett as the star, to the point that he stated that he wrote the script specifically for her and would actively stop production on the picture if she said no. This mindset is pretty questionable, but his rationale proved necessary as a lot of the picture’s goodwill and even appeal comes from her inclusion. The opening act of this movie is actually abysmal and kind of hard to get through, featuring soulless dialogue, awkward editing, bland shot composition, direction that feels too laser-focused to be clear and concise, and sole attention being placed on the majesty of its leading actor to the point that it starts to feel very one-note and even a little insulting. The direction by Field in general just feels off, as it seems aimless in its story direction, limited in its appeal, and so stale in its character and supporting performances that it comes across as a project tailor made to draw the attention of the higher ups of Hollywood rather than the general public. However, once the second act rolls in and you get a better understanding of its narrative and find out that the film is actually about the effects of cancel culture in the modern era and how those in high positions are no longer untouchable, it mellows out just enough. Those previously listed issues are still present, and the movie is still unengaging and often times hard to follow, but the commentary and direction feels more purposeful, the characters start to actively engage with the material, the visuals and atmosphere start to feel less aimless, and the script actually feels like it’s leading somewhere and isn’t just stuck spouting endless monologues back and forth. There are other stories that have done this kind of narrative and theme far better in the past and even the handling of this commentary seems a little messy (a story about the problems with cancel culture would work better if it wasn’t focused on a person that openly deserve it), but at the very least, it evolves from a painful experience to just a mishandled one. There are a few decent scenes that shows that Field is capable at his craft, but he’s too stuck in this overly pretentious manner of delivery that it removes a connectable element for the audience to relate to.

The clear star of this film is Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, and it doesn’t try to hide that. She has already proven countless times before that she is a professional and extremely capable actress that usually manages to hit bullseye and can even turn lesser material into something good, so as expected, she is very good in this movie. Her acting is strong, you hang off her every word through how passionately she speaks her lines, and despite still being a little bland, her character is the only one with a sense of personality. Lydia Tár is, by all accounts, not a good person, and is someone who is willing to exploit her fame to show privilege to those that she likes (sometimes even more than just platonically), is willing to demean and even hurt others even when a less-aggressive solution would be more effective (she goes as far as to threatening to abduct a child) and puts her work ahead of so much else that she starts to neglect her own wife and daughter (played by Mila Bogojevic). With all this said however, just because the character has traits to point out, doesn’t mean she’s that engaging, because in truth, it still comes across as very shallow and not properly fine-tuned. Lydia Tár doesn’t feel like a character, but rather a template for the message the movie is trying to convey, and because of that, it’s very hard to see it as anything more than Cate Blanchett doing a performance (one that will tick all the boxes required to get her that illustrious nomination). While the performance is still very good, it’s expected of her and therefore doesn’t feel surprising or even that impressive. The rest of the cast, by comparison, are handed practically nothing in terms of development, personalities, or even just basic desires for their characters to have, but at the very least, the actors seem strong enough to work with whatever they can get and some of them do stand out because of it. While Mark Strong is quite bland and poor in all of his scenes, people like Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, and even small roles like Mail Bogojevic and Zethphan Smith-Gneist are memorable enough and help make this sterile environment feel a least a little bit more alive.

From a visual standpoint, the film originally looked like it was wasting a lot of talent by playing itself too straight and bland to really provide a unique style. As previously stated, the opening really sums up everything awful about this movie, and it felt like from a cinematography, production, and even musical level, it would be presented in a very boring fashion despite all the pieces feel very professional and talented. However, once the film gets its stride, these elements stop feeling actively ignored and more so just become improperly handled, as the talent for each of these individuals is put on display even if it’s not matched with what’s being shown. Cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister at first just sticks with very basic medium shots of people without any variety or fun angles to make the film feel uniquely cinematic or even that involved with its audience (it remains very stagnant for long stretches of time), but there are several other instances where the camera work becomes more active in its panning shots and even so crispy framed in its still moments that it feels very Stanely Kubrick in nature, especially with how it often times creates a very awkward and uncomfortable atmosphere. Nothing about the subject material really matches that kind of mood and there are several filming decisions that feel different for the sake of being artsy, but he is a really solid cinematographer that could be used really effectively in better material. The editing by Monika Willi was awkwardly done at first, with snap shots of random sequences over other scenes that never seemed to connect or flow as intended, but that feeling goes away around the middle of the film and feels more traditionally presented and even sometimes well cut. The production design by Marco Bittner Rosser is cold, brittle and slightly colorless, but it does match the prestigious and even ironically spotless feel the film is hoping to capture, and even the musical score by Oscar winning composer, Hildur Guðnadóttir, isn’t anything that special despite being a story about a conductor, but never feels outright bad and the piece that plays over the credits is pretty solid (it’s strange that it wasn’t featured in the film).

Tár was a movie that not a lot of people cared to think about outside of its award battle between Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett. With hindsight in mind after the results, it feels like the right decision was made by giving the award to Michelle Yeoh, because Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (whether you like it or not) provided something different for the actress in question, whereas Blanchett could deliver a strong performance during a coffee break, so it’s a little hard to say she deserved extra praise for doing it in a movie that didn’t challenge her at all. The fact that she is the only thing that was preventing the film from being drowned says a lot about the overall quality of the picture. Tár isn’t as terrible as it could’ve been (like it was showcasing in its beginning) as there are some decent ideas, serviceable performances and impressive production qualities to make it function, but the slow pacing, pretentious vibe, messy delivery of its commentary, downright wastage of its talent, and only giving the lead any sense of care or attention, keeps this as a pretty mediocre picture at best. It doesn’t deserve the cancel card, mainly because no one would care enough to look into it.