Director Todd Field has gone through great pains, including on a podcast for the Los Angeles Times, to explain his great effort to get the world of classical music right in “Tár.”
A wealth of knowing chatter, gossip and the goings-on in the orchestra is meant to add to the film’s realism. Cunning clues abound, as in a conductor in the film, Andris Davis, being named after the real-life Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andris Nelsons and the revered late British conductor Colin Davis.
There have been many fanciful feature films set in the milieu of the classical music world with many actors, including Rex Harrison and Yul Brynner, as charismatic star conductors. They, though, are charismatic movie actors just doing their thing. On the other hand, Cate Blanchett, in her role as Lydia Tár, attempts to show what it really takes to conduct an orchestra, let alone reveal what it might require and feel like for a women to become the music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, the most desirable job in the profession. Blanchett doesn’t, like all the others, just wave her hands around. She conducts.
