CHICAGO — The new Cate Blanchett film “Tár” is no issue movie. It has, however, brought a lot of rarified and/or unfashionable issues back into the spotlight: symphony orchestra politics; the cost of obsessive artistic ambition and devotion to a calling; and, for writer-director Todd Field, the challenge and allure of creating a screen character testing our sympathies one minute, inspiring greatness the next.
“Tár” also simmers with topics of right there pertinence: #MeToo, for one, and for another, that suspiciously easy phrase “cancel culture” (or simply “canceled,” as a verb used against a transgressor, innocent or guilty). Set mostly in Berlin, the film recently expanded its nationwide release. Already, thanks to the late summer and early fall film festivals, it has entered the cultural conversation and post-screening arguments phase.
Selfishly, I wanted to sit down with someone watching and listening to “Tár” with a set of receptors different from mine. Enter music critic Hannah Edgar, a freelance writer for the Tribune. We met at a Lincoln Square cafe and talked gender bias, Blanchett’s stick technique, the details “Tár” got right and wrong — and “that crazy uppercut thing” Blanchett cooked up for her character, the beguiling and manipulative conductor Lydia Tár.
