Cate Blanchett, always a high achiever, outdoes herself in this award-winning film about an award-winning conductor, a lesbian maestro whose sneakily abusive (and viciously petty, hypocritical and egocentric) behaviour makes her a target for the #MeToo movement. Blanchett and the team (writer-director Todd Field and countless others, unexpectedly credited at the beginning of the film, in a clear attempt to signal that this is a group effort, and leave space at the end for the even longer music credits) deserve to win big at all the glitzy ceremonies to come.
The fact that Lydia Tár is fuelled by lust, and has a smitten PA played by Portrait of a Lady on Fire’s Noémie Merlant, will lead some viewers to anticipate a movie packed with hot sex. All we see is a frazzled kiss between Tár and her long-suffering German wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss). Field’s not interested in screwing. He’s interested in how Tár’s ugly need to be on top screws up her brilliant career. The film’s subtitle could be Portrait of a Lady Who Gets Fired.
It’s hard to boil down Tár’s plot, let alone its themes. There’s a lot going on and many of the facts presented by self-mythologising Lydia are fictions, especially where Leonard Bernstein and her very own name are concerned (quick translation: Lydia’s a liar). But let’s try.
Tár, the first female chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, is preparing to release a new recording (of Mahler’s 5th Symphony), a new book (Tár on Tár), and a new composition (“For Petra”, dedicated to her and Sharon’s adopted daughter). Everything this woman does is done at full throttle and that includes “protecting” Petra (Lydia all but duffs up the kid who’s been bullying her daughter at school), guzzling Sharon’s meds, making mincemeat of sensitive Gen-Z students, grooming cute young Russian cellist (spry newcomer Sophie Kauer) and scheming to destroy the job prospects of Krista Taylor who, we gradually realise, is the last girl who caught Tár’s eye.
This is the bleakest and funniest film about systemic sleaze since Promising Young Woman. Both movies involve a suicide, but keep the victim off-screen, and both serve up a volatile and gifted central female character who loves the sound of her own voice. Promising Young Woman’s Cassie is hunting a predator; Lydia is the predator (though, just to be clear, she’s no rapist). Both women, albeit to different degrees, are made to seem worthy of respect. The misuse of power, which so many of the films’ characters collude in, is what’s entirely repulsive.
Marin Alsop, a real-life, female conductor name-checked in the film, recently described the project as “Anti-Woman”. I don’t agree. I think it’s pro-nuance and we’ll all benefit from the civilised debates/screaming rows it stirs up.
157mins, cert 15
