TÁR (2022) and Feathers

TÁR has to be one of the more controversial films of 2022, at least judging by the critical arguments and counterarguments about its meaning and/or gender-political correctness (or incorrectness). At the same time however there’s a strong critical consensus about its cinematic qualities: the terrific performances, most notably (but by no means exclusively) by its star Cate Blanchett (who even gets lauded by many who criticize the meaning of the movie), the writing and direction, remarkable visual composition and cinematography, impressively credible mise en scene (look and feel) taking us into the upper echelons of an elite classical music world, gorgeous music from Mahler and Elgar, and an interesting, pitch-perfect score by Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir.  

And if you haven’t seen TÁR or if you’d like to see it again the good news is that it has just recently become available to rent at non-premium prices on most streaming services.  

The movie was written, directed and produced by Todd Field, not exactly a household name. Field started out as an actor in the mid 1980s but switched to the other side of the camera in 2000. His first feature, which he wrote and directed, was In the Bedroom (2001), starring Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek.  It was a critical darling and, for a small film, did exceptionally well: made for under $2 million, it brought in over $44 million.  His next project was Little Children, starring Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly and Patrick Wilson, which he also wrote and directed. Released in 2006, it was also a critical success, but did not fare so well at the box office: costing $26 million, it only took in only around $15 million worldwide. 

Sixteen years later, TÁR is only his third film. Its critical reception overall has been tremendous – generating a Metascore of 92 and a Rotten Tomatoes critical score of 90%. The movie is prominent on most 10-best lists and awards season discussions, nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actress. The US box office, on the other hand, has been lighter than hoped (under $6 million in gross receipts as of this writing ). Those who have seen the film seem to like it nearly as well as the professional critics: its IMDB score is 7.7 (out of 10) and Rotten Tomatoes audience score is 72%. But among the self-appointed Woke and parts of the journalistic intelligentsia, there has been some loud carping, which I’ll return to in a bit.   

The film opens with the end credits (which normally occur at the end of a movie). They scroll from the
very end of the credits to their beginning. It’s confusing (particularly if one is streaming the movie at home, rather than sitting in a darkened theater).  Presumably this is intended to underscore the fact that a motion picture is not just the product of the director’s vision or the artistry of its stars, but rather, it results from the efforts of hundreds (if not thousands) of unheralded people from electricians to set designers to camera operators, editors, drivers, and so on; just as a symphony is much more than an orchestra’s famous maestro or a long-dead composer’s genius, and would never be heard or seen if not for the scores of musicians, concert hall staff, and so on. Basically, this opening is a stunt; one with a point, but a banal one. Once we get past that this though, the movie soars.

The story profiles a world-renowned symphony conductor named Lydia Tár (Blanchett) at the height of her creative and celebrity power. As it starts, we see Lydia standing in the wings waiting to go on, nervously brushing off her dark outfit, fidgeting a little, setting her face, focusing – until she walks offscreen into an auditorium to the sound of applause. Lydia is being interviewed before a packed house at New York’s Alice Tully Hall by The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik as part of the magazine’s annual arts festival. 

Gopnik starts out by saying “if you’re here, then you already know who she is … one of the most important musical figures of our time”; then proceeding nevertheless to list Lydia’s accomplishments at some length, presumably for our benefit since the audience already adores her. Her resume is so preposterously superhuman as to seem satirical (which surely it is): Harvard PhD; music director/conductor at all of the so-called “Big Five” American orchestras (which Gopnik name-checks: Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New York) before arriving at her current top-of-the-heap position with the Berlin Philharmonic; teacher/mentor to aspiring women conductors; a composer herself and benefactor of other less well-known female composers. She’s also one of only a handful of artists to win all four EGOT awards (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony). And, she’s got a memoir coming out, Tár on Tár. 

The interview itself is interesting and gives us our first impression of just who Lydia Tár really is. Unmentioned by Gopnik, but hardly unnoticeable even at this early point, is that she is sleekly fashionable, remarkably articulate, extraordinarily knowledgeable – basically, one of the most accomplished women we’re ever likely to see. And it is hard not to admire and even like her for all that. But keep in mind that first impressions can be deceiving.

Most of TÁR takes place within the dizzying milieu of world-class classical orchestras and the power structure that supports it. The behind the curtain view is fascinating and feels quite convincing.  But note: you don’t need to be a fan of classical music to enjoy the movie. In fact, while there are some rousing moments in which excerpts from Mahler’s 5th Symphony and Elgar’s Cello Concerto are played, and the film is rich with detail about music history and performance, this is just the milieu in which the movie is set, but not its subject. Rather, the central topics are ambition and power and their corruptive and corrosive effects. 

As you might expect or may have heard if you haven’t yet seen the movie, this is personified by the arc of Lydia’s story, which plays out much like a Greek tragedy. In the classic Greek rendition, a great man is brought down to earth by arrogance or other hubristic character flaws. In the modern cinema world, these stories often are tied to the megalomania of business magnates – think Citizen Kane (1941), There Will Be Blood (2007), or The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), for example - always about men. After twenty-five hundred years, one would think that at least a few ladies would join the largely male Tragic Heroes Club. 

TÁR may be the first major feature film to tie such issues of hubristic downfall to a powerful female protagonist.  Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) in Devil Wears Prada is powerful all right, but doesn’t count because (a) she’s not the film’s protagonist, and (b) she does not suffer a tragic fall.  #MeToo issues are beginning to be reflected in TV series and a few movies, such as 2019’s Bombshell and the very recent She Said, both of which based on real events, the latter about the Harvey Weinstein case itself. But again, TÁR seems to be the first narrative feature to center on a woman brought down from the heights because of accusations of sexual predation.   

Times have changed over the millennia, of course, and there is now a greater recognition that self-destructive behaviors do not necessarily result from moral weakness or an innately evil character, but may result from personality disorders or more pronounced mental illness. TÁR skillfully muddies the waters here. Precisely how this happens in Lydia’s case is best left for you to discover, and I will not provide further plot details here – suffice it to say there are clues suggesting either explanation.  Nevertheless, [spoiler alert] there will be, of necessity, some general hints in my discussion of certain critical viewpoints, below.  

TÁR is not merely a story about a woman rising to great heights only to fall. Along the way, other 
contemporary topics with some connection to the film’s main threads are examined as well.  For example, the film spotlights the undue power of social media, including its willingness to spread uncorroborated, often false, information and to give a megaphone to those who, based thereon, demand the censure and boycott (and frequently the firing) of those whose behavior or ideas, accurately understood or not, they deem unacceptable.  

A relatively early scene satirically illustrates how this phenomenon can effectively dumb down education (and by extension public discourse generally). This is the famous moment when Lydia is teaching an advanced conducting class and suggests to a student, Max, that instead of focusing on atonal, discordant avant garde works at this point in his career, Max might want to study and conduct something more traditional and recognizable, like, for instance, Bach’s Mass in B minor. Max says he’s not ‘into” Bach, because “as a BIPOC trans-gender person”, he has no interest in some white guy who fathered twenty children. It seems that, for Max, this establishes Bach as a misogynist, thus automatically unworthy of consideration. If Max had his way, Bach – within the Western canon, generally recognized as one of the three greatest composers of all time (along with Mozart and Beethoven) - would be cancelled, because he fathered too many children (within wedlock, by the way).  Exactly what this had to do (if anything) with Max’s racial or sexual identifications goes unexamined.

It is a great scene, and much has been made of it, more because of how Lydia treats this guy than for what he said. It’s not a fair fight. When her rather compelling arguments fail to dent the illogic of his perspective, Lydia uses her immense power advantage to roll over poor Max, until – humiliated before his peers - he finally flees the room, calling her a bitch on his way out. The scene also demonstrates how, like a lot of powerful people, Lydia uses her status as a lever of control.

Lydia has an empathy problem. We see signs of this in several ways, such as when she demotes or dismisses, often for petty or selfish reasons, musicians and others over whom her position gives her control, without regard for the emotional effect of her decision on the other person or on the orchestra. This lack of consideration impacts Lydia’s relationships with her wife Sharon (the great Nina Hoss – underused but excellent) as well as with her protegee/personal assistant, Francesca (Naémie Merlant), among others.  Keeping in mind that several mental health conditions – such as borderline and narcissistic personality disorders - are distinguished by an empathy deficit, does this make her a bad person or a sick one? Should we dislike her for it or feel sorry for her? 

Lydia can be impulsive as well, particularly when attracted to a younger, good-looking female musician, as happens in the case of a talented Russian cellist, Olga (Sophie Kauer – an actual cellist) seeking a position with the orchestra. 

This combo of impulsiveness and lack of empathy apparently led to Lydia’s abrupt dismissal some time ago (before the action in TÁR gets underway) of a former protegee, Krista.  The film’s depiction of Lydia’s relationship with Krista is intentionally murky and mysterious; and although there are hints from the very start, and nothing is ever made explicit, eventually this becomes the center of the story.  In the opening interview scene, there are at least two shots of the stage from the back of the auditorium with a sharply in-focus view (from behind) of the bright red hair of a mysterious (never revealed) audience member. Later we may wonder – Krista? Then there is the fact that Lydia is haunted, figuratively and perhaps literally, throughout the film. Her sleep is increasingly disturbed. She occasionally hears or thinks she hears things – a couple of musical notes at one point in her composing flat, a woman screaming during one of her runs through the park; or she sees things, perhaps figments – a shadowy creature in a seemingly abandoned building, for example. Now and then, we may catch glimpses (or think we do) of some ghostly images that Lydia herself doesn’t notice.  All of which may or may not be real, but add a sense of foreboding, of something being off-kilter, and eventually, as the narrative unfolds this feeling undergirds our understanding of Lydia’s unravelling.

In any event, people within the film notice odd changes in Lydia’s behavior, cracks in her mystique; and whether it is due to that or because they are swayed by pervasive rumors and hearsay promulgated within the cancel culture portraying Lydia as a predator, these things, taken together, culminate in her fall from grace.

Bottom line, this is some terrific filmmaking. TÁR  is by turns compelling, intriguing, gorgeous, sometimes funny, sometimes darkly troubling. It is well written, well-paced, well photographed. But whatever the overused label of “star” means, it is applicable to Cate Blanchett’s sublime performance here: she is in virtually every scene and carries the film on her shoulders – naturally, confidently, indelibly. The best adjective I can come up with is incandescent. Anthony Lane in The New Yorker perhaps put it better: “She burns like a cool flame.” It is Blanchett's best performance, in a career of excellent ones, at least since her role as Jasmin in Blue Jasmine (2013 ), for which she won the best actress Oscar. 

So why has TÁR been so polarizing? 

Some objections may be based on taste  – simply not enjoying the film for some reason. For example, Nathan Lee, a critic at Film Comment “hated’ the movie, saying: “I found the character [of Lydia Tar] unbelievable in her choices; watchable, but I didn’t believe any of it.” He also found the movie too “middle-brow”.   Okay, I disagree, but that’s his opinion. [I, by the way, generally find the cinema reviews in Film Comment too “high-brow”.]

Other critics disliked the scene I’ve described where Lydia bullies poor Max. And yes, it was a bit cringeworthy, but that was sort of the point – to show Lydia’s abuse of her power. On the other hand, the substantive point she makes - puncturing the argument that the work of  geniuses like Bach (who died in 1750) should be cancelled for some era specific behavior that’s not practiced in the 21st century – was grand. 

By far, however, most of the objections I’ve read (and the most vehement ones) come from feminists or from activists for non-traditional gender identities,. These generally result from the sin of overgeneralization, which goes like this:  if a movie is about a flawed woman, it must be saying that all women are similarly flawed.  Or, if a movie depicts a queer guy as devious, then it’s really saying that all LBGTQIA+ people are devious. Kind of illogical, and untrue in most cases, but there you go. Here’s a recent example:

In a recent article entitled “What’s Wrong With TÁR” by Alexandra Coghlan in The Sunday (London) Times, here is Marin Alsop, an esteemed, groundbreaking conductor herself, one of the most famous women conductors of our time: “I’m offended by Tár as a woman, as a conductor, as a lesbian.”  Coghlan herself acknowledges that Blanchette’s performance is ‘brilliant”, but she’s not much interested in the cinematic or dramatic qualities of the movie. She asks, “what about the real-life female conductors whose lives and careers are suddenly under new scrutiny, filtered through the lens of Blanchett’s hypnotically controlling, abusive, exploitative narcissist of an antiheroine?”  Ah, there we go.  She believes that all movies have an agenda. If the movie spotlights a flawed lead character and that character is female, this has to mean that the film’s intent is to cast all women similarly situated in a negative light.  She’s also unhappy that some of Lydia Tar’s background aligns to a degree to that of Alsop – and Alsop “wasn’t even consulted.” 

Alsop, on the other hand acknowledges that whatever similarities exist between the fictional character of Lydia and herself are “superficial’. But regarding the portrayal of a successful woman as flawed, she is in accord with Coghlan: “To have an opportunity to portray a woman in that role and to make her an abuser — for me that was heartbreaking. I think all women and all feminists should be bothered by that kind of depiction because it’s not really about women conductors, is it? It’s about women as leaders in our society. … There are so many men — actual, documented men — this film could have been based on. Instead, it puts a woman in the role but gives her all the attributes of those men. That feels anti-woman.”

Actually, she is right about one thing but understands it rather ass-backwards. TÁR is not about women conductors. It’s about one (fictional) woman conductor.  What Alsop is asserting here, however, is that to even suggest in a movie that some women may have negative attributes similar to some men - like narcissism, overweening ambition and/or even abusiveness - is ipso facto proof that the film is misogynistic. Notice that we are talking about some women being bad like some men are bad – not all men, and by extension not all women, right? But Alsop is also saying that women are just naturally better than men and much less likely to act badly in ways that some men do.  Really?  What about, say, Elizabeth Holmes, to take a recent example of an actual woman who was brought down by the flaws of ambition and hubris?

Luckily most people don’t take stories, cinematic or otherwise, so personally. 

2 hours 37 minutes Rated: R “for some language and brief nudity”

Grade: A

In theaters and streaming on most pay-per-view services including Amazon, AppleTV Google Play and others (about $5.99)