Tar, written and directed by Todd Field (his first movie in over 15 years), is about a renowned conductor of symphony orchestras, Lydia Tar, played here by Cate Blanchett. It is a strange movie, not necessarily in content or tone, but in construction and point of view.
In the wake up #MeToo, we have all heard various stories of executives that have abused their power to gain sexual favors from female subordinates. In real life, we hear these stories from the outside. We are not in the room where it happens and by default such stories have a he said/she said quality to them. A fictional movie like Tar though is not constrained to an outsider’s view. Because the writer/director has the ability to create what went on in the room, there doesn’t need to be any uncertainty involved as to what happened. The strange thing about “Tar” is that the movie is told from the inside, that is, it is told from Lydia Tar point of view, it follows her around in the privacy of her apartment and is present during confidential conversations. But even so, the scandal in question involving an allegation of abuse of an up and coming conductor, is never shown or explained in any detail. This leads to a strange viewing experience because we see Lydia Tar reacting to the outside world reacting to the vague rumors of a scandal, but we don’t actually know whether what the world thinks happened in that room is actually true or not.
This is one of those movies a certain type of movie critic loves because it allows them to interpret it however they wish (and thus show off their considerable skills in interpretation). I am not one of those critics. I am compelled to reveal that I spent a considerable amount of this movie confused as to what I was watching. The unexplained scandal is only one aspect of the confusion I had. I also had a hard time telling who it was Lydia Tar was talking to in any given scene. Near the beginning, she had a polite dinner with a character whose name I didn’t quite catch but who is played by Mark Strong. This character played by Mark Strong had some position in the orchestra but I didn’t pick up on what it was, or I did, but didn’t know what the position meant. Really, all I knew about the guy was that he must be wearing a wig because Mark Strong, the actor, is famously bald.
Not that the movie is being deliberately vague about that scene, it just isn’t all that helpful either. I have a feeling that if I knew a lot about symphony orchestras, I could probably have picked up on what they were talking about, and, in turn, its political undercurrent. I think that symphony orchestras, being bastions of elitism, are probably run in the discreet and indirect manner that shows up on the screen here. In this world, Lydia Tar, a direct and dominant personality, bullies her way through people, perhaps not realizing that what is left unsaid will find its way back to her.
Other times, I think the movie should have helped me a little bit. I know part of this movie takes place in New York City because I know that Juliard is located there and I recognize some of the streets and buildings. But this movie also takes place in a city where most people speak German. It was not clear to me where that was and there were no scenes of travel between locations. (The movie opens with a train scene, but you can’t get to Germany from NYC by train. So…) Lydia Tar has more than one residence, that much I picked up on. I couldn’t tell you on what side of the Atlantic Ocean either one of those residences were located.
I did grasp how Lydia Tar went about seducing her charges. In one scene, she takes a young cellist out to lunch and gives her information unknown to the rest of the orchestra, that Tar is going to choose a piece of music for the upcoming performance, which includes a cellist solo. This young cellist goes out and gets a head start practicing for the solo. Then Tar tells the orchestra the news and asks the lead cellist in front of everyone whether or not they should have auditions. The lead cellist, confined by politeness, has to agree. Then Tar schedules the audition for early the next week and asks the lead cellist if that is enough time. The lead cellist, confined by politeness, has to agree. The audition itself is blind, that is the listeners cannot tell who is playing the cello behind a large partition. But one cellist is clearly better than the other, and, lo and behold, it turns out that the better one is the young cellist that Tar wants to seduce.
It is a good question here as to whether Lydia Tar has taken advantage of the young cellist. There doesn’t appear to be any objection on the young cellist’s part. What is clear is that Tar has unfairly manipulated the lead cellist and has been dishonest and disrespectful to the orchestra. What this movie might be about ultimately is not about the comeuppance due a person in power for their taking advantage of a subordinate, but how an organization fights back and expels such a person for her crimes against the whole.
Of course, if this movie was about the latter, you would think that Todd Field would show scenes of people in the orchestra plotting the downfall of Lydia Tar. But we don’t see that. The movie stays with Cate Blanchett the entire time. She seems oblivious to the machinations around her until it is already too late. I am reminded by the last quarter of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon wherein the title aristocrat is shunned by his peers but no one actually tells him that it has happened.
Overall, the way everyone scurries about outside the frame doing things for reasons they will never articulate, reminds me of all the more annoying people I know in real life. A part of me thinks Lydia Tar will be happier having nothing to do with them. She loses everything it appears, except the work and the music, and perhaps that is what really matters to someone like her. In one scene, she goes way out of her way to eloquently and publicly defend the music of Bach against the charge that he is white and male. Who knows? Maybe she is entirely innocent.
Cate Blanchett has been one of our best actresses since she played Queen Elizabeth at the age of 28. She has considerable talent as an actress and cuts a striking figure but, unlike most big name actresses, has never really been sexy. Not being known for sexiness is a boon to the aging actress, and not unlike Meryl Streep, it lends Blanchett a gravitas that will likely have her hoovering up all the best roles for women (and men, see I’m Not There) past a certain age. Meryl Streep was 57 when she played Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, a role that finally made her a bankable star to a wide audience. It is fair to say that Streep’s career has been as strong as ever for the past 20 years since she turned 50. Cate Blanchett is now 53 and I think it is very plausible that she will have a Streep-esque run in the next 20 years that will have her doing some of her best work. She’s already played a Queen. It’s only a matter of time before she plays a President. That is not to say her range is limited to power roles. She also did a great job this year playing an incompetent hairdresser in Documentary Now’s Two Hairdresser’s in Bagglyport. Blanchett can do anything.
