‘Tar’ Is *Almost* Brilliant
A review of ‘Tar’.
Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is the world’s most famous conductor. She is intelligent, articulate, well-put-together, and a student of her craft. She is also an ‘EGOT’: someone who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. It suffices to say she is a rare thing. This last is mentioned by a New Yorker journalist during a fireside chat with Tár, arranged to promote her new book. But his words are mouthed by Tár’s assistant, who is standing in the audience. And so we see that though Tár is brilliant, she is also controlling, to the point of manipulation.
This is how Todd Field’s Tár opens, and it sets the stage for what follows. The launch of Tár’s book, Tár on Tár, is approaching, and its author, who is conductor for the Berlin Philharmonic, has problems in her life. Her relationship with her partner and first violinist Sharon (Nina Hoss) is somewhat fraught, she is being stalked by a former mentee, and her assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant), an aspiring conductor, may be growing resentful. Cracks are starting to show in Tár’s glamorous, globetrotting lifestyle.
The launch of Tár on Tár is approaching, and its author has problems in her life.
The question Field asks of us is a familiar one: how much can one person control the world before the world hits back? Put slightly differently, how long can someone like Lydia Tár last before a crack-up? Darren Aronofsky asked the same question in Black Swan; but the trope of the perfectionist on the verge of a breakdown is hardly new. Genius looks like madness till it finds its context, Russell Brand once said; but contexts change, and if they can be controlled at all by those who thrive within them, it is not for long. So it is with Lydia Tár, who shows herself to be as flawed as Mahler, Bach and her other musical role models.
The trope of the perfectionist on the verge of a breakdown is hardly new.
Technically, Tár is outstanding. Florian Hoffmeister’s cinematography takes full advantage of gorgeous auditoria, grungy Berlin backstreets, and the beautiful flat that Tár shares with her partner and their daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic). Stressing the intense claustrophobia of self-centredness, Tár has the same stifling focus on its central character as that achieved by Aronofsky in Black Swan and The Wrestler. The writing, too, is good, because it is disciplined: in Tár, noise, if not always music, takes centre stage, relegating mere dialogue to the wings.
The film is too long. (Most films are.) It could be thirty percent shorter and would be better as a result. The dénouement is bland and unneeded, and the scenes in which Tár jogs through Berlin in her all-black running gear (calling to mind another ice queen, Claire Underwood of House of Cards), are so frequent as to come across as filler footage, stretching out the spaces between the action that moves the plot along. The pacing is off, too, which is common in character-driven fiction. When a character is interesting, we will observe her living her life without too much thought for the story. But things must happen sooner or later in a story, and they happen too fast and too late in Tár. Nothing of substance happens for long stretches, and then a lot happens quickly.
All that said, it is a great film, and so good is Blanchett’s performance that it seems trite to point it out. If it were a shorter film, and if certain scenes had been excised for the sake of the plot’s unfolding at the right speed, it would be brilliant. As it is, we will have to settle for very, very good.
