Film Review: Tár (2022)
Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss in Tár (2022)
Written by Gabrielle Keung
In the film Tár, Cate Blanchett commands the screen for nearly three hours. Her portrayal of Lydia Tár as the mighty composer and conductor is breathtaking, cementing her reputation as one of the finest and most versatile actors of her generation. The punch of the movie is supplied by Blanchett’s unswerving attention to Tár’s mental acuity and a mistaken belief of her infallibility. The alertness in Tár’s gaze conveys her ferocious ambition, verging on mania. Her rage roiling beneath the surface is carefully controlled and contained like a tiger pacing in a cage, waiting to be unleashed.
Tár devotes most of her days composing her music and interpreting Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony; her obsession and exactness in this pursuit is echoed in her relationships with The Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, her assistant Francesca and her partner Sharon. What’s so captivating about this character is how much with which she seems to get away. Her ruthlessness and cruelty are highlighted in various ways: She fires Sebastian, the assistant conductor, by humiliating him and calling him out for his obsequiousness; she selfishly passes Francesca over for promotion as rumors of her preying on young woman intensify, and she disregards the orchestra’s traditions by granting a solo performance to Olga, an unofficial orchestra member, because of her beauty and youthfulness. Tár wields boundless power; she appears indestructible. She is willing to destroy everything that stands in her way, burning her bridges even with Sharon, whose support helped secure her permanent position with The Berlin Philharmonic in the first place.
Tár is suffused with Blanchett’s self-possession and charisma. The opening scene sees her sitting on stage with Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker Festival, revered and adored by many. Blanchett’s performance is exceptional because of the delicate balance she finds between Tár’s paranoia and the illusions of her infallibility. Tár takes Sharon’s pills to calm herself down in the face of mounting accusations of impropriety with her former mentee Krista Taylor, and the ringing of the fridge or the ticking of metronome keep her up at night, taking her ever closer to the breaking point. The scene where she marches on stage and lunges toward her replacement during a live recording of Fifth Symphony is simultaneously shocking and somewhat anticipated – for someone who appears larger than life and thinks that she has control over time, her fall is unsurprisingly melodramatic.
For such a grand and sweeping story with an intense emotional focus, the denouement is disappointing, disconnected, and incoherent. The scene where Tár goes to a massage parlor in Asia and stands in front of “the fishbowl” – a place where young girls wearing numbers on their robes sit in front of a shopwindow like prostitutes – adds little to the film’s established story and instead sticks out as odd and random. Furthermore, the amateur orchestra Tár conducts in the wake of her downfall sheds very little light on the plans for her future – and, more importantly, the filmmaker’s treatment of a power-hungry conductor who fell from grace. In contrast to the rest of the movie, which is gripping and powerful, the ending feels bizarre and cold.
Despite its puzzling end, Tár is a remarkable movie marrying the language of music with that of cinema. Blanchett is a charismatic performer; however, the ending doesn’t hold a candle to the film’s stirring central narrative and the woman in the center of it all.
Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss in Tár (2022)
