Tár

Meet Lydia Tár. She’s the chief con­duc­tor of the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic, is soon to record Mahler’s 5^th Sym­pho­ny and is a fer­vent patron of the arts. So says New York­er staff writer Adam Gop­nik (play­ing him­self), on stage with his sub­ject and read­ing the care­ful­ly con­struct­ed biog­ra­phy penned by Tár’s assis­tant Francesca (Noémie Mer­lant) at the New York­er Fes­ti­val allow­ing Tár to pro­mote upcom­ing book ​‘Tár on Tár’.

It’s clear that Lydia Tár takes her­self very seri­ous­ly, per­form­ing the per­fect upper-mid­dle-class artist to a room full of admir­ers. But it’s not all work. She lives in Berlin with her wife and con­cert­mas­ter Sharon (the always great Nina Hoss) and their daugh­ter Petra in a Bru­tal­ist-style apart­ment so cold, you’d think no one’s lived there for years. But it all comes crash­ing down when she’s accused of abus­ing her pow­er to sleep with young female mem­bers of her orches­tra, one of whom com­mit­ted suicide.

Tár, Todd Field’s por­trait of the artist as an abuser, is the fun­ni­est hor­ror film of 2022. In an ear­ly scene, Tár is seen deliv­er­ing a lec­ture to a group of her Juil­liard stu­dents and starts chid­ing one of them, Max, for reject­ing the mas­ters of clas­si­cal music (specif­i­cal­ly Bach) on their per­son­al lives and views they held. What we wit­ness isn’t two peo­ple on equal foot­ing hav­ing the infa­mous the ​“Art vs Artist” debate, but instead some­one in a posi­tion of pow­er using every rhetor­i­cal trick they’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over the years to ridicule a per­son she deems beneath her. Blanchett adorns Tár’s ridicule with humour and the wis­dom of an old­er men­tor – an excel­lent ​“U‑Haul Les­bian” joke is deliv­ered with the man­ner­isms of some­one who just walked out of lesbian’s ​‘Dream Wife’ Pin­ter­est board.

When it comes to the sub­ject of abus­ing pow­er, Lydia Tár is not a man like most of her cin­e­mat­ic pre­de­ces­sors, nor does she want to be one. It’s hard to believe she lives in Berlin, for it seems like the life she’s lead­ing is of the kind that can be lived any­where. So much so that every time Tár steps out of that world, a lay­er of hor­ror shrouds the film. The film adopts Tár’s per­spec­tive, and her night­mares are filled with abstract fig­ures in the fog, not the mem­o­ries of awful things she’s done.

The film is not inter­est­ed in show­ing what Tár did, though it gives plen­ty of clues. Field is more inter­est­ed in show­ing us the haunt­ing of Lydia Tár: the screams she hears from the woods on her runs; the omi­nous tick­ing of a metronome stuck in a cab­i­net; the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ghosts that are like a sym­pho­ny of their own. They haunt Tár not for guilt she feels, but the fear she has over them com­ing out and ruin­ing her life.

Lydia Tár is not a man like most of her cin­e­mat­ic pre­de­ces­sors when it comes to the sub­ject of abus­ing pow­er, nor does she want to be one. Instead, she wants to assert her­self as mas­cu­line. From call­ing her­self Petra’s father to her suits and man­ner­isms, Tár is per­form­ing a type of mas­culin­i­ty she’s learned over the years to become who she is. And as we learn from her con­ver­sa­tions with an old men­tor, the world of clas­si­cal music is filled with men who abuse their pow­er. Lydia is not the first, and won’t be the last.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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