Thoughts on Tár

 Sometimes I’ll go into a movie with a certain amount of my mind already made up. Is that a good thing for a film critic? Probably not but in the case of Tár I’m very happy to stand corrected. 

Most of the conversation around this film is around the performance of its lead Cate Blanchett. She is fully operating at peak performance here. Career-best feels like an understatement with how she moves through the very real spaces of the Philharmonie. There’s the standout scene at Julliard which much smarter people than me have discussed already, but she is often in these long takes with her in the center acting as this Titan of music and theory. Blanchett is a maestro of the word as she knows exactly which syllable to hang on and what needs to be staccato. 

All of her loquaciousness that she shows in the first act of the film makes her crash back down to earth all that more enticing to watch.  

Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with the rest of Todd Field's but this film is directed with such a deft hand that I’m very excited to see his past films. There’s a version of this movie that is incredibly overwrought and undercooked but Field plays his hand perfectly at all the right times and this is in the visual language of the film as well. Field uses the closeup so sparingly that when we do get one it’s this incredibly impactful moment that you might not fully recognize intellectually but you understand it on an emotional level. 

It’s impossible to watch a movie about a specific artform and not think that it also has to do with the art of filmmaking. In the opening scene of the film Tár gives an answer in a Q & A about how a conductor is much more than a human metronome. Anyone who’s even smelt a live symphony performance would know that but the question isn’t without merit. Tár continues to say that she has to be this absolute time keeper that can never falter while the other hand is the part that brings the unexplainable out of the music. 

It’s reminiscent of what the modern director must do. Yes, Field has to work with his actors to bring forth emotion from the void but he also only has two days to film it and all of a sudden one of those days just got cut so now he has to film these emotional and vulnerable scenes with a sense of urgency that the actors can’t feel.

There always has to be a hand that just keeps the time. 

Tár is an incredibly dense and demanding film that requires much from its viewing audience. I understand that that probably won’t work for everyone, but it sure is nice to see a movie like this not only get made but do incredibly well critically. 

Thank you for reading as always.