Tar it’s a film that I admit has unsettled me. It has everything to bore the viewer in half an hour of footage (being very generous) and still get your full attention. I don’t know how he did it, but it’s quite a feat considering it’s almost three hours long, deals with a topic that only 0.01% of the population cares about (explaining above) and the first act lasts something like two hours at just nothing happens. Well he succeeds.
Tar tells us the story of an orchestra conductor surrounded by a murky case of sexual harassment (are there any that aren’t murky?). The director is not so much interested in the thriller plot, so to speak, but in the day-to-day life of a music director. And what a director! The movie is Cate Blanchet in pure state It’s not that it appears in 90% of the footage (the other 10% are the credits) it’s that it’s a “Blanchetian” style manual.
The Australian actress bares her skin to perform Lydia Tár. Not only has she learned German, piano and to conduct an orchestra, if they tell me she has also become a lesbian to prepare for the film, I believe them.
Cate Blanchett as a performer always consciously separates herself from the character she embodies. In other words, there is always something “artificial” in his work. It’s perfect, but it reminds me of those luxury watches with the transparent case so you can see the gear and how it works. This is Cate Blanchett. You don’t see an actress who is grounded in the person she embodies, you see an actress who is neither nor pretends to be that person in the film.
I don’t mean that as a negative thing. A completely naturalistic or organic mimetic interpretation is just as valid as a more stylized one. It will depend on how the director wants to tell the story and the tone he wants to give it. Even the contrast of an “artificial” actor and another “naturalist” one works very well in comedy. From Kathering Herpurn and Cary Grant to My little girl’s beast to Kevin Spacy and Annette Bening a American Beauty. In other words, one is not worse than the other. It’s simply (“simply”) whether it works or not and if Cate Blanchett works.
That really striking of Tar it is not the performance for which Blanchett has her third Oscar almost already in her pocket (via Michelle Yeoh), but Todd Field commits one of the first errors of narrative… and I repeat that even so Tar it works.
Anyone who is telling a story, from a film director to your cousin from Cuenca when you mistakenly don’t notice him and ask him about his life, must be very clear that what he may think exciting, the potential audience can peel it. An example: The broken hugs. I have no doubt that Pedro Almodóvar’s worst nightmare is that the editor downloads his film, but to you, me and your cousin from Conca he takes it to the father. Is there anyone who didn’t look at whatsapp while Hypatia was talking about astronomy a now? So that. How then to tell a story about a subject that does not interest us? Well, telling personal stories using the subject in question as a context or backbone. But let what reaches you be the human journey, not the thematic coldness. We are all interested in passions because we live them and this is the key with which the director (or your cousin) introduces you to his story. It’s just as if we don’t know anything about astrophysics or want to know, The theory of everything it works because it’s Stephen Hawking’s personal story, and we all like that because we all have feelings.
Tar, but it is the day-to-day life of an elite concert player that seems more like a docu-reality than a narrative. However, the story moves forward. Very slowly, small flashes throughout life… but it’s moving forward. Todd Field’s narrative bet is very risky and anyone else would have gotten the can of the year, but Field knows how to gradually introduce details so that the story rolls forward. Of course, I don’t want to take credit for the editor of the film, Monika Williwith which he shares the credit and for which he got a well-deserved Oscar nomination.
What will you find in Tar? One of the most crushing performances of the year, a theme about cancellation culture very much the order of the day, and above all, a three-hour film that you almost thought you’d be bored with… and it wasn’t does.
Oh, and the best posters of the year.