You don’t realize how rare repugnant women are on screen until you meet a character as menacing and unlikeable as Cate Blanchett’s latest invention, Lydia Tár.
The protagonist of Todd Field’s Tár—which premiered today at the Venice Film Festival, and hits theaters in October—is an American conductor widely seen as a generational great; an EGOT who has led just about every noteworthy orchestra around the globe. She guest-lectures classes at Juilliard. Fans stop her to gush about her work.
That success has led her to an enviable industry position: She heads up the Berlin Philharmonic, has written an autobiography (titled TÁR on TÁR), and lends her name to a scholarship program that aims to propel more young women into conductor roles (though she’s considering widening the pool to include men, too). She is thorny, yes, but rich—flying private and wearing tailor-made suits resembling those of her mostly male idols—and seemingly untouchable.
Yet there are strange ghosts from her past, and a few from her present, threatening to derail her success—specters, it seems, of her own making. In his masterful script, Field alludes to these ghosts in fleeting moments. There are smatterings of attractive and talented young women who continually surround Lydia; glances from her present lovers to potential replacements; and ceaseless emails from an old protégée desperately trying to get back in touch.
In a pivotal early scene, during her Juilliard class, Lydia encounters a student, Max, who expresses a distaste for Bach, his work, and “cis, white, male” artists in general. Max introduces themself as a “BIPOC pangender person,” sending Lydia on a sharp tirade against what she sees as close-mindedness. Artists, she argues, must eschew identity politics and “sublimate and obliterate” themselves instead.
Indeed, Lydia’s own fight for her position, as a woman in a male-dominated industry, is slowly losing relevance to her public brand; from her vaunted vantage, she struggles to see the struggles of others. That scene, and the opinions she spouts within it, introduce us to Tár’s compellingly ugly core; how that same tunnel vision applies to her behavior within the industry is what transforms the film into a spiraling psycho-thriller. Is Lydia Tár simply a delusional narcissist, or do the flock of former students and apprentices that eventually accuse her of being dangerously—and often sexually—manipulative have the evidence to back up their claims? In a recent interview with the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, Blanchett described Tár—which presents her knottiest and arguably best performance to date—as a movie about ”a sort of fall from grace, a come-to-Jesus moment, and… the creative process.”
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