‘Tár’: Todd Field conducts Cate Blanchett to her third Oscar
In an interview with film and TV website “The Playlist” about her new film, “Tár,” Cate Blanchett said she thinks the film is “about many things, but it is a meditation on the corruptive nature of power,” echoing the speech she delivered at a Q&A screening at AMC Century City Friday night.
At its core, “Tár” is a deep-seated character study about power and what happens when we let it take control of us. Lydia Tár, the fictional esteemed composer/conductor the film revolves around, is a character who serves herself, conducting the people in her life as if they are musicians in her orchestra.
And none of it would have been possible without the true centerpiece of the film, Blanchett, who delivers arguably the most ferocious performance of her career, the type that comes once every few years. Director Todd Field’s deft direction, combined with Blanchett’s measured restraint, mold her performance into something truly awe-inspiring and for the ages.
A character of such caliber can easily be taken over the top, but Blanchett lends her a remarkably realist nuance that makes her towering sense of self all the more believable. Viewers are led to really trust in this woman’s egoistic perception of herself, thanks to Blanchett’s masterfully articulated performance.
Every interaction with Tár is bound with tension, almost as if she were unintentionally reminding you of her power and unbridled superiority that makes her both dangerous and wholly fallible to weaknesses. She is never painted as a messianic prodigy figure, but as someone ambitious enough to grow their talents to such heights. She allows herself to take and take because she believes she has already created so much for the world — and she convinces you of this as well, with the help of Field’s script and direction. Even when you don’t agree with something she says, the film constantly reminds you of her greatness, momentarily destabilizing your qualms. She sees herself as the protagonist, a heroic conductor to the cacophonic orchestra that is her world, but what makes her so captivating is that is exactly how we are led to see her as well.
Viewers find out information through Tár’s perspective. We’re on her side through each and every blindside. Her hubris is never so obvious and comes off in how you see her from off-handed remarks to the pantomime of her baton. In a sense, Tár is a character incredibly understated in her bigness, a contradiction that would be difficult for any actor to pull off but one that Blanchett plays to gainly aplomb.
Through Field’s careful direction, it is clear he takes no interest in making Tár the victim or martyr of her deeds. The point of her morality is unimportant entirely, as Field is less interested in why Tár is motivated to make the decisions that eventually lead to her downfall than how power has manifested itself in her downfall.
We see her fall from grace play out step by step, but her motives are murky because we have been subject to her subtly filtered view of these events, making the moments of her condescension and ego break through even more effectively.
This is Field’s first film in 16 years — his last being “Little Children” in 2006 — and it’s truly a testament to his almost scientific attention to detail that makes it so we are able to feel so removed from Tár’s actions whilst simultaneously maintaining an intimacy between viewers and her macro sense of self that lends her a moral ambiguity, which highlight “Tár’s” ultimate themes of power and corruption. Watching Tár dig her hole is like watching a car crash in slow motion. Neither you nor the driver can control the outcome of what happens or knows when the impact will hit; it’s stuck, almost entirely left to fate, matching the cruel, Shakespearean irony of Tár’s own descent after being the conductor of her own fate for so long.
Though it feels like a cascade of dominoes when it starts to take shape, Field makes the beginning of this fall from grace feel sudden and abrupt, almost as if the audience is too late to even catch when and where it begins. However, when it does start, it does not stop until the final frame, and even then you can argue that it continues on.
But it is Field’s masterful assembly of the film’s many moving parts, all used to brew tension and allow the film to crescendo in a finale that feels earned, that allows the ending to work so well. From the cold cinematography to the tempestuous editing that reflects Tár’s go-go-go mentality to Hildur Guðnadóttir’s gargantuan score that ravishly comes and goes through diegetic orchestral interludes that accentuate Tár’s command as if to reaffirm her sense of power despite the rising challenges to it, there’s a shared tension that takes the seeming monotony of the first and second acts and converts them into a gloriously cinematic downfall.
At the Q&A session, Blanchett said what lured her to the project was how it was a story that is essentially about the universal theme of time. Blanchett feels that as more time passes, we feel more inclined to prove ourselves, thrusting us into a state of trying to do as much and as quickly as possible to consolidate our legacy. She feels that it is a notion that spans industries and careers, and something she herself relates to as an actor moving into the latter stages of her career. If that sentiment was even partly responsible for the sheer magnitude of her work here, I say let the music of Lydia Tár play on.