But the film is only partly about making music. It’s mostly about what happens to amoral people in powerful positions when they meet their Waterloo. Hildur Guðnadóttir’s remarkable score links all the aspects of the story superbly.
Extremely disciplined, Tár lives reasonably conventionally in a massive apartment, symbolically concrete-walled, with her wife Sharon (Nina Hoss), the leader of the orchestra, and their school-aged daughter Petra (an outstanding performance by Mila Bogojevic). Perhaps to keep passion alive, Tár lives part-time in a studio bolthole and has serial off-screen affairs with young female acolytes. Discipline versus passion is just one of the conundrums that make up Tár. She’s a conductor who can interpret any composer’s intent, and yet she’s a composer with only one unfinished tune in her repertoire. She’s a teacher who expects individuality, but dismisses her racially or gender-diverse students as robots.
The underpinnings of Lydia Tár are cruel. Her undisguised attraction to a string of acolytes humiliates Sharon, but Tár carries on regardless. And when she deals on Petra’s behalf with a playground bully, she does so in an appallingly malevolent way, after introducing herself to the child as Petra’s father. Go figure.
Then there’s the downfall. When a discarded lover commits suicide, implicating Tár, she desperately tries to cover her tracks. Sharon has finally had enough, refusing to let Tár see Petra, the only other person Tár really loves. The orchestra bears the brunt of Tár’s vindictiveness. She sacks her loyal assistant conductor Sebastian (Allan Corduner), replaces her adoring personal assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) and elevates newbie Olga (Sophie Kauer, a talented cellist in her off-screen life), the only one who knows how to play Tár. Unwittingly, Tár has orchestrated her own destruction.
Tár is increasingly thrown off-kilter by strange emblems and the tiniest of sounds. Eventually, paranoia takes over when she can’t find her annotated score of the orchestra’s current recording project, Mahler’s fifth symphony. Another conductor, Eliot Kaplan (Mark Strong), is out to get her, she thinks. Is it only the score she’s lost, or herself as well?
Everything about Lydia Tár is spectacular, even the way she unravels. See the film for Cate Blanchett’s acting, but expect to be bewildered, in a very thought-provoking way, both by the character of Lydia Tár and the film as a whole.
Highly recommended
Movies are rated: Avoid, Recommended, Highly recommended and Must see.
The first person to bring an image or hard copy of this review to Starlight Cinema Taupo qualifies for a free ticket to Tár, screening from March 16, 2023.
