TÁR, the cancel culture conversation piece of the year starring Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss and directed by Todd Field

also re: "cancel culture conversation piece" - the part of the movie that is explicitly about cancel culture (as i understand it) is pretty minimal. there are more parallels to #MeToo than cancel culture, and really the movie is broadly about power dynamics

I've procrastinated because of the length and b/c Field and Blanchett don't inspire me (Blanchett in particular I'm cold and colder on) but I'll probably go in the next few days. Thanks for the push.

Yeah NA otm… the cancel culture stuff seemed to me like a plot device invoked only as much as it needed to be in order to talk about power and complicity, not something the film was interested in discussing in & of itself. Framing it like a movie “about” cancel culture reminds me of people who felt The Irishman was making some kind of statement about the American labor movement.

I generally like Blanchett, I don’t think her performance was the stunning tour de force that some are describing it as but its a good one that holds together a very good film imo

It is good indeed, her performance and the film, and the fact that you have to spend time piecing together context (but never in a way that makes you lose sight of the story's relentless flow -- it's all centered around Blanchett's character and needs to be in this case) is a big key to it. (In a weird but real way, Rose Green's Saint Maud from the other year serves as a similar model, in that Morfydd Clark is relentlessly the center of her own drama, with a [much MUCH different] final scene to end it all. So clearly the sign is to cast actresses who have played Galadriel in such roles.)

I will give it sound edit credit alone. There's a particular moment that I won't bother to signal or describe but if you're in a good sound system setup it will knock you flat, a pure thrill, where the imperious intention also serves as a telling point.

saw this last night and broadly enjoyed it a lot, tho its a tiny try-hard a couple of time maybe: like horror moments where you want to say turn yr lights on at this point and 2moro mend yr fridge you are not short of cash

the cancel-culture element felt minor and fairly add-on: ilike three-quarters of the way thru the project todd field thought oh wait i'll have to deal with this side of things also and then also decided to skimp it -- it doesn't depict the protesters with much interest (or tbf really even try to: mobs and social media remain very derailing for cinema as a subject)

i genuinely enjoyed the movie's heel-turn at the end, from the start i'd been snorting with amusement at small cartoonish elements of character where the set up was TOO MUCH ALREADY and subverting the intensity, and not just of blanchett's highly controlled and increasingly absurd performance and long-hair hair-work -- the cosplay audience (which was very lovingly done and kind of redeemed the skimped anti-mob element earlier) also made me want to go back and see the degree to which comedy was the intended mode all along even though the horror moments seems out of step with this?

for a soon-to-be-professional cellist i tht sophie krauer is an excellent actor (the strad magazine ran a piece arguing basically "of course all great virtuosos are also a kind of actor" which seems to be pushing it but )

at one point during an early rehearsal i had a great sad wave of nostalgia for when i was a part of such orchestras (i mean not the berlin phil lol, basically not very good school and college orchestras, but the physical setting of being among all these ppl with their beloved instruments gave me a pang, the noises and of such a room, the smell of polished wood and rosin and so on -- myself i haven't been there for 40-odd years and i finally gave sold my bass to a friend's nephew last year 😔😢)

also i larfed non-stop at once particularly nonsensical joek = when sophie krauer as cellist was dressed up nice for a proper performance in the SEINFELD PUFFY SHIRT, this was someon's choice for her look

Often LOL funny, sometimes excruciating. I can't imagine any actress except maybe the young Judy Davis in the role, which didn't mean Blanchett didn't figure in the excruciating parts. Todd Goddamn Field is sharper about his milieu than Ruben Östlund is about his.

I thought the film was fantastic, and had been waiting for an essay like this one to come along:

It didn’t occur to me until I left a showing of “Tár” that the movie does all sorts of things that I’d normally find intolerable in a narrative about a powerful person accused of sexual misconduct. The camera stays glued to Lydia, using long takes and few establishing shots, and rarely straying from her point of view. The victims are barely fleshed out or else absent altogether, their accusations only referred to in passing, their testimonies unheard. We catch only the first lines of Krista’s desperately confused e-mails. One of the few characters to challenge Lydia directly—a “bipoc pangender”-identifying Juilliard student who struggles to connect with Bach because of his “misogynistic life”—is not given the time to make a full or coherent argument for a more inclusive canon. But making the forces that threaten Lydia’s stature as muted to the viewer as they are to her turns out to be a highly effective way of conveying the insidiousness of power. Lydia does not have to contend with other people’s humanity—nor offer hers to them. The film immerses viewers in Lydia’s world of extreme control, which is to say, extreme isolation.

…

I did not feel that such immersion was intended to evoke empathy for Lydia, at least not unquestioningly. Roger Ebert famously likened movies to “a machine that generates empathy.” “Tár” generates something more like empathy horror. A crowd at the Venice Film Festival reportedly cheered as Lydia dressed down the Juilliard student, identifying with her exhaustion in the face of cultural sensitivities, and perhaps instinctively siding with a person whose greatness the film has gone to great lengths to establish. I wonder how the audience felt once it became clear how far she’d gone to silence others. The film itself is masterfully made, aggressively sleek, confident and clever. I delighted at its niche cultural references, thought I saw Cate Blanchett commune with the divine, and even, somehow, cried. But through all it reveals about the cost of artistic greatness and the ruse of prestige, “Tár” casts even its own achievements as untrustworthy.

…

I still value the sanctity of the artist-audience exchange, but it worries me when conversations about artists’ misdeeds end up centering on it. When an artist is revealed to have abused someone, we ask, “Can we still like their art? Is it still O.K. to?” These questions treat every individual’s response to art as a morality test. They confuse optics with ethics, muddying a useful distinction between reacting to a work of art—an act that, after all, is something visceral and involuntary, like laughter—and materially supporting it. Discussions around accountability and practical consequences for abusers get sidelined in favor of abstract exercises around taste and identity. Justice appears to have been served merely because a legacy has been tainted. I do not mean to suggest that art works can be divorced from social context, only that our reactions to them are not, in themselves, public statements, acts of harm, or good deeds.

Lydia also monitors her own and others’ reactions to art, albeit for virtues of a different kind. “You’ve got to sublimate yourself, your ego, and, yes, your identity,” she says to her students, with disdain, imagining that they are constricted by arbitrary rules of their own making, whereas she approaches music from a neutral place of surrender. Her exhortation is ironic, though, given how much she has invested in her own persona–her identity, you could say–and the career she's built on it. She may deride the idea that a student would attend Juilliard for its “brand,” but the school’s brand helps to uphold her own. “Tár” is less interested in explaining the relationship between genius and cruelty than in showing how both collaborate with power—as derived from the brands, the institutions, and all their virtuous pretense—to create a shield against accountability.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-tar-knows-about-the-artist-as-abuser/amp

Pretty much on the same page with Alfred here minus the Blanchett hate. Finally Todd Field made something that wasn't terrible.

a “bipoc pangender”-identifying Juilliard student who struggles to connect with Bach because of his “misogynistic life”

the rest of this better be really good because this is fucking embarrassing

did a fake SJW sockpuppet account from 4chan write that character because it sounds about that level of writing/understanding

Field's direction of that character to constantly be pumping his anxiety-ridden leg throughout the scene does him no favors, either

the rest of this better be really good because this is fucking embarrassing

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Friday, November 25, 2022 7:55 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I implore you to actually read the essay and or watch the film

they won't

I read the piece (having read a couple of more negative/ambivalent ones previously) and will probably watch the film eventually but if this minor character sounding like something out of a bari weiss column is justified thematically somehow I'll be impressed

Oh Nina Hoss is really really good in this too btw

yeah I said as much in the detrius thread

I do love the tossed-off gag about Marlon Brando's imported alligators (presumably during the filming of Apocalypse Now making the river permanently un-swimmable by locals.

I read the piece (having read a couple of more negative/ambivalent ones previously) and will probably watch the film eventually but if this minor character sounding like something out of a bari weiss column is justified thematically somehow I'll be impressed

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Friday, November 25, 2022 9:24 PM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

life is…so much more complex than you make it seem

To that end, that's precisely what makes this very much officially an anti-"cancel culture" movie, no matter how much grey area Field and Blanchett build into the apparatus ... They practically double underline the idea that "there's more to every story" etc.

I’m sorry no offense but there simply must be more to life than reading a few second-rate synopses of a genuinely challenging work of art and developing a whole point of view based on little more than that

I agree!

Also, to pull things down into the gutter, a quote from J3ffr3y W311s' allergic reaction to the movie:

All kinds of exposition is deliberately left out of Tar, and it’s triggering. I’m sorry but Tar takes forever to get going (at least 45 minutes if not longer), and once it does it’s too elliptical, too fleeting, too oblique, too teasing and (I guess) too smart for its own good. It made me feel dumb, and I really hate that.

Anything that both makes him understand that he is, in fact, a stupid person AND makes him say he felt "triggered" ... chef's kiss.

Also, the very idea that I'm actually wrestling with a Todd Fucking Field movie means I too am getting my just desserts

i had the opposite reaction as tavi g. both tár's partner (nina hoss) and her assistant francesca (noemie merlant) were wet blankets--jealous, petty, all anxious concerned expressions and worried furrowed brows--while lydia is fabulous and ebullient. her deep connection to music gives her terrestrial presences a delightful levity. even her slam poetry-inflected boomer rant in the "pangender BIPOC" scene is, against all odds, kind of a banger. the scene where she threatens the kid in german--so good! she also wears great outfits throughout

framing one's whole reaction to the movie around the assumption that lydia is an "abuser" misses the fact that the movie is (imho quite intentionally) highly ambiguous about whether she was abusive at all. it leaves out key details of her relationships with krista and francesca, and the scene where olga vulgarly slurps her food cuts against the assumption that their relationship is an abuse of power; if anything olga is the one using tar. it's (not that subtly) making a "meta" point about cancel culture in turning the audience against lydia without actually showing us anything incriminating

Tár also made Hoss and Merlant into wet blankets, to be clear: she ground them down.

yes. and flops, one of the central points of that essay, and at least in my opinion one of the strengths of the film, is that the film allows us to render a fairly firm judgment despite deliberately leaving key pieces of information uncorroborated, at least literally speaking. I suppose field could have shown us scenes of krista prior to her death, or her parents confronting lydia in court, but would this really have added anything to the film? has anyone come across a review that genuinely seems to think lydia is innocent?

whoops that was supposed to be spoiler tag, I’m getting old

How Todd Fucking Field made a movie about a guilty person and asked, "How can we still have fun?" is the most surprising thing about Tár .

i don't think the BIPOC scene is at all well handled content-wise* but you come out of it (well i came out of it) already knowing that LT was a bully who absolutely shouldn't be teaching even if her antagonist was basically delivered as a twerp pulling studenty stunts. i fully disliked lydia from then on and was hoping for the comeuppance she deserved.

*bcz there's several real issues to it, and they're delivered as no more than hurried cartoons (actually on both sides, tho lydia's has far the better delivery mainly bcz cate). of course the entire movie is a very controlled cartoon and that's good -- but it's mainly a different kind of cartoon

as observed above this entire strand to me feels like minor business sellotaped in at the last minute, like field belatedly felt it "had to be there" but didn't then put the work in to ensure it wasn't basically a red herring (while also helping himself over-painlessly to a plot point or two plus some handy arc machinery). my guess is that he felt the (to repeat: belated) work needed fleshing out this conflict and the real issues attached, wd overset the tone and content of the rest of the film (and i think he's right).

That trembling knee is the equivalent of Captain Queeg and the steel ball.

i mean he's called queeg

Knowing that the movie had a "cancel culture" angle, I spent the first half waiting for something to come of the Juilliard scene (which is fairly early). I kept thinking, "Look at Tar, oblivious to what's about to happen." But when it does come, it seems relatively inconsequential on its own, or at least it has a slightly different import than one might have predicted from the original scene: It's leaked to support the accusations against Tar in the context of Krista's suicide, as an example of her imperiousness and abuse of power. The Bach/BIPOC stuff is superficially salacious, but it's not really the point.

In fact, while I was anticipating the consequences of the Juilliard scene, the movie was quietly demonstrating how all of Tar's relationships and interactions are suffused with perverse power dynamics, but this becomes apparent only through accretion because the movie withholds other people's perspectives. In some ways, I feel like the Juilliard scene is almost intentionally heavy-handed, to show that her character's real abuses are more insidious.

I guess I'm saying that it is kind of a red herring! But not completely unrelated to the broader revelations.

Another comparison to Östlund: https://boxd.it/3tcs3V

Maybe people genuinely, genuinely think this guy is the shit. But... I very much doubt this movie has a second and third life in the discourse cycle. It's disposable. TÁR was a little calculated for me but it's a high masterpiece next to Triangle of Sadness and I'm glad I saw them on consecutive days to be able to further appreciate what the Todd Field has to offer.

yes. and flops, one of the central points of that essay, and at least in my opinion one of the strengths of the film, is that the film allows us to render a fairly firm judgment despite deliberately leaving key pieces of information uncorroborated, at least literally speaking. I suppose field could have shown us scenes of krista prior to her death, or her parents confronting lydia in court, but would this really have added anything to the film? has anyone come across a review that genuinely seems to think lydia is innocent?

― k3vin k., Saturday, November 26, 2022 7:46 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

ya idk i disagree. i felt see that the film is trying really hard to do the opposite, to keep the judgment ambiguous. from an interview with todd fields

The film is an examination of a downfall, recognition, and even potential rebuild of an artist abusing power that they’ve gained over time. How difficult was it to create a balance on this issue without tilting your hand to one side or the other when making it? And do you think the audience should remain neutral when looking at Lydia and her actions?

TF: I think the audience has to do what the audience wants to do. We built this thing for a very particular purpose. We built this thing so that there was the ability to ask questions about her behavior and to have a real stake in your feelings about it, whether you judged her one way or the other, or maybe you changed your mind about her, or…

When Monika Willi and I were editing, we were out in the middle of nowhere working seven-day weeks, and when we would watch the film down, at different points, we would always turn to each other and say the same thing. It was, “How did you feel about her today?” And sometimes those feelings would be very contradictory from the previous viewing. So, it wasn’t like… We really tried to approach it, if I can be so bold as to say, in a humble way, which is that we weren’t trying to draw any lines about… We weren’t looking for outcome, we weren’t looking to do equational narrative. We were looking for as much possibility of interpretation as possible. Not to be intentionally vague or obscure or anything like that, just that all of it was available, and there’s no wrong answer, you know?

the real controversy is not about whether lydia tár is abusive, a bad person, cancel-worthy, etc., but whether she is a real person

I really don’t think that quote contradicts anything that I or others have been saying! but I will concede that the film takes on a hot-button topic in an unconventional, decidedly non-didactic way, and that it is not gonna please everyone!

I finally watched this and I loved it so goddamn much.

the real controversy is not about whether lydia tár is abusive, a bad person, cancel-worthy, etc., but whether she is a real person

― flopson, Saturday, November 26, 2022 2:14 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I felt like the first moment of this movie, Adam Gopnik’s introduction, made it very clear that this was an entirely fantastical character. It felt similar to a buildup in a horror movie. Do people really believe a person like this could exist? Should they have gone even further and had her conduct the first symphony from space or something?

i knew it was fiction going in but the friend i watched it with who went in completely blind asked me "wait, so is she not a real person?" after we saw it. it's also become a bit of a meme https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/lydia-tar-is-not-real.html

xp k3v- one of the things i like about it is that a reaction like mine (fawning over tar) and mark s's (rooting for her downfall) are both possible. as you said "the film allows us to render a fairly firm judgment despite deliberately leaving key pieces of information uncorroborated", but imo the same limited information also allows you to not

I had no idea that the last moment was anything other than a fantasy (not knowing what she was conducting or why the audience looked that way), until reading up on it afterwards.

The scene where she tries to follow the cellist home also felt unreal, so now I want to see the whole movie again from the point of view that she wasn't falling into some hallucinatory madness.

Also would like to watch this as a double feature with Black Swan.

asking "do people really believe a person like this could exist?" but pointing crossly towards adam gopnik

I loved this. odd reactions as expected up above from those who didn't actually watch the film. the film does a good job making it clear that she was an abuser without having to get explicit (ie: there is no doubt that she should not have done whatever it is she did to Krista, even though it's also somewhat apparent Krista was not a stable person). The surreal elements were well done, and really recalled Eyes Wide Shut to me, and I'd honestly forgotten who Todd Field was!

i knew it was fiction going in but the friend i watched it with who went in completely blind asked me "wait, so is she not a real person?" after we saw it. it's also become a bit of a meme https://www.thecut.com/2022/10/lydia-tar-is-not-real.html

― flopson, Saturday, November 26, 2022 5:45 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know that Lydia Tar is fictional, but she doesn't do anything that hasn't been done in real life by 1) a male conductor or 2) a male film director. (With the likely exception of a conductor tackling the second, in front of an audience.)

The Juilliard student is a strawman (strawperson?), but his dialogue is rooted in discourse I've seen elsewhere, challenging the canon and who decides what is canonical. I didn't see Whiplash, but in that I understand the cruel teacher is supposed to be the hero for expecting no less than 115% from the student?

Hmm: https://slate.com/culture/2022/12/tar-cate-blanchett-movie-ending-explained-analyzed.html

Maybe?

That sounds like a more interesting movie than the one I'd been reading about until now. Might need to rent it from Amazon.

that's how I watched it last month

that's the first piece i've seen that grapples with that aspect of the movie in even a remotely satisfactory way.

it kinda reads to me like she's accusing the film of being intentionally racist

"Lesser than" and far away is far above Staten Island for her, though.

it kinda reads to me like she's accusing the film of being intentionally racist

― avatár the way of watár (voodoo chili), Tuesday, March 7, 2023 6:50 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

hmm!

it’s so funny to me, I really hope it wins best picture tumblr is gonna have a rough time

pretty sure i adored this. lotta great posts itt really grappling with the text, dlh in particular killing it

i went in knowing as little as possible but honestly spoilers for this movie don’t really tell you much about what it’s doing. i found every horror/dream sequence really powerful, especially the bed on fire and the obliquely-lenses visions of her partners in the dark, and i gradually grew aware that lydia is haunted not by any specific character but by the viewer, no matter who that is, even if it’s a phone, bc the viewer is no longer someone she can manipulate

obliquely-lensed* lol whatever

i kept reading sentences about “the scene with the shoes in the bathroom stall” and i was like what in the possible fuck could that mean, but y’all: the scene with the shoes in the bathroom stall

alt universe michael mann movie where hypercompetency cannot save you from the habits and patterns that are so ingrained in you you’re nearly oblivious to their continual enacting

the composing scenes were excruciating, great mini movie about how it is impossible to write bc there are noises and they may not be diegetic at all, in fact they may emanate from the past, been there!!!

The "they may not be diegetic at all" is what got me the my second visit

haunted not by any specific character but by the viewer, no matter who that is, even if it’s a phone, bc the viewer is no longer someone she can manipulate

first line of the movie is tar to (presumably) her ethnographic subjects: “just— yeah— just ignore the microphone”

i’m hiding from her

why

because she told me to put my things in order, and they already are

Kavanah. I think many in our audience may have other associations with that word.

Carvana

“Haunted by the viewer”: I love this, Brad

yeah that is extremely otm: all her “every grain of sand” style sudden turns to stare past you like she felt you breathing— the looooong lingering early shot establishing your POV as krista’s— “god is always watching”— the impossibly edited video filmed from multiple angles by no one— “we all know the things you do”— her sealed tailored world where no one’s judgment or way of seeing can define her but her own, yet other judgments are still out there somewhere, lurking— objective, death-bringing time itself as the ultimate, unappealable frame of reference

“we put flowers on her grave every march 8” “her birthday?” “…no, international women’s day”

An artist besieged by an audience -- Henry James may have been the first to devote several short stories to the subject -- to the point where the audience vanishes and the paranoia-warped brain keeps humming is a subject I wish more movies depicted in the social media era.

🧵Films and books referenced in TÁR (2022) directed by Todd Field

1. The parallels in TÁR and The Meetings of Anna (1978) dir. by Chantal Akerman pic.twitter.com/81RLrDVfyr

— Rina (@bbblanchett) March 21, 2023

alt universe michael mann movie where hypercompetency cannot save you from the habits and patterns that are so ingrained in you you’re nearly oblivious to their continual enacting

This is kind of fascinating to think about. In Mann movies, the protagonist's hypercompetency often means *consciously* dooming the safety and comfort of domesticity, here it's kind of un(sub?)conscious. I think the main difference is ... arrogance? Mann people, they know they are the best, and there is pride involved, but maybe not so much arrogance. Tar, I get the feeling she is not prideful, per se - she is not above where she ends up - but certainly arrogant. I need to think about this more, as I do with many aspects of this film.

I rechristen this great film Lady Mann.

A dissent:

https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2023/03/tar-vitriol.html

not a good one imo

Good luck figuring out the interlude where Lydia, who winds up in the Philippines when her life falls apart, visits a masseuse recommended by the desk clerk at her hotel and finds herself in a brothel.

yes good luck figuring that out

With TÁR (and maybe TÁR alone these days) I enjoy the bad takes as much as I don’t fully trust the good ones

Field is an awful director. His notion of editing is to cut, for example, from Lydia reading the increasingly desperate emails from the young conductor whose career she’s short-circuited (emails that she asks her assistant to delete) to a shot of her assaulting a punching bag at the gym; or from a scene where she trips and smashes into the pavement because she thinks she’s being pursued to a shot of her pounding dough in her kitchen.

What makes this awful?

Invited to give a master class at Juilliard, she asks a young Black man (Zethphan D. Smith-Gneist) about Bach and gets him to admit that he’s not interested in some old white guy who sired so many children he must have been a misogynist. Her hyper-educated cooled-out responses are so high-flown insulated that you can’t imagine he could possibly understand half of what she says; still, he laughs at her jokes but she makes him so nervous that he can’t control his restless leg. But he stands his ground about Bach. So she gets him to sit next to her at the piano and plays some, and she seems to be softening up his biases. But then she humiliates him in front of the class and he storms out, muttering, “Fucking bitch,” as he marches past her. The scene is mildly amusing but it isn’t drama; it’s more like an idea for a dramatic scene.

What?

OK, maybe "enjoy" isn't the right word here

"stare at, fascinatedly, as someone runs into a wall they made themselves, repeatedly"

todd field was finally (indirectly) asked about heather from the blair witch project's screams .......... pic.twitter.com/nQQTosaxoo

— troy (@joker_misato) April 18, 2023

Wait, what?!

If the Muppets were still doing a weekly variety show we 100% would have had a Miss Piggy parody of TÁR call PÍG where she karate kicks the conductor

— Ben Crew (@BenjaminCrew1) June 8, 2023

finally saw this - top tier comical ending for a ‘serious oscar movie’

Todd Field did his Daniel Plainview movie. How you feel? Results may vary!

There is no right reaction to this movie, it contains multitudes. As funny as you want, as serious as you want.

PS I’m in Berlin this past week and this movie keeps popping onto my head. I even went to the Philharmonic twice!

This movie was very funny in parts. I think it's hard to believe Olga didn't know how Tar messed her face up, which makes all the scenes afterwards with the two of them in vry funny. Tar telling the kid "she was going to get them" or whatever. Lots of great laughs in this

who'll bear the pall?

i'll-- we'll bear the pall.

furiously hitting the punching bag to the rhythm of eine kleine nachtmusik

I can't help but wonder if, during his six years spent learning how to mimic Bernstein conducting one single snippet of music, Bradley Cooper happened to catch Cate Blanchett besting him while not even breaking a sweat

Yeah she was very convincing. Cooper was not conducting, he was swatting at flying elves.

Would watch Blanchett as Bernstein.

Really, I'm Right Here

he was swatting at flying elves

I appreciate this deep cut.