Contains light spoilers for Tár; linked pieces with heavier spoilers are noted in the text.
Occasionally the two sides of my twitter timeline - film twitter and classical music twitter - converge, and there’s no escape from the topic du jour. This has been the case since Tár began its festival circuit and has reached a fever pitch over the last week with its UK release and awards season successes. Cate Blanchett’s Golden Globes victory happened three days after an interview with conductor Marin Alsop appeared in the Sunday Times where she expresses (very understandable) distaste of a character whose biography more-than-somewhat matches hers - but the kicker, her fictional counterpart is an abuser.
Excitement over representation of classical music on film - and an openly gay woman conductor, still a shameful rarity in the industry - sits hand in hand with concern over the portrayal of Lydia Tár. She is wholly fictional, but she name-checks Leonard Berstein and other contemporary women conductors and is even introduced by Adam Gopnik (playing himself). Field seems to delight in blurring this line, even if he has recently clarified some fictions in the light of (again, very understandable) critiques. The classical music world has seen slow, small, and yet significant progress in terms of the visibility of female conductors - and has also watched male titans of the industry fall from great heights after allegations (and proof) of impropriety.
Over the weekend I went to the cinema excited, apprehensive, and far from blind. I don’t mind spoilers, believing a good film should stand on its own in its storytelling rather than its destination, so of course I had already impatiently devoured many positive, negative, and befuddled reviews and reactions to Todd Field’s first film in sixteen years.
To the film’s immense credit, not a single reaction piece or prior expectation prepared me for how deeply strange, unsettling, and meticulous the 160-minute experience proved to be.
(a final spoiler warning)
Tár begins in an unsettling, unusual space - coiled tension in Blanchett’s face, knocking back her partner’s beta-blockers to steady her nerves as Gopnik narrates a list of achievements that should set her among the greats. The titular maestro is already haunted by those venerated musical titans who came before her and the up-and-coming generation - far more diverse than hers and her predecessors’ - who she helps to soar until she clips their wings. In her actions, if not in her mind, music begins and ends with her.
The ensuing unravelling is a flight to and from history - both her own and the larger industry she represents. Time moves mostly linearly, but in odd jumps. Place is defined by vast rooms in cold colours, seemingly endless highway tunnels, and modern auditoriums that all look the same. Lydia Tár awakes from her sleep speaking aloud to the great conductors of the past - until she cannot sleep, inexplicable sights and sounds making those luxurious surroundings ever more inhospitable. By the film’s end, past and present, dream and waking are presented with equal weight. The events emerge with clear-eyed impartiality even as neither Lydia Tár nor the audience can be one hundred percent certain which is which.
It is certain she is brilliant. It is certain she has abused her power to groom students and - when they begin to forge their own careers as brilliant young women in music - to stymie their efforts. There’s room at the top for one woman in Tár’s mind, and no one has been blessed by the ghosts and genius she has. She sets her own trap in isolation. The rest is as seen through curtains, waterfalls, or a distorted conductor’s monitor backstage.
(Massive spoiler warning, but Dan Kois’ examination - a piece to avoid at all costs until watching the film - is an astute look at details that might be missed on a first viewing, and I look forward to a second viewing looking through his eyes.)
The film cheekily evokes verisimilitude in having Adam Gopnik “interview” Tár as himself and name-checking several current figures in classical music, but immediately shatters the illusion through its deliberately confounding atmosphere that builds plot reveals behind each step in the unravelling of Tár’s professional standing, space, and indeed entire sense of self.
Field’s classical music research appears to be dumped wholesale on the screen, perhaps to prove his credentials, and this translates into some forced dialogue of entry-level talking points (as Rebecca Tong points out, watching career musicians and managers talk about the histories and theories of Mahler, Schopenhauer, and Furtwängler feels fake and demonstrative when they - like normal people - would likely be talking about literally anything else). These may be, at best, for the audience’s benefit over truthful character development - at worst, patronising, self-involved, and sketchy when character details align with recognisable figures (see again, Alsop). It’s a line he does not walk with complete, unproblematic success. The wholesale infodump, thankfully, is only present around music and history. The narrative construct thrives in half-confessions and narrative ambiguity, even as each piece of the puzzle is brilliantly clear.
Ultimately, the result is further alienation from reality. These details cribbed from reality serve to further separate fact from fiction. Tár’s performative self is so carefully curated, her Mahler Five cover ripping from Claudio Abbado’s, that it feels laughable that anyone would actually try that in real life. Whether or not Lydia Tár ever met Leonard Bernstein in the world of the film is up for interpretation, and whose version of the truth seduces the viewer.
Bernstein, naturally, provides the final lynchpin. As the film opens, Lydia Tár is completing her recordings of all nine Mahler symphonies with the fifth - perhaps the most iconic, written during Gustav Mahler’s early courtship and marriage with Alma Schindler and after a near-death experience. Switching between English and unsubtitled German with easy rapport, Tár asks the Berlin Philharmonic (in German) to “forget Visconti” - a nod to the director’s use of Mahler’s Fifth at the climatic moment of Death in Venice, a film based on Thomas Mann’s tremendous novella whose central figure was very probably inspired by the great composer and conductor himself (at the film’s premiere, the story goes, a Hollywood producer asked for Mahler’s agent, not realising he had been dead for sixty years).
Visconti’s film is purposefully referential - he also makes his Aschenbach a composer, like Mahler, rather than the less-cinematic career of writer - and Tár says she wishes to avoid this at all costs. But is her whole life a homage to her idols? She references her (real or imaginary) mentor Bernstein as she treads the same path he did, anchoring her legacy in oft-recorded canon staples rather than - as Bernstein alleged he did with Mahler in the mid 20th century - building a legacy on under-explored works. The impeccably tailored suits she wears, which we see being cut and measured as Adam Gopnik introduces her vast achievements echo the men who stood at the podium before her. In an industry where women are aggressively judged on their outfits, her suits are designed to imitate, to conform - just as she imitates various Bach interpreters at the piano for a cohort of Julliard students. (Lillian Crawford explores this essential conservatism very well.)
So Tár is not an iconoclast - she skillfully treads the same ground, perhaps seeking safety when really she leaves no lasting legacy for the world she loves. Of course she makes no mark - she’s fictional. But the young students and their heterodox musical explorations see something she doesn’t.
Some moments verge on the tawdry and mean-spirited. The Juilliard video is edited to reframe careless words into vile ones is unsettling: the viewer knows Tár to be untrustworthy and dangerous for young aspiring musicians, but this moment - for all her disregard of her students’ comfort - is not what it was painted to be. The ambivalence is uncomfortable: Field’s point hits harder than out-and-out condemnation.
Richard Brody caught much unfair and personal ire when he gave Tár a largely negative review, citing regressive ethics and sympathy with the classical music industry’s most notorious (alleged) abusers. His review is excellently written and well-informed, but I did not find the film’s weird heart in the same place. To me, Field holds Tár at the same distance she holds her daughter, who calls her Lydia. There is interest and perhaps some affection for the charismatic maestro, but the paths she’s led down are full of monsters of her own making, and ultimately Field is okay to leave her facing them alone and unredeemed. With the self-congratulatory She Said also in this year's awards race, Tár stands out for its unanswered questions and ability (to bowdlerise Fitzgerald) to hold two opposed lies in mind at the same time.
Tár is thornier than many pieces have reduced it to - including this one - and I’m delighted it exists. It is highly and wholly worth a viewing, preferably at a cinema like the Glasgow Film Theatre where the sound is perfectly calibrated. I am very grateful I could see this one in a dark and crowded room for the unnerving, uncanny dive into a haunted psyche. Hopefully people will use Tár as a stepping stone to learn about classical music, its institutions, and the women conductors working today - and the ways in which the industry is addressing, or ignoring, its endemic abuses of power.
This is from VAN Magazine’s Cards Against Classical Music deck, which they’re selling alongside a year-long subscription to the online magazine. I recommend this wholeheartedly. This is not affiliate advertising, I just spent the post-Tár weekend dealing new hands and amusing myself far too much.
What else I've been watching
Television has been consumed by The Traitors (the superior UK version and the inferior US version featuring superior ham Alan Cumming). I’ve not once correctly chosen who the traitors should or would murder, which makes me think I’d either be the world’s worst traitor or a secret genius walking away with the entire prize money. The latter is patently untrue; my poker face is abysmal.
The Menu: Mainstream cinema is still (possibly innately) antithetical to true social commentary, but even its mad logic and attempts at outrageous satire feel muted. Never has a film squandered true “eat the rich” potential like this one.
Enys Men: Mark Jenkin is back with more Cornish horror - this time more (super)natural rather than socioeconomic, visualising the interconnectivity of the natural and human worlds with unsettling vibrancy. At the Q&A screening I attended at the Glasgow Film Theatre, the second audience question to Mark was “have you ever seen a ghost?” followed by “tell us more!” setting a model for all future Q&A sessions. If you think you’re going to offer “more of a statement than a question”, just ask about ghosts.
Aftersun: like Tár, I’d heard and read lots about this film and still managed to be overwhelmed by it when it reached Mubi at the beginning of the month. Anchored by two gorgeously natural performances from Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal, Wells’ film seems to unfold like a puzzle-box until it’s clear that the clues have all been laid out right in front of you at the start.
Force Majeure: this is now my expectation for The White Lotus series 3.
What I'm reading:
The Method by Isaac Butler: a book I’ve had my eye on since its release last year does not disappoint - an immensely engaging and readable examination of the origins of so-called method acting and its many mis- and re-interpretations. Butler’s condensation of his research captures the sociopolitical and artistic environments from which such developments emerged while not overwhelming with information overload.
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: novels that dump all their exposition up front and re-explain throughout are insufferable; novels that explain nothing are torturous. In the first book Gideon the Ninth and now in the second, Muir reveals everything through the character's perspective and experiences - and only what they would know or share at the narrative moment - with confidence, dexterity, and faith that her story is interesting enough readers will stick around for the ride. She’s entirely right. The result builds complete trust in her as a guide through her bizarre bone-filled sci-fi.
What I recommend:
If you want more information about Alma Mahler after Tár, there’s lots you can read - including her own writing on her and her (first) husband’s life. She had many husbands and lovers throughout her life, and after Gustav, Oskar Kokoshka may be the most memorable for the wrong reasons.
This interview with Charlotte Wells on Aftersun, which talks about *that* needle drop.
I think I’ve correctly added my favourite Substacks to my recommendations page, but check out Fran Magazine (whose writing on Tár is exemplary), So This Is What It Feels Like, and Scanning the Corpse if you haven’t already.
And a big shout-out to So Long, Suckers - a fantastic exploration of how BIG cinema can get - who recently recommended my own little blog. If you are planning to go see Titanic in cinemas for its third (?) re-release, their episode is top notch.