Review of TÁR (2022) by Efram — 03 Dec 2022

I love Cate Blanchett. I like Todd Fields. So why didn't I like Tar. Well, first, it's almost three hours long without a compelling narrative to justify its length. Second, it dances around the main issue brought up by Fields.

What happens to a wunderkind conductor, (blanchett) who is at the pinnacle of her career and minutes away from commanding her most impressive achievement yet, who is faced with a scandal that destroys her career and sets her on a path of self destruction.

That sounds like a good premise for a film, but Fields never delivers on its promise. Instead we are given a much more than-needed verbose and overly intellectual narrative that presupposes that every viewer of Tar is interested in the intricacies of Music theory and composition, and the inner workings of a conductor's professional existence without fully fleshign out the woman and her motivations behind that existence.

As a documentary, this might've worked to some degree, but as a drama the intellectualization of the personal demons of this remarkable woman doesn't do justice to the narrative or Ms. Blanchett's uneven performance.

A good example of Fields over intellectualization comes during some of the conducting scenes where Tar is conducting the Berlin philharmonic rehearsals in German but there are no subtitles, so we don't know what she is saying to her orchestra.

You'd think in a film about a Conductor reveling in her craft, that you'd want to see exactly what she was saying to her orchestra, but Fields leaves us wondering and annoyed. The first 30 minutes of the film is set at an interview with Lydia Tar and The New Yorker where we go through a biography of her work and her accomplishments along the way.

As a creator myself, I've always been told that exposition is the death of great storytelling. In other words, don't tell, SHOW, something Mr. Fields seems to forget as Tar moves forward. The most interesting aspect of the film, namely how this incredibly talented woman is brought down by a sexual scandal is glossed over, told in warped dream sequences and oddly relegated to behind the scenes viewpoint when it should have been front and center.

The film comes alive when Tar has to deal with her past relationships, (the main relationship being with another up-and-coming conductor, who ends up committing suicide, naming Tar as the cause of her suicide.

) It's a weak construct, made even weaker by Fields inability to fully bring the affair and its consequences to the forefront, something that would give the audience a window into Tar's life and enable the audience to either side with her or against her.

Instead, Fields brings another young conductor into the picture, someone Tar obviously has an attraction for, but the plotline happens so far into the film, and never gets fully resolved that by the time we become interested in Tar's new protege, the film is over.

These half-hearted attempts to draw us into Tar's inner world, whether it be with her lover Sharon or her stepdaughter Petra left me wondering what this woman is really about. Instead, the film meanders through Tar's professional life, never giving us the depth behind her talent, or allowing us to see the intricacies of her life path.

So, in the end, the film delivers an uneven portrait of a fascinating woman, but never fully delivers on the promise of getting under her skin, or into her head where we can either root for her, or understand fully why others are rooting against her.