Review of TÁR (2022) by Kutijanos — 24 Nov 2022

I found the glowing reviews by the critics to be misleading. The film was pretentious and self-indulgent, with no real point to the contrived dramatics. Classical music and the trappings around it was used as a gimmick to make it seem deep, serious, and cultured, but there was very little "there" there finally.

It all seemed to me like a Woody Allen movie, with its heavy-handedness and lack of genuineness by the characters, but without the humor and charm. Poorly executed narrative, bogged down with inconsequential minutiae.

And I believe the lesbian element was just queerbaiting and not significantly relevant to the story. Lest I come across like an uncultured curmudgeon, I saw the film with my sister who has been a musician in a major orchestra for fifty years and she had the same impression of it.

I had to apologize to her afterwards. Cate Blanchett certainly put a tremendous amount of work into her role, so will probably win all kinds of awards for it, but the talent was wasted on this project.