The Tár eventually melts

There's a moment in all stories, visual, aural, or textual, where each viewer, listener, or reader decides that it's something worth staying with and reaching the end. For me, Tár hit that point about a third of the way into it. It's a film that begins with a very slow pace and with a great deal of assumed knowledge and technical jargon in its dialogue. Put simply, if the viewer doesn't already have that knowledge, they're likely to be both confused and frustrated by this story for quite some time before it begins to sink in as a character study, rather than an exploration of the inner politics of the orchestra world. It's a device that many storytellers use and one which I'm inordinately fond of, most of the time. One of my favorite comic writers, Howard Chaykin, begins almost all of his stories in this fashion. He doesn't give you a primer on who people are or where they are or what they're doing. He just drops you in the middle of the action and essentially says: "Catch up." His characters don't identify each other or their life roles in their daily conversations because, of course, no one does that in the regular communication they have with each other. We just talk in the same way that the characters in this film talk. Once I realized that no one was going to stop and explain this jargon that they were using, I let most of it just flow over me as I tried to get a handle on who these people were and how they related to each other. That, of course, becomes the main focus of the film and the stuff that you should actually be paying attention to and why Tár is being lionized as one of the best films of the year and quite possibly deservedly so. I probably would have stuck with it even if it continued being oblique and circuitous because I'm all experimental like that, but it eventually becomes a much more conventional character study and one that crosses a lot of modern boundaries in a fashion that has clearly encouraged a number of professional critics to miss the point in the same way that The Whale has.

That character is Lydia Tár, played by Cate Blanchett in what most will consider a tour de force performance. This, more than anything I've seen her in before, is her "leading woman" moment, where she's definitely this character, but she never departs from being "Cate Blanchett", either. It's an extremely powerful and abrasive and complex role, at the same time that it is also a vulnerable and simple and suffering one. The story takes pains to point out the assumed incongruity of being a woman in the man's world of orchestral conducting, but also never shies away from the fact that Lydia is in charge and not just because she's borderline abusive to everyone who interacts with her except her daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic), but including her partner, Sharon (Nina Hoss.) Everyone shies away from the intensity of her approach; man, woman, and child. But we also learn about the passion that drives people in that profession, and music in general, and that the armor she's built up over the years, hides a person that is semi-tortured by every sound she hears, most of which are keeping her from composing the music that her profession (publish or perish!) and her soul demands. That armor is what she uses to prevent anyone from getting too close to her inner self and, of course, also ends up being the source of many of her troubles as the story progresses. One can only be that prickly as a public figure for so long, especially in the world of easy communication, before it comes back to sting you.

One of the running background themes of the story is how she's treated students and colleagues in her industry and the abuse of power that said treatment embodies. When it's turned against her by some of the targets of her aggression, some critics like Richard Brody of The New Yorker accused the film of being aimed at "cancel culture" and dismissing the cultural mindset of "identity politics", mostly because Lydia objects to classical composers like J. S. Bach being dismissed by students for his personal foibles, rather than his music. But that seems to be a spectacular job of missing the point. Just because the protagonist objects to a modern mindset doesn't mean that the inherent message of the film is promoting that idea. Indeed, this is a character study of a person who puts off many of those around her and is someone that most of the audience would probably not be interested in knowing. This isn't promotion of the idea, but rather demonstrating how questioning figures and actions of the past is often more complex than any black-or-white presentation. In the same way that Richard Wagner is rejected by many for his anti-Semitism and appeal to the Nazis, it's also difficult to refute the fact that his music is the stylistic foundation of modern soundtracks for film, games, and other creations. The point that Lydia makes is that there's reason to appreciate classics of the past for reasons beyond their creators. The counterpoint is that no one has to like Bach or others like him and if personal actions are enough to dissuade you, then that's a valid point of view. That, indeed, is the essential premise of the film: Lydia is a brilliant conductor and creator, but personally she's also often quite repellent to those around her, if not outright vicious. It is possible to hold more than one point of view on a concept, in the same way it is about a person.

And that applies to this film, as well. As much as I enjoyed it the story and Blanchett's excellent performance (a nod has to go to Noémie Merlant, as Francesca, Lydia's assistant, too), I'm not sure that I'd list this one as among the best films of the year. I appreciate the real depth that writer-director-producer, Todd Field, invested both character and story with, but I wonder if it's almost too cornered in it's own niche. This is kind of like when albums were produced in the late 60s and 70s that critics would wave away as "self-indulgent", because they felt artists were only producing long strings of studio experimentations that were interesting only to themselves. That, of course, is up for debate like any creative work, but the amount of effort and patience required to get to the real meat of the story in Tár makes me wonder if there couldn't have been some editing applied that would have produced a leaner final product and one which had more immediate appeal. I'm sure that many people have bailed out somewhere in that first third if they don't have deeper knowledge of the music industry and I can't say that I blame them. It makes me feel like the film, like the protagonist, is really good what it does, but can't hide an essential flaw that perhaps makes it less than the brilliant production it's being promoted as. I'd certainly recommend it for anyone able to be patient.