Tár

 Year:  2022

Director: Todd Field

Screenplay:  Todd Field

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kaur, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong

Running Time:  158 minutes

Genre:  Drama

Lydia Tár (Blanchett), an acclaimed American conductor, prepares for a live recording of Mahler's Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.  While living in Berlin and rehearsing the orchestra, Tár receives a series of increasingly disturbing communications from a former lover, who blames Tár for blacklisting her from various orchestras.  Meanwhile Tár becomes attracted to young Russian cellist Olga (Kaur).  However, as the pressures on Tár mount up, her personal and professional reputation is threatened by allegations of sexual impropriety.

This intense psychological drama is basically a character piece, portraying composer Lydia Tár, a driven, charismatic, talented, ruthless woman who is capable of both great kindness and extreme cruelty.  Cate Blanchett, who is on screen for pretty much the entire film, gives possibly her best ever performance.  Classical cellist Sophie Kaur plays Olga, the latest object of Tár's affections.  The film opens unconventionally, with most of what would usually be the closing credits, being placed at the beginning of the film, with only the cast and music credits at the end.  The film focuses entirely on Lydia Tár, even when she is not on screen, scenes are filmed as if from her point of view,  and she is a fascinating monster, accused of abusing her position to seduce young hopefuls with promises of plum roles in the orchestra, and cruelly vindictive to anyone who crosses her, as well as ruthlessly discarding friends, lovers and colleagues, when they are no longer of any use to her.  In Berlin she seems to lead two lives, living with her wife Sharon (played by Nina Hoss) and their adopted daughter Petra (played by Mila Bogojevic), while keeping a furnished flat which she uses for composing and rehearsals.  Despite being dominated by Cate Blanchett's performance, the rest of the cast are all excellent.  Staring as an actor, with roles in films by Woody Allen and Stanley Kubrick among others, this is only writer/director Todd Field's third film as a director and his first in 15 years.  Slow-moving, with a stylish, almost documentary style look, contrasted with surreal dream sequences, and an increasingly fragmented editing style, matching Lydia Tár's increasingly disintegrating sense of reality.  This is a great film.

Cate Blanchett in Tár