“Tár” is a harrowing search through identity and fame

Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár is a rotten person: smug, conniving, heartless. But the world she lives in isn’t that nice either, even though it portends to be: it’s populated with weakness and misplaced priorities. What is more important: the artist’s work or their character? These opposing ideals clash in Todd Field’s Tár, a powerful film that takes its time, wanders through a landscape of opposing ideals and reaches a conclusion that seemingly anoints and condemns both of them.

Lydia Tár is one of the great classical composers of her age, directing the Berlin Philharmonic. She’s busy preparing for a live recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony as well as promoting a new book. Relying on assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) as well as wife and concertmaster Sharon (Nina Hoss), Tár finds herself in trouble with the next generation of musicians: she belittles student Max (Zethphan D. Smith-Gneist) for dismissing Bach based on character flaws, a past relationship with a protege named Krista (Sylvia Flote) becomes increasingly dire and her flirtation to a new student named Olga (Sophie Kauer) is not reciprocated to her liking. In addition, Tár is forced to fend off friend and rival Eliot (Mark Strong) and coerce assistant conductor Sebastian (Allan Corduner) into resigning. Seemingly caring for only her daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic), whom she defends with an iron will, and her sexual escapades, Tár’s world unravels.

The film fuses character study with social commentary, taking the fictional Lydia Tár and springboarding several discussions about the modern world through her: Is today’s generation too soft? Are they righteous in their beliefs? Is Tár too beholden to her art above all else? Is she ruled instead by her sexual desire? Should she be more commended as a boundary-breaking woman? How much has she lost her true self to become this accomplished individual? The film offers no answers, but ruminates on all of these questions.

It’s a good 45 minutes too long. Clocking in at nearly 3 hours, the theme comes across much more quickly and the bloated running time makes some of the later revelations fall a bit flat.

Cate Blanchett inhabits the titular role with gusto, seemingly breathing in the character and displaying it before us. Her constant reflections in mirrors, windows and water speak to a distance between her and us, never truly able to identify with her; Tár (revealed to be not her true name) is a construction that’s as distant from herself as much as from us.

With eerie cinematography that lends itself to a thriller, striking performances and an ambiguous theme, Tár is the kind of film rarely made in American cinema today, one more focused on character and subterfuge, content to be both ambivalent and vague.