Tár-red and feathered
A friend asked me to write him an email after I watched Todd Field's new movie. I did it in one go, typos and all.
Hi [redacted],
I wanted to say I came up with the pun in the subject line but I have since discovered that the venerable Anthony Lane, film critic at the New Yorker, used it in a throwaway line in the middle of his review. Which I recommend reading.
We watched Tár a couple of weeks ago and it's been percolating in my mind since. I've been working with Mahler's symphonies in the background since then and, good goodness, they're excellent. I'm listening to Mahler's 3rd right now. Sometimes, there's a reason people are famous and well-regarded: they make good stuff.
The film: first impressions... it's a movie that grabs you by the scruff of your neck, doesn't it? It's quite the move to silently run all the credits at the beginning of the movie. It's further quite the move to start it off with a big interview and soon follow it with an uncut tracking shot of Tar teaching and dressing down students.
All this to say, Todd Field is as assured a craftsman as anyone. Great magic is conjured with lighting, sound and art direction. Demons lurked in the shadows and down quiet, softly clicking hallways. When Lydia descends into the underworld of her rarified existence, a hell beast regards her with mild surprise, and stares. She eventually runs and is scarred by the visit. She is born again into a new world after confronting her neighbour's mother, and the experience is rude and dirty, beneath her, and she tries to scrub it away.
The film is tightly controlled like, one imagines, Lydia Tár controls her work. A film about a composer is a hard sell. A film about a composer that has no musical score? That leaves a lot for the audience to work out on their own? A sure hand needs to be directing this piece, and it's masterful. I want to watch it again to pick up all the cues and choices Field made to tell the story. A red bag here. Blue suede shoes there. A pencil. An untuned piano. So much is said with so little. It's brilliant.
I also appreciated the slow unravelling of Lydia's life from her perspective. Blanchette conveys the torture of it, but one thing that must be so difficult to get right is the outright, quiet denial that it's happening. Lydia thinks her genius and forcefulness will pull her through, that the consequences of her manipulations and desires can be controlled away. It's mesmerizing to watch, especially as those that surround her, people who know her better than probably she knows herself, see her slowly flail.
It's also mesmerizing to watch someone as accomplished as Lydia use relationships as a transaction, something her wife eventually points out to her. Transactional doesn't mean without emotion. Clearly Lydia Tár is looking out for her desires. She lusts, she hates, she likes to feel like she's in control. Even her only truly loving relationship is marked by how she can just fuck with people: Tár confronting her daughter's bully is horrifying to watch.
As for the commentary on the pandemic, of MeToo, of BIPOC artists asserting themselves, there is a lot to mine there as well. Her dressing down that composition kid's rejection of Bach is brutal, but it gets into a tension there that I've often felt.
I like Bach. It takes a lot for me to refuse to consume art because of the artist, but I admit it's arbitrary. I admit I watch, read, listen to awful people because they make good art, mostly because they haven't reached the threshold of awfulness to get me to stop. Or worse, their transgressions are too far in the dusty past to bother with. Am I evil? Perhaps lazy. If it existed, would I read Lydia's book? Attend her take on Mahler's 5th if she hadn't been outed as awful? Even though I've been given access to her being in very personal way?
I confess I can’t be sure.
But that’s enough for now. This is truly a great film. I think I need to watch it again, perhaps a few more times. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Anyways... back to work. Hope you're well!
Warm regards,
Tej Swatch he, him