Disorderly Conductor: I watch “Tár”

Lydia Tár is a force of nature–or so she wants us to think. Tár, played by Cate Blanchett in full goddess-of-war mode, is a conductor of classical music; a crusty curmudgeon when it comes to identity politics, though also of course of course a defender of her own particular identity group, championing women conductors; the glamor half of a lesbian power couple; a self-assured, sexually-predatory genius who has been keeping some sordid little secrets, which are about to destroy her brilliant career.

When Tár is conducting, the camera absolutely swoons for her. When she’s talking, the camera hones in on her; the early scene where she does an interview with Adam Gopnik (playing himself) is hilarious in just how thoroughly she dominates the field of vision, like, even when you can see his whole face and just a wisp of her hair, the wisp is all you’re gonna care about. Overall writer/director Todd Field’s film is pulsing, prowling, it feels angry or at least charged with some wild energy: this film is in love with Tár, but also willing to take her to pieces, like a moth who rattles off the entire moral inventory of the flame right before diving in.

We first see Tár slouched in an airplane (iirc–I really need to rewatch this) under the unforgiving eye of a smartphone camera. We don’t know yet who’s observing her, who’s commenting with such social-media pharisaism about whether she has a “conscience.” From the very beginning, we’re reminded that the lone genius might have power, but the Argus eyes of the smartphones have their own diffuse and destructive power as well.

That’s a movie that might be predictable, and in fact a lot of people have talked about “Tár” as a movie about “cancel culture.” I think that’s not quite right; even in the scene where Tár finds out that she’s being “canceled,” her adversaries immediately concede that the specific transgression that went viral is not the point. It’s a pretext, or a red flag, or a microcosm. The real concern of the film is (I think) the nature of artistic genius, and because this movie was made for me personally in every single respect, that question gets played out as explicitly a question of whether artistic work is an act of humility or of pride. And there is no answer! Or like, both answers are true really hard. Oh, I love it, this film gives you the genuine surrender of the ego that music can provoke, the ecstasy of making someone else’s music… and it also shows how, if you’re very good at enacting that self-loss in your own individual self-asserting way, other people will give you respect and power, those gifts that are so bad for us. Love the depiction of music as erotic, for the same reasons education is erotic; love, also, the ethical concerns of the film, which are a lot more sincere than I think people are giving it credit for. You don’t casually invoke “poor Jimmy Levine*,” in a discussion in which both parties are strenuously agreeing that mere moral transgressions shouldn’t cause people to reject your great art, if you want the audience to take home easy answers.

* lol I can’t actually remember if the guy says “poor” but that’s definitely the vibe!

Like, of course the kid who says that “as a BIPOC” he dislikes Bach is silly, nobody who pays money to watch a movie like “Tár” will really agree with him, but this caricature of wokeness is kind of a red herring imho, because that scene is actually about Tár ranting gloriously about how you have to obliterate yourself in order to conduct music. Her power, which she is currently abusing both in the classroom and everywhere else, does in fact come from her recognition of some kind of power greater than herself in music. She experienced that, I think her crazy hypocritical speech is coming from personal experience, the white-hot joy of “servic[ing] the composer.” This is a movie that is very political and very mystical, and I’m super on board with what it’s doing in both areas and also especially thrilled to encounter them together.

Tár loses a lot over the course of this film. Her exposed secrets include some real wild cruelties as well as the usual gross “what if every good thing ever is just a factory for sexual abuse” stuff. She deserves worse than she gets, although as always, there’s no need to like the people who give others what they deserve.

I do disagree with Tim about the final scene. It’s important that she still is conducting music, just as Krista Taylor was still working with youth orchestras in spite of Tár’s ruthlessness toward her. I think the Asian setting is kind of “far enough/close enough”: far enough that you can believe Tár would be able to evade her reputation here, close enough that you can believe she might claw her way back. The film’s smash-cut ending suggests that she’s in a tilting place, where she could be changed by her humiliation or hardened by it. I get that the cosplay stuff is exoticizing, but it’s also such a great image of the absurdity which so often attends our chances at moral regeneration; absurdity and sublimity lie very close alongside one another, if you’re willing to see it.