Tár is a Work of Genius, Several Geniuses Even.

Monday is about movies. And sometimes TV. Today, a movie I finally got to on TV...

When Tár played at the cinema late last year, or earlier this year, I meant to see it. But I don’t always get to the movies. So, finally, this weekend just been, I caught up with Tár. It’s two and half hours, and we started watching it near to 11pm, but sat riveted.

We have a giant TV at home now, so the only barrier to a cinema-like event is the modern malaise of combining doom-scrolling with movie-watching, as if the dopamine-hit of a wonderful story and a thrilling set of performances can never be enough. Of course, you barely ever get a truly wonderful story and an actual thrilling set of performances, and sometimes it is fun to see a few silly Instagram reels while also processing most of a movie.

But as soon as we plunged into Tár’s opening scene – immediately put into the world of the film – I was hooked. The phone was parked, and though I’d been up for a very long day the movie held me in its sway.

The hype around Tár was Cate Blanchett’s performance. And fair enough. Blanchett, I thought while watching the film, has pretty much never not been good and is almost always great. But there are some career highpoints from her that blow me away. I think, instantly of the Woody Allen film, Blue Jasmine. (A career high for the director as well).

Blanchett is incredible as Lydia Tár, a fictional conductor – though many have Googled to see if Lydia Tár (a composite character) was in fact real or based on someone from the world of classical music.

Tár is an odd film. Wonderfully so. I’ve possibly never seen anything like it, but I did think about the way Paul Thomas Anderson structures films, and the ending felt like something he might dream up. And I did enjoy the risks that were being taken, it was a selfish film, a very personal film, the writer and director wanted to tell you a story in his own way and didn’t mind if there were parts that you didn’t get; wasn’t going to over-explain the world, was simply going to place you right up in there.

Todd Field started out as an actor – and though he might not have played any memorable roles, it’s likely he was in some films you’ve seen. He’s there alongside Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut after all, and in a couple of decent 90s indie comedy/dramas (Sleep With Me, Walking and Talking) He was in the disaster action-thriller, Twister. And in one of the lesser-mentioned, but rather brilliant Woody Allen films from the mid-80s, Radio Days.

But since the early 2000s, Field pretty much called it a day on his acting and turned to directing and writing. Though Tár is just his third full length picture, and his first since 2006. In 2015, he was shouted to in a piece called the “Top 10 American Indie Filmmakers Missing in Action". Journalist Nicholas Bell wrote, “It is definitely time for Field to throw one down the middle…”

And wow, he certainly just did that.

I’m slowly catching up on the Marc Maron podcast, WTF. I used to listen to its twice-weekly instalments with a fervour, but I’m several months behind now. And I wonder if I’ll ever catch up, or if I need to. But I was glad to hear Todd Field on the podcast recently. A wonderful episode. They don’t spoil Tár at all either. Which is lucky. But if anything, listening to the podcast was what jogged my memory that I needed to see this film.

Now I need to re-watch the first two Field films (In The Bedroom and Little Children). And I have been thinking about all of the amazing Cate Blanchett performances. A brief list should include: The Gift, The Shipping News, Veronica Guerin, Notes on a Scandal, I’m Not There, Blue Jasmine, The Turning, Carol, Manifesto, Don’t Look Up, and Nightmare Alley. There are more, I’m sure, but those are the ones that instantly come to mind.

But Tár is a film I’ll have to see again. I’ve been thinking about it so much over the last couple of days. The music and sound design so crucial too – as you’d hope in a movie that is on some level about music. But it’s about music the way Whiplash is about music. It’s more about drive. Passion. Commitment, and the way it creates flaws in humans.

Tár’s score was composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir. I’ve mentioned her here before, and hopefully many times. She’s one of my absolute favourite composers of the last decade or so, and her scores for the movie Joker and the mini-series Chernobyl are spellbinding. She even made average films like Mary Magdalene just a little better with her music. And her playing (cello, primarily) is all over other wonderful scores such as Arrival, Sicario and The Revenant. Her work for Tár is subtle, intriguing, beautiful.

I’ve not seen a better film this year. And maybe for many years before that. The lead performance was stunning, absolutely, but it was the story placement, pacing, treatment and ambition that blew me away the most. There were incredible supporting performances (Nina Hoss,  Noémie Merlant, and – in her first acting appearance – the cellist Sophie Kauer) and the music and sound design I mentioned, there was some wonderful style around the filming decisions, the cinematography – but it was the slow-burn of it all, the way the filmmaker knew exactly what he was doing and when and how he was going to play the cards, and then (and how) he would make that house of cards he had built topple.

Have you seen Tár? What did you think?

------------------------------------------------------------------------You might have noticed (or read) that things are a bit different around here, as my Off The Tracks blogging is all now here at Substack too. To view the full archive (over 11,000 posts) you need to be a paying subscriber. I took the liberty of randomly upgrading a few of you over the weekend. I scrolled through the free sign-ups and picked a couple of dozen of you to gift a month or three or six of subscription. If you are not one of the lucky ones that was randomly gifted an upgrade, but you think you’d like to check out the premium sub then send me a message. I’ll upgrade you. Or you can leave a comment asking for a trial upgrade below. I’ll hook you up. Promise! 

And, I know I sent it out already, and I don’t intend to send out every Off The Tracks post, or even that many of them at all actually, but on Saturday night I saw Prima Facie at Circa Theatre. Wow! It was truly something. And it was one half of an unknowing Double Feature, as we returned home to watch Tár straight after. They felt like connected stories, two sides. Etc.