TÁR Review: A Star Is Torn As Cate Blanchett's Conductor Falls Tragically From Grace [Venice]

"Perhaps the chief requirement of [the conductor] is that he be humble before the composer; that he never interpose himself between the music and the audience," said famed conductor Leonard Bernstein. "All his efforts, however strenuous or glamorous, be made in the service of the composer's meaning — the music itself, which, after all, is the whole reason for the conductor's existence."

Bernstein serves as something of a guiding light to the titular character of writer/director Todd Field's "TÁR" — a title so serious it requires special instructions to ensure capitalization and with an acute Á. Cate Blanchett's Lydia Tár is a contemporary composer-conductor and protégé of Bernstein's who seeks to occupy a similar place in the cultural firmament. She's an EGOT polymath on the verge of completing a famed cycle of Gustav Mahler's symphonies and writing a book extolling her own brilliance. It's no wonder Field claims the film simply would not have been made if Blanchett turned it down — there's simply no one else who could pull off making genius look so effortless. She confidently conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in German, a language she does not speak.

But Bernstein is as much illumination as obfuscation to Tár's quest for glory and recognition. If he is the sun, she is Icarus getting too close for comfort thanks to overconfidence in her invincibility. Tár's intimate knowledge of her mentor's feats and foibles looms over her own career, presenting a legacy she can amplify but not avoid. She exalts herself above the craft and learns the cost of putting the cockiness of the composer ahead of the humility of the conductor. The slow-burning "TÁR" tracks the dramatic changes of fortune in her professional prospects, unfurling with the gravity of ancient tragedy.

Though "TÁR" locates many classical resonances with its tragic downfall, Field's story also speaks powerfully to the contemporary. With its pointed incorporation of social media virality as well as its nuanced understanding of contentious identity politics, the film mires Tár's quest for recognition in the ethical quicksand of her era. Field is unafraid to ruffle feathers with his portrayals of social phenomena like cancel culture and the #MeToo movement, taking no ideological position unquestionably. It's not so much a bomb drop as the release of a hand grenade, slowly releasing its vapors until they consume the characters entirely.

But beyond the initial provocation, it's not clear what Field has to say that's particularly novel about the present moment in debating the relationship between brilliant art and toxic artists. The film is mercifully not a manifesto, but it's occasionally fumbling for something profound to say about what Field shows. "TÁR" often resorts to lazy shorthand in conveying the details of the protagonist's dilemmas. Field is quick to criticize but hesitant to introduce — or even hint at — replacement values for dominant ideologies.

While it can sometimes get tangled in the weeds of easy cultural signifiers for highbrow and lowbrow art, that's of little concern for a film shooting for the stars thematically and aesthetically. Field channels a Kubrickian sense of unease as he charts the existential unmaking of Tár as her ambition runs astray. Tár's streak of vindictiveness and barely concealed preferential treatment proves her undoing. The film resists simple reduction into any one thing — psychological thriller, character study, melodrama — into a tonal blend of orchestral might. Field builds sparsely and methodically toward the character's cataclysmic crescendo.