Tár, we learn as her absurd resume is rolled out on stage in a mildly satirized version of The New Yorker Festival, is a virtuoso conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, an international celebrity and the author of the forthcoming memoir “Tár on Tár.” She’s also an imperious brat with undeniable charisma, a self-proclaimed “U-Haul lesbian,” and delightfully mediocre prestige. On stage she describes her work in divine terms. ‘I’ll start the clock,’ says Tár, and with another movement of her stick the time stops. But times change.
When a former acolyte commits suicide, Tár’s penchant for seducing her subordinates returns to haunt her. The New York Post supports anonymous complaints; a crudely edited video of her berating a Juilliard student has been ricocheting across the internet. The online cancellation of an artistic giant can be a tedious subject, but in ‘Tár’ it takes on sneaky complications. Tár tells a fangirl that a percussive interlude in “The Rite of Spring” makes her feel “both victim and perpetrator,” and that also describes her position in society. Her job is to channel the work of long-dead white men, and she also enjoys trying out their privileges. Having climbed into a male-dominated industry, she’s established a fellowship to support young female conductors — and nurture assistants and loved ones. When Tár traps a new protege, it’s like she’s exploiting a younger version of herself.
Tár’s real achievement is not conducting, but self-mythologizing. The film’s most revealing scenes show her using her power to lift or crush people, masterfully forcing artists and philanthropists into submission. But when Tár teaches a Juilliard class that it’s a conductor’s job to “sublimate yourself” into the canon of white male composers, the young musicians don’t bow to her will. And when Tár’s power trips can no longer be sublimated in her work, her self-image shatters. The film itself seems to warp under the weight of her fear and self-pity. Dark satire sinks into gothic horror. Tár tries to follow a handsome cellist into her apartment, but instead encounters a damp basement and a hulking black dog reminiscent of the arguably supernatural Hound of the Baskervilles. She later finds the littered pages of her memoir manuscript floating around in a former assistant’s empty room, the title transcribed “RAT ON RAT.” This is the stuff of nightmares, in which the accused invents a version of her comeuppance that’s so overt it spills over into wish-fulfillment.
The other anagram of “Tár” is, of course, “ART”, and while real art monsters fade from view, “Tár” offers a work where we can sublimate our own Schadenfreude and sympathy for abusers. Thanks to Blanchett’s bright performance and Field’s storytelling in a puzzle box, we’re free to obsess. “Tár” has inspired its own bizarre world discourse, one with pleasingly low stakes, because Lydia Tár (despite suggestion to the contrary) isn’t a real person. She’s now circulating as an internet culture fix, edited in a fan video set to Taylor Swift’s “Karma” and splattered on a faked Time magazine cover as a “Problematic icon.” When it moans What about the men? question became instead What about this one strange woman?, I found myself wanting to discuss little else.
If “Women Talking” is about the power of the collective, “Tár” examines the church of Western individualism, challenging us to confront our inclination to worship at its altar. The most notable editorial in “Tár” comes right at the very beginning, when the credits roll and we watch for several minutes as the names of makeup artists and gaffers float by. Art is not the product of a single genius, the film seems to say, but the collective work of many. The reversal of the typical credit sequence signals something else: We are witnessing the end of something – perhaps an era.
“Women Talking” also deals with a shift in power, and it too scrambles up typical movie language to make its point. It opens with a God’s-eye view shot, looking down at Ona tossing and turning helplessly in her bed, screaming for her mother. This is a cold (and clichéd) take on an assault, one that invites a sense of spectatorship over the victim. The film ends with another overhead shot, but this time from the perspective of a mother, presumably Ona, looking down at the newborn baby moving in her arms. She has finally become the omniscient narrator of her new reality.
“Women Talking” and “Tár” are two very different movies, but they deal with the same provocation: God is a woman.