Ah The vague worry I had at the Venice Film Festival about Todd Field’s completely outrageous, delusional and sensual psychodrama starring Cate Blanchett as orchestral conductor Lydia Tarr was the power of a hurricane. was wiped out. At the time, I had my trepidation about the climactic element of soap operas – it’s now a purposeful and brilliant thrust of dissonance, brilliantly cuing the film’s deeply mysterious and surreal final section.
No one but Blanchett could have provided the arrogant haute tulle necessary to portray a great musician heading for a crack-up or creative epiphany. I have the right way to wear a two piece black suit with a white shirt. Her performance pierces your heart like a conductor’s baton. The real-life conductor Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, complained about the apparent parallels between her own life and Thal’s, but offered no suggestions. of misconduct in his career.
Thal is envisioned as chief conductor of a major German orchestra, nicknamed “Maestro” by his colleagues. She is passionate, demanding, and autocratic, with rock star fame and an international touring lifestyle that borders on the super-rich, and has a live-in relationship with the first violinist, played by Nina Hoss, who has children. However, Thar’s life has its problems. She runs a mentoring scholarship program for women, managed by a troublesome and oily would-be conductor, played by Mark Strong, and this is the source of the young women with whom Tarr has an affair. Rumor has it that there is. Her assistant, played by Noémie Merlant (another would-be conductor), looks like someone else she’s wearing an emotional string, stalking another ex-mentee who has a crush on her. It has been. Thal also devised the Tendresse for new cellists. Meanwhile, her guest-her masterclass at Juilliard is exacerbated when Bipok, a young student identified as her pangender, assumes she will dismiss Bach for ideological reasons.
But this movie is not as mundane as ‘Cancellation’. Tár suspects something is wrong. We know from the start that she’s been effectively spied on. There are strange sounds, intrusions, and things out of place. And the music itself amplifies the violence just below the surface. The field may have been under the spell of Austrian director Michael Haneke, the maestro himself. It’s the chilling smoothness of the film’s look and the ideas about revenge and surveillance, the return of the oppressed, and the tyranny and cruelty of classical music. tradition.
Tarr has a job where arrogance comes almost territorial. She invented herself through her command. Her other professions and music career were not successful. On her second viewing, I found that Thalle’s loss of control was partly due to her violent reaction to Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which she wanted to perform with her student. It resonates with her and with us.
