CONDUCTOR STRIKES OWN CHORD

BLANCHETT PERFORMS ICONIC CHARACTER STUDY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The world’s most iconic orchestra conductor endeavors to be the first to conduct all 8 symphonies of composer Gustav Mahler for a classic recording. 

But having left the most challenging Symphony No. 5 for the crescendo, the pressures to be the first begin to close the doors of opportunity.

Cate Blanchett stars as fictional character Lydia Tar. Tar presents as the first female principal music director of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Director Todd Field cast Mark Strong in a supporting role as rival symphony conductor, Elliot Kaplan. Noemie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer and Julian Glover are also cast well in supporting roles.

The narrative follows Tar about as her world at the top of the western classic music culture begins to fall apart, and as such, provides a forum for Blanchett to perform another hallmark character study.

The film begins with a book launch interview in New York for the conductor’s memoir ‘Tar on Tar’. 

From early on though, Blanchett creates the illusion that Tar has been institutionalized inside the profession of music conductors and instrumentalists as she talks with the elite vocabulary of western classic music and the theories behind world renowned compositions.

Tar also has a few uncontrollable muscle tremors with tactile delusions of conducting when she is not yet there at the podium. In this way, Blanchett indicates early on that her character is fanatical about conducting.

The press interview and the release of the memoir become used as a narrative device that wrap around the film.

Initially, Blanchett portrays Tar as all consumed in her tasks with other issues such as those of family only offering brief supplements to her day as a full-time orchestra conductor.

Field gradually unpacks the meaning behind the leading character as one might interview a subject or read a memoir of an iconic figure.

The camera initially follows the visual details of the set while the character is introduced in broad brush strokes. And then as the audience hangs in there waiting for something more interesting, the details of the set disappear a bit as the nuanced character becomes revealed.

The script speaks to broader issues of gender politics and the pressures of the classical music world, as well as the exchange of intimacy for positions of importance.

The sexuality of the conductor and the musicians are ever so subtly layered onto the required charisma necessary to hold everyone’s attention.

Tar declared that ultimately the conductor is a timekeeper. But the film also shows how a conductor is responsible for interpreting classical compositions. And that the meaning of music is evident in the way the sound makes a person feel and how the sounds merge together to create feeling.

Field takes this classical vision of music and applies similar principles to the narrative, such as the sound advance from the piano keys or a door knock being used to transition the scenes.

At the same time, a score is not used to compel action. Field cleverly uses silence to accentuate the acting and the dialogue driven by Blanchett’s distinctive film voice. Only then, once in a while in public the low chatter of voices can be heard in the background of restaurants.

Blanchett also makes the German language sound good.

Tar becomes more and more annoyingly distracted by unannounced sounds while trying to work at home, such as a ticking metronome in a cupboard, the refrigerator in a five star kitchen or the recuring faint sound of a neighbor’s doorbell.

This unconventional approach to the subject of music seems all rather dull and boring at first in a similar fashion that commonly occurs in documentary filmmaking. 

But then incrementally, the film becomes more interesting as the details of the closing arguments made in the script are foreshadowed.

The scenes are also transitioned using the natural lighting of sets that one might find in particular rooms. Field progresses in layers of light and shadow from scene to scene. 

The bright movie set lights are at times excluded to add a bit of documentary tone to the film as the audience learns about classical music as much as about the moral conundrum the leading character has so far internalized.

Blanchett shows how this great public figure held in such high regard can have delicate moments of intimacy but then can also simultaneously be quite nasty in the schoolyard with children belonging to unknown third parties.

Field also shifts the focus of the lens from the foreground to the background to give sets a third dimension.

One scene has Tar, driving her German luxury sportscar, looking through the rearview mirror at her daughter as a sort of sublime intertextual reference to the master of film suspense, Director Alfred Hitchcock, with Blanchett ever so quickly speaking to the audience members who catch the reference: ‘that’s right’.

Tar is meticulous in every aspect of her professional life except in wearing a blue wrinkled shirt to rehearsals and then also in the little bits of evidence dropped now and then that leaves a trail to her own demise.

As in a classical concerto as in a Hitchcock film, tension ever so delicately increases until the suspense starts to drip from the screen.

A bit of psychodrama is added through brief dreamscapes that only hint about the real issues unknown to the audience, still stuck deep inside the subconscious of the protagonist.

Everything becomes flayed though after Blanchett performs a bit of psychodrama when her character runs blind from the sound of a barking German Shepard in an abandoned, derelict tenement building in Berlin.

Music is movement following the pattern created by the composer who composes with an overall vision.

ENCORE 1, 2, 3 is a special award category for OTC50 Film Festival Alumni who have substantially influential roles in the production of films focussed on fictional accounts of characters one might find in the real world.

Cate Blanchett is a film festival alumni as executive producer and lead actor in the streaming series, Mrs. America (2020) (Winner) and as Cinerama OTC50 Edition #49.

Blanchett stars in and executive produces Tar (2022).