BY LIAM HEITMANN-RYCE-LEMERCIER
“You cannot start without me.”
So asserts the eponymous Lydia Tár in the opening scene of Todd Fields’ austere psychological drama set within the world of classical music, spearheaded by a thunderous lead performance from Cate Blanchett.
Lecturing on her prowess as a conductor with breathy swagger, wrapped in a black suit so sharp one fears drawing blood were they to lay a finger on it, Tár proceeds to boast of godlike powers to control time.
“My left hand shapes, but my right hand — the second hand — marks time, and moves it forward […] Sometimes my second hand stops, which means time stops.”
Much is made of Tár’s divine power, a fabulously decorated public intellectual atop the highest tiers of her profession. Appointed principal conductor of what is most likely the Berliner Philharmoniker, an institution befitting a character that American journalist Adam Gopnik – playing himself in a cameo role – introduces as “one of the most important musical figures of our time”, her position of influence is systemically rigid. Indeed, her residency in Germany, a country wherein classical music is upheld as quasi-sacred, only further consolidates her authority.
“Right from the very beginning,” she declares, “I know precisely what time it is – and the exact moment that you and I will arrive at our destination, together.”
Her placement as conductor – atop a literal podium, at the head of a pyramid-shaped structure of players – certainly invites these hubristic declarations of power. With one downward wave of her hand, Tár summons sound from quivering silence, much like a god conjuring thunderbolts from air.
The film’s trailer realises this allusion far more literally, with a low-angle shot framing Blanchett in a pose of stately violence as she slams down her hands, an explosion of lightning and crashing metal created with each strike. Its importance as a portrait of power is underlined by the fact this one image comprised virtually all of the film’s marketing material and posters.
Since its release, Tár has courted both acclaim and controversy for its exploration of contemporary trigger points ranging from cancel culture to institutional abuse of power, perceived by some critics as a #MeToo drama in all but name.
As one who has essentially self-authored herself – we learn the great Lydia Tár was once Linda Tar of Staten Island, her surname absent of that pretentious accent – keen to espouse virtues that the artist must sublimate their “ego and, yes, [their] identity” in pursuit of art, Tár inhabits contradictory spheres of fame and wealth.
An anagram both for “rat” – as one character resentfully demonstrates – and “art”, Tár is a fabrication borne in equal part of the authentic musical genius and the vainglorious huckster.
“Our world is not mysterious; it’s humanity”
Bourby Webster, founder of the Perth Symphony Orchestra – and, like Lydia Tár, a woman of notable influence within the world of classical music – has her own thoughts of the film’s overarching controversy. While conceding she has not yet seen it, Bourby does say of its subject matter, “I’ve heard good and bad”.
As a business leader within the Australian arts sector, she applauds Tár’s positioning of “conductors and classical music in the spotlight”. Media coverage of the film was unavoidable in the months surrounding its release. Type “Lydia Tár” into Google and you’ll find numerous publications jumping at the opportunity to answer a popular audience question: Is Lydia Tar real?
To viewers, she may as well be, thanks to the film’s meticulously researched worldbuilding. The film’s title even alludes to the slippery authenticity of conventional biopics, being named after its lead character in the spirit of Ray, Judy, or Elvis.
Meanwhile, arts leaders like Bourby are so familiar with the ins and outs of the classical music industry that they don’t need an hours-long film to educate them.
“Our world is not mysterious,” she says, “it’s humanity. Real, relevant, and impacted by all the things that impact any industry: politics, competition, culture and more.”
Indeed, throughout her 13-year tenure as head of the PSO, Bourby made conscientious efforts to soften the rigidity with which arts bodies are traditionally orchestrated. As opposed to the thunderous, sermon-on-the-mount brand of authority exerted by Lydia Tár, Bourby’s style of leadership was far more co-operative.
How do real leaders run an orchestra?
Speaking to The Culture Creators podcast shortly before her resignation as creative director of the PSO last year, Bourby outlined the guiding principles that influenced her unofficial secondary role as “Chief Rule-Breaker”.
“The company will always shift a little [with] each new person that joins, and therefore the culture absolutely still gets influenced by me and my values,” she told the podcast. “But it’s never completely me. It’s begun to shift away from being [a founder company] to being its own thing.”
The polarity between Bourby’s methods of running an orchestra and Lydia Tár’s is, thankfully, as great as the distance between Perth itself and the film’s Berlin setting.
However, the same cannot always be said of conductors who have achieved fame for their musicality and controversial leadership styles alike. Daniel Barenboim, a world-class conductor of a Berlin orchestra, like Tár, recently faced accusations of bullying. A decade prior, Vasily Petrenko achieved similar prestige in his appointment as chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic, before relaying to a journalist that men are more capable of their work in music, while the sexual energy of girls and women intrudes on their ability to focus.
The representation of symphonic music is Tár’s great strength
Alongside its portrayal of classical music culture, the film’s other great strength is its representation of symphonic music. Hundreds of column inches have already been devoted to the icy bravado of Blanchett’s lead performance, yet nothing has been made of Tár’s miracle status as a major cinema release that places this art form so meaningfully at the centre of its narrative. If ever a Hollywood release shows the inside of a concert hall, it is to demonstrate in the laziest possible way that a protagonist is rich or classy or, gosh, cultured.
As such, the reputation of classical music within mainstream media conjures the image of stuffy plutocrats yawning in starched collars, tapping their feet to the same limp repertoire of no more than five pieces employed by Hollywood screenwriters. (Really, how many more times do we need to hear Carmen in a frothy romcom?)
A subversive love letter to classical music
Tár is a lightning bolt of cinema. Every scene crackles with unspoken fury, the screen generating its own magnetic charge with every loaded glance and incendiary quip – “don’t be so eager to be offended” being one particularly biting remark from its title character.
The film is magisterial, forensic, transfixing, and despicable, a monochromatic firestorm of brutalist concert halls and chilly close-ups. Devoid of primary colour save for a handful of annihilating sequences that blind and beguile in equal measure with their macabre beauty, the film is exquisitely photographed (a well-earned Oscar nomination for cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister).
Much of the focus of that lens is given to the film’s numerous rehearsal sequences, inviting the audience inside the sacred realms of such a private creative space. As we see Lydia on the podium before us, her instructions are for us: the camera adopts the perspective of a player within the orchestra. When she tells the strings that the Adagietto of Mahler’s Fifth needs to be more like “just one person, singing their heart out”, the soaring upthrow of her hands in that moment is for us. We see her own heart cast into the heavens and we are there to catch it.
Tár, like no other film released in the last quarter-century, openly and effusively invites the audience to become lost in the magic and mystery of the process by which sound is summoned from nothing.
As much as audiences may be swept up in Blanchett’s all-consuming portrayal of a titan of the arts undone by her own hypocrisy, Tár is the subversive love letter to classical music that rewards close engagement. Whether for your first, third, or fifth viewing, it is a film that demands to be appraised just as much with a critical eye as an open ear.
Like nothing else, it makes classical music look fantastically cool.
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Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier is a freelance writer based in Perth, WA, with passionate interests in film and classical music. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram and posts regularly in his blog. He intends to enrol this year at WAAPA to study Arts and Cultural Management with hopes of one day working in Perth’s classical music industry.
