Lydia Tár is one of the most meticulous on-screen characters you will witness. This trait does not only strangely entice and frighten a viewer but also rebirths itself through the film’s use of sound, delivery of dialogue, and physical performance. These elements are as brilliantly executed as the film’s portrayal of the obsessive chaos that imbues perfectionism. A hypersensitivity to the senses, especially her hearing, manifests Tár’s immediate attentiveness to her daughter’s middle-of-the-night whimpers or a woman’s screaming in the distance, as well as her nightmares of a ticking metronome, and an eerily silent still shot of a mystical lake. One slowly begins to question her susceptibility to sound, or sound’s absence, as the narrative progresses. Is it simply a quality of intelligence —as it is so highly praised by her mentor Andris Davis— or more deeply, could it be a paranoia that pervades her entire physiology, at times, triggering visceral sickness?
Much like Tár’s character, this film constantly looks to itself for reference in moments of comparison or admiration. What I mean by this is that scenes and characters foil, threaten, and complement one another all through the same mutual source —Tár’s mind itself. Even she actively avoids the term and concept of “variety” to describe her work in the opening interview. Tár is fixed. Or at least, she wants to be. She is closed-off to change, in favour of static tradition and perhaps in fear of a danger greater than she, which is why she resorts instead to verbally threatening a child, wasting perfectly crafted and depravedly amusing dialogue on an innocent being of lesser life and —as the viewer would suppose— lesser mind. Scared to relinquish control and obsessed with performing it, Tár seems so flawless because of her capacity to self-express and behave with pure rationale that is decorated with a charm that lures others in, a seamlessness of character that Cate Blanchett delivers with an enticing sharpness.
Tár serves as a thrilling insight into the antagonistic protagonist; all forces of the new age and of automatic control seem to work against her while the manual elements follow her lead. The metronome threatens her. She calls the laptop a “machine”. She is positively stunned when Olga Metkina —the new young cello player— declines her invitation to dinner on the basis of jetlag, and Tár soon notices her leaving the hotel dressed up and seemingly ready for a wild night out. Yet, everything analogue that she has relied on for decades is at her fingertips, fresh pencils almost as sharp as the crescendos of her orchestra.
Tár eventually succumbs to losing control, and it begins with an obsession over the symbol of perfection that is Olga. It is through this obsession that Tár seeks the thrill of a new experience without rebelling against her position as a music-maker but while doing so against her relationship, loyalty, and identity which we once assumed were so confidently fixed. At first, one craves Tár’s approval, but ultimately one realises that her fear of losing control leaves her begging others for it.
Tár is a film that masters the art and phenomenon of mastery itself, particularly that of sound. Tár runs towards sounds and with them. She attempts to replicate all types of sounds, mimicking them throughout the film, from the bell to the reporter’s voice on the news. Her mind strives to embody sounds and melodies so obsessively to the point that she ridicules clutter and mess, actively avoiding and scorning it. She reserves the mess for her own private experiences, such as in her childhood home and in her private studio, the pinnacle of her closed-off chaos —accessed only by Olga who sees her desires and disturbances. When in her childhood home, she lets the neatly tucked away mess play out in tears of resonance, awe, pain, and regret. These are feelings too deep that one cannot describe apart from through music, as the conductor on the television describes. In her own rooms, the mess is acceptable. In her childhood bedroom, her messy truth is acceptable.
“Cate Blanchett, 2023” by Elena Ternovaja is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.