Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett, director Todd Field and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir break down the vital role classical music plays in the critically hailed 'Tár.'

“It was interesting to figure out how to wield those very delicate threads of internal music and connect that to the characters in this subtle way.” “I became obsessed with it and I bought every recording I could.” As he was crafting the script, Mahler’s epic, emotionally sweeping symphony, which opens with a funeral march, seemed a perfect musical accompaniment to the story of Tár’s downfall. After combing through hundreds of auditions from around the world, Field says, “It started to feel like it was going to go tragic.” “When you hear a beautiful piece of classical music on the radio, why is it that you have to pull over and write down 6.93 squared to figure it out? “It’s almost like it’s haunting her, coming for her.” In composing the symphony, Mahler was also inspired by his love for his future wife Alma Schindler, who was 19 years his junior, echoing an infatuation Tár develops with a much younger Russian cello prodigy named Olga. “The Five was really like my gateway drug into a lot of classical music,” he says. [ecstatic reviews](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-09-04/telluride-film-festival-tar-cate-blanchett-empire-of-light-olivia-colman) and [rapturous receptions](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-09-06/telluride-film-festival-winners-losers) at the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals, “Tár” chronicles the precipitous fall from grace of a conductor who has achieved the pinnacle of success in her rarified field. “You’re dealing with a part of our so-called high culture that is intimidating by design,” says Field, who was a budding jazz musician before he turned to acting and then directing. Field is well aware that the prospect of spending two and a half hours immersed in the world of classical music could be an intimidating prospect for many viewers, who could find themselves occasionally lost in the film’s references to esoteric musical terminology and past conductors like Wilhelm Furtwängler. “My fear was doing a sort of toy town version of this milieu and having people who are in the trade say, ‘Bull—, that’s not what it is.’” “I wanted to be able to look at the score and be referring to the exact note and dynamic marking. [Review: Cate Blanchett is at the peak of her powers in ‘Tár,’ a magnificent cinematic symphony](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-10-06/tar-review-cate-blanchett-todd-field)

Tár,” Todd Field's look at Lydia Tár, a celebrated, if fictional, female orchestra conductor, has already won Cate Blanchett the Venice Film Festival's Best ...

“I didn’t think about the character’s gender — or her sexuality — at all,” she said. “I love that about the film. So it’s a seminal piece of work in that and many other respects. “I think what people do with it after the fact, it can be politicized, disseminated or discussed. People can be disgusted with it or offended or inspired. “Homogeneity in any art form is death.

Following a conductor who becomes the first female chief conductor at a major orchestra, the film delves into the deep psychological traumas that come from the ...

She went on to win Best Supporting Actress for her role as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator and Best Actress in Blue Jasmine. TÁR has been sparking a lot of conversation on artistic expression and obsession as it makes its way to major festivals. The Music Lovers is the oft-forgotten story of Russia’s greatest composer, Pyotr Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain). Amadeus tells the story of Mozart through the eyes of his lesser rival Salieri, played by a fantastic F. Many contemporary film fans may not remember him as this is his first film in 16 years, but in the early 2000s, he changed the landscape of American independent cinema. Unfortunately, TÁR will not be available for streaming on the same day as its theatrical release and there is no news on what streaming service it will end up on. It nearly won Best Picture and proved to be one of the most financially successful films to ever premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is an “exceptionally detailed portrait of a Promethean artist eventually hoisted on her own petard.” It opens with an image of Cate Blanchett surrounded by darkness and slowly letting a large puff of smoke out of her mouth. [TÁR](https://collider.com/tar-cast-release-date-trailer-cate-blanchett/) first premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, it became clear that this would be one of the biggest contenders in this awards season. At Venice, [Cate Blanchett](https://collider.com/cate-blanchett-tar-movie-todd-field/) won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress for her titular lead role and seems well on her way to another Oscar nomination and possible win. [Visit the film's official website](https://www.focusfeatures.com/tar/) to see showtimes for TÁR near you.

Domhnall Gleeson has been told he looks like Cate Blanchett since he was a teenager, which made him extra nervous when the pair finally met in real life.

"And I didn't! "She was very nice back and then I walked away… "Strangers would stop me and say, 'Do you know…' and I would say, 'Yes, I know! I would love to work with you someday, and it's a pleasure to meet you,'" Gleeson said. "I met her in a corridor right before — somebody introduced me — and I was just thinking, 'Don't say that people say, "Do you get people saying you look like Domhnall Gleeson?,"'" he joked. My whole cast called me Cate because I looked really like Cate Blanchett when I was 19 years old."

Yet Tár is anything but clichéd. Not to be hyperbolic, but it might be perfect. The titular Tár is Lydia Tár, a fearsome orchestra conductor fiercely played by ...

But it so richly rewards the careful viewer that you immediately want to see it again, to see what you couldn’t have known from the start. After a (much too) long absence from cinema, it’s a relief that Todd Field — whose previous films In the Bedroom and Little Children are devastating examinations of what happens when perfectly constructed realities begin to cave in — has tuned his themes so brilliantly. That Lydia is a woman only adds to it all; she’s not meant to have gotten here in the first place. (This is not a tiresome movie about how “#MeToo has gone too far” or about the dangers of social media.) But there’s not exactly a villain in this world, either. That’s the mark of good art, but it’s a discipline so many contemporary films aren’t willing to demand from audiences. (She’s a fictional character, but you can sense a dozen real ones just beneath her skin.) She’s fought her way to the top of the profession, which in this particular case resides on the podium in front of the Berlin Philharmonic. Tár tackles the rough but rewarding challenge of portraying the ways that powerful people are sometimes taken down by things that, in a strict sense, aren’t really their fault. Its bookending scenes, beginning and end, are the subtlest of indicators of what Lydia must deign to do to keep herself afloat; blink, and you’ll miss it. He finds himself, at the end of his days, living in a palatial estate (complete with bowling alley, site of the famous “I drink your milkshake” scene), alone and miserable. It’s only through cracks in the veneer that you can glimpse the real person. The surface of each scene is perfectly legible, but the full import of what you’re watching is elusive till the end of the scene, or even the sequence. She lives in a sleek modernist flat with her wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss), and their daughter, and she spends her days on the most elite circuit imaginable: chatting with New Yorker writers in front of packed crowds; rehearsing the orchestra in advance of a new season and upcoming recordings; prepping for the publication of her memoirs.

Todd Field's newest masterwork “TÁR” had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, starring Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss and Sophie Kauer.

While the fact that Lydia is a gay women might not be the thing, it is a thing, and a very important one in how the film works to challenge its viewers. He then places her in a world populated by women, who are all jockeying for a piece of the maestro — and her power. It’s a very human portrait, and I think we have perhaps matured enough as a species that we can watch a film like this and not make that the headline issue.” You just experience this ride of Lydia Tar and her multifaceted personality and along this ride, you kind of feel what surrounds us right now, the discussions we’re all in, and you try to put yourself into that perspective, and I think that’s what makes you want to talk about it, because you come out of it with a lot of great questions.” Had Lydia been a male conductor, for instance, it would be perhaps much easier or more natural to make conclusions about her actions and her motivations, especially in the post-MeToo world. With her wife and the orchestra’s first violin, Sharon (Nina Hoss), by her side, Lydia is preparing for a history-making performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and the launch of her memoir, “Tár on Tár,” when things begin to take a downturn. “I think I love that about the film. And it respects the audience enough to ask them.” Watching the film, which is Field’s first since “Little Children,” released 16 years ago, viewers have to consider how they themselves are reflected in their answers to these questions, including at what point they consider someone’s actions to be irredeemable (or cancel-worthy)? She takes an outsize interest in the orchestra’s attractive new cellist, Olga (newcomer Sophie Kauer), which puts her at odds with the other players during a crucial point in rehearsals. She’s also the first woman to take the stage as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and, thanks to this hard-won success, she has managed to evade any serious repercussions for her morally questionable habits — at least when the film begins. The questions asked in “TÁR” — sprinkled through its nearly three-hour runtime — center on power dynamics, cancel culture and complicity.