Sam, Although I find your analysis of Tàr well-written and even argued, and although I found Blanchett's performance quite stunning, "power" as the single motivator makes the screenplay idea-driven. All good stories have layered conflict--and I don't see that in this tale. The viewer needs to understand the forces, internal and external, that drive her behavior. I did not find that complexity that drives all great narrative here. What am I missing?
You didn't like the movie? I think I see what you're saying - that you found it a bit schematic. I guess I get that. Even asking the question 'is the character driven by art or power' makes them not exactly a flesh-and-blood person, more emblematic of something. I think what I found so exciting about Tár is that it's a reversion to an artistic style that doesn't really exist anymore - which is tragedy in the old-fashioned sense; and the idea that we're not exactly dealing with a person who we would evaluate according to conventional mores (and also don't have to have any particular empathy with) but are dealing with someone who is larger-than-life and who embodies certain socially-pervasive energies. Some Shakespeare plays, for instance, are meditations on power - and taking in characters who are, by any normal measure, monstrous; and there's a dimension of that with Tár. But curious what didn't work for you about it!
Sam, the word “tragedy” in the classic sense, as I’m sure you know, refers to not only the fatal flaw, but also internal conflict as the character faces what he’s done, what has happened to him and what he might do, will do in the face of his mortality and his actions. This the crux of my argument about the so-called power of the flick. Even Job questions G-d, Lear in his madness is more sane than anywhere else in the play and his conflict drives the power of the play that has stood for so long. Hamlet is another example: torn even though he believes the ghost—still riddled with questions that give the play its lasting depth. What I’m saying is that, despite the brilliant performance by Blanchett, we know nothing of how she came to be or of any of her conflicts over what she's done and what happens to her. Her character remains an idea—just as you so eloquently describe. But idea-driven narrative holds only for that purpose and does not touch our hearts with the struggle to survive, to make sense of what appears meaningless—or with what one has done or not done.
I see what you mean. She seems to be more a nexus of different energies as opposed to a person with a clearly-defined biography. The movie did blow me away, though, and I think in large part because it seemed to point towards a different aesthetic - something pre-Chekhovian in which we're not exactly in naturalism, in which it's understood that the protagonists are larger-than-life and are determined by their relationship to power more than by their psychology.
Having not seen the film yet, I have to say, I'd love it if more film reviews could read like this. Thank you for taking the artist and the art from seriously.
Dig this because i want to live for two years w Mahler and all the multi and atonalists but am not about to IOW words watch movie until i have.no mention of yorgos Lanthimis though? I think all of his films are perfectly parodic depictions of different power arrangements. I guess that was part of the idea that this one delivered on the nervous system consequences of being Big. Where Lanthimos works in the mode of Rousseau, not a dramatist, not even an imprimatur. Dig it.
Your review deconstructs the hold this movie had on me--even in the air, with a tiny screen and subpar sound. It's been nine months and I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I relished the discomfiting challenge of imagining a female sacred monster. The director's point of view, which I'm inclined to support, is that women's absence from the annals of Me Too villainy results mainly from their lack of power. Power corrupts, including the power to make art. We are asked to believe--and I certainly believed--that Lydia/Linda is a great artist. The conflict I found so compelling was my own: art or power? I couldn't answer it neatly because Lydia's lust for power had become the engine for her art. And yet as Linda, she was driven by something else, reverence for music and the bond it creates between maker and listener. Her defenses stripped away, her intimate relationships trashed, she must ask who she will be and what she truly values. I wish I remembered the denouement more clearly. You've made me want to watch this movie again.
Wow, Sam, thanks for writing this. Even though it’s been a while since I saw the film, it touched me in some way I couldn’t define until I read your essay. I guess it’s always baffled me how “powerful” powerful people really are and how that actually works. Coming from a formerly Communist country in which it’s often so unclear who holds the power that there’s talk of a “parallel state”, I could never quite understand the nature of power. Is it that some people are born with it, born into it, born for it? Or can anyone, under the right circumstances, become powerful?
Sam, Although I find your analysis of Tàr well-written and even argued, and although I found Blanchett's performance quite stunning, "power" as the single motivator makes the screenplay idea-driven. All good stories have layered conflict--and I don't see that in this tale. The viewer needs to understand the forces, internal and external, that drive her behavior. I did not find that complexity that drives all great narrative here. What am I missing?
You didn't like the movie? I think I see what you're saying - that you found it a bit schematic. I guess I get that. Even asking the question 'is the character driven by art or power' makes them not exactly a flesh-and-blood person, more emblematic of something. I think what I found so exciting about Tár is that it's a reversion to an artistic style that doesn't really exist anymore - which is tragedy in the old-fashioned sense; and the idea that we're not exactly dealing with a person who we would evaluate according to conventional mores (and also don't have to have any particular empathy with) but are dealing with someone who is larger-than-life and who embodies certain socially-pervasive energies. Some Shakespeare plays, for instance, are meditations on power - and taking in characters who are, by any normal measure, monstrous; and there's a dimension of that with Tár. But curious what didn't work for you about it!
Sam, the word “tragedy” in the classic sense, as I’m sure you know, refers to not only the fatal flaw, but also internal conflict as the character faces what he’s done, what has happened to him and what he might do, will do in the face of his mortality and his actions. This the crux of my argument about the so-called power of the flick. Even Job questions G-d, Lear in his madness is more sane than anywhere else in the play and his conflict drives the power of the play that has stood for so long. Hamlet is another example: torn even though he believes the ghost—still riddled with questions that give the play its lasting depth. What I’m saying is that, despite the brilliant performance by Blanchett, we know nothing of how she came to be or of any of her conflicts over what she's done and what happens to her. Her character remains an idea—just as you so eloquently describe. But idea-driven narrative holds only for that purpose and does not touch our hearts with the struggle to survive, to make sense of what appears meaningless—or with what one has done or not done.
I see what you mean. She seems to be more a nexus of different energies as opposed to a person with a clearly-defined biography. The movie did blow me away, though, and I think in large part because it seemed to point towards a different aesthetic - something pre-Chekhovian in which we're not exactly in naturalism, in which it's understood that the protagonists are larger-than-life and are determined by their relationship to power more than by their psychology.
Having not seen the film yet, I have to say, I'd love it if more film reviews could read like this. Thank you for taking the artist and the art from seriously.
Thank you Andrew!
Dig this because i want to live for two years w Mahler and all the multi and atonalists but am not about to IOW words watch movie until i have.no mention of yorgos Lanthimis though? I think all of his films are perfectly parodic depictions of different power arrangements. I guess that was part of the idea that this one delivered on the nervous system consequences of being Big. Where Lanthimos works in the mode of Rousseau, not a dramatist, not even an imprimatur. Dig it.
Your review deconstructs the hold this movie had on me--even in the air, with a tiny screen and subpar sound. It's been nine months and I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I relished the discomfiting challenge of imagining a female sacred monster. The director's point of view, which I'm inclined to support, is that women's absence from the annals of Me Too villainy results mainly from their lack of power. Power corrupts, including the power to make art. We are asked to believe--and I certainly believed--that Lydia/Linda is a great artist. The conflict I found so compelling was my own: art or power? I couldn't answer it neatly because Lydia's lust for power had become the engine for her art. And yet as Linda, she was driven by something else, reverence for music and the bond it creates between maker and listener. Her defenses stripped away, her intimate relationships trashed, she must ask who she will be and what she truly values. I wish I remembered the denouement more clearly. You've made me want to watch this movie again.
Wow, Sam, thanks for writing this. Even though it’s been a while since I saw the film, it touched me in some way I couldn’t define until I read your essay. I guess it’s always baffled me how “powerful” powerful people really are and how that actually works. Coming from a formerly Communist country in which it’s often so unclear who holds the power that there’s talk of a “parallel state”, I could never quite understand the nature of power. Is it that some people are born with it, born into it, born for it? Or can anyone, under the right circumstances, become powerful?