Tar

Ten Second Review: there’s a reason there is fr more buzz around an Oscar for lead actress rather than best film.

I think there is some belief that a conductor stands at the front of an orchestra and waves a stick while the players read the music. If Tar does one thing well, it’s demystifying the role of the conductor.

Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett) is one of the world’s great conductors. Decorated with every award you could imagine (including managing an EGOT) and having played with every orchestra that one could possibly hope, she is now about to complete a cycle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic as they perform Mahler’s fifth. As the pressure mounts, Tar’s relationships with family, colleagues and old flames will come under the microscope.

I liked Tar. If it wasn’t awards season and there wasn’t an increased pressure to enjoy what we are watching, I’d probably have liked it more. If it was a smaller film with less people chucking in their two cents I’d probably have liked it more. If it was a better film, I’d probably have liked it more.

Overall it was an interesting character study in an interesting arena and certainly one of the best performances from an actor this year. The camera work also demands attention. It is a shame that some of these more technical aspects of filmmaking are less popularly recognised as this was nothing short of a masterclass.

It was full of interesting ideas and set ups, intriguing relationships and potentially revealing anecdotes and allegories. The problem is it was arguably too full of all these things with very little in the way of actual delivery.

This has ended up as yet another example of a director wanting to have as much depth to their story as a TV series, but a resistance to actually making a TV series. If you need more time to tell your story, either get more time or tell a smaller story.

Where a film like Whiplash explored a tight theme and used the other relationships and the musical ammecdotes to add richness and further explore this central idea, Tar spreads itself thin. It reads less as complexity and more as confusion or over ambition.

I am left disappointed, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I am left wanting more with no way to get it. There was too little resolution to too many things the film started. Best lead actress, sure. Best film, no.