Trapped in Tár

The screenplay that restored Scorcese's faith in movies

In Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pit Museum is devoted to studying and exhibiting fossils of giant extinct mammals that ended their lives trapped in the local tar pits. I’m not yet extinct, but I find myself, nonetheless, trapped in Tár. It keeps sucking me in. Not sure when, if, or how—I will get away from it. I’m fascinated with trying to decode how it’s structured. What follows is my deep dive into the film’s first act.

There will be SPOILERS. Seriously.

Tár

Written, Produced, Directed by Todd Field

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Mark Strong, Sylvia Flote, Adam Gopnik, Zethphan Smith-Geist

Rated R

2 hours 38 minutes

Distributed by Focus Features (US), Universal Pictures (International)

Streaming: included with Peacock (US), available for rent or purchase on multiple services.

When the New York Film Critics Circle chose Todd Field’s Tár for best picture of 2022, Martin Scorcese heaped high praise on it, emphasizing the ways it departs from most movies made today.

For so long now, so many of us see films that pretty much let us know where they’re going. I mean, they take us by the hand, and even if it’s disturbing at times, sort of comfort us along the way that it will be all OK by the end…. The clouds lifted when I experienced Todd’s film, ‘TÁR.’ What you’ve done, Todd, is that the very fabric of the movie you created doesn’t allow this… we don’t know where the film’s going. We just follow the character on her strange, upsetting road to her even stranger final destination.

My strongest impressions of the film centered on three things: the towering performance by Cate Blanchett in the title role, Todd Field’s virtuoso filmmaking, and, above all, his screenplay. The script is is a miracle of construction and misdirection. It’s both subtle and dense as it winds unpredictably through a story, filled with bracing moments of “I did not see that coming.” While most of the fireworks go off later in the film, they’re all put in place in Act I. It’s just one Chekov’s gun after another.

What makes the magic work is this: Field constructs his film as a jigsaw puzzle, doling out clues before we have any idea where they fit. He gives us glimpses of things that only lock into place later on, when we get more context for them. It's the strategy of saying A and C, challenging the audience to step up and fill in B—once we've heard about D and E. Lydia Tár is a towering figure who conceals the truth from her pubic, her colleagues, her family, and herself. As screenwriter, Field needs to be her co-conspirator—hiding her secrets for as long as possible. On the other hand, if he never reveals them, he doesn’t have a movie. As in a well-crafted detective story, he puts the the clues right in front of us. The only thing missing is the detective.

In a mesmerizing balancing act, Field paints Lydia Tár as both genius and monster, charmer and bully, loving and cold, commanding and vulnerable. As the film progresses, her misdeeds emerge unmistakably, but even at the start, the clues are there—and by “start,” I mean the very first shot.

Close-up on a mobile phone aboard a private jet.

Two people are texting over a live image of someone dozing in a sleep mask Who is the sleeper? Who's filming her? And who is on the other end of the conversation?

We don’t know. But that shot will linger in our memory as an anchor—a concise introduction to the toxic love-and-power triangle that drives the story. 

“you mean she has a conscience” 

“maybe” 

“you still love her then”

That's the essence of the film right there—a thesis statement hidden in plain sight. In a single 27-second shot. Lydia Tár, blindfolded, unaware that she’s not in control of her image or what people say about her.

Tilt your head one way and Tár is the story of a powerful woman using her position to exploit others and shape her own destiny. But tilt it the other way and it’s also the story of a vulnerable woman whose power is continually exploited by everyone drawn into her orbit by the pull of her brilliance.

FADE TO BLACK

Field makes it easy for us forget the words of the text chat we’ve just seen by following them with a barrage of more text. An unexpected list of credits—the gazillion crew contributors and acknowledgements we usually see at the end of a film. Screen after screen crowded with tiny white type against black.

What we hear behind the credits is also unexpected. Not some bombastic, orchestral “Main Title Theme” but a raw field recording of a solo singer that we can't quite place, singing in a language we don't recognize (unless we're steeped in the ethnomusicology of the Shipibo-Konibo people. Which, I confess, I'm not. And I'm guessing you're not either.) That field recording is another clue. But we’ll have no idea how it fits the puzzle until later in the film.

We will soon learn that Lydia made that recording early in her career. We will eventually learn that she had two younger companions along with her when she did so. The three of them were “so close.” One of them now works as Lydia’s assistant. The other is cut out of Lydia’s life (and will soon die by suicide.) We never get details of what happened among them. Field never completely pulls the veil away from Tár’s life.

FADE TO BLACK

After four minutes of credits, the movie proper starts.

Backstage at The New Yorker Festival

A nervous Lydia prepares to go onstage. Her assistant (Noémie Merlant) offers her some hand sanitizer, and pills. Every detail of that will prove important. Especially the pills.

SPOILERS: We’ll discover soon enough that those pills were prescribed to her partner Sharon, who remains back in Berlin. Lydia, when she flew to New York, had nicked her lover’s heart medicine. She nicked her lover’s heart medicine! When Lydia returns home, she’ll find Sharon gasping, clutching her side, complaining that she’s having heart palpitations and can’t find her pills. Lydia leaves the room, muttering, “oh, fuck!” and comes back with a pill from her own supply, blithely lying that she had just discovered it loose in the drawer. The betrayal is papered over when Lydia puts on some Basie and tenderly slow-dances with Sharon. But that all lies ahead, in Act II. Right now, we’re still backstage at The New Yorker Festival.

Adam Gopnik, author and staff writer for The New Yorker (playing himself) emerges from the green room, joins Lydia, and together they hit the stage, where he will interview her.

As they exit the frame, we hear the audience applaud and Gopnik begins to recite Lydia's improbably impressive CV—as honors student, pianist, ethnomusicologist, educator, and conductor. But we don't see him. Instead, the B-roll whisks us away to…

Lydia's flat in Berlin.

She's rolling up the carpet and moving furniture to clear a large space. She tosses nearly a hundred classical LP albums across the floor and begins sorting them with her bare feet. She narrows the selection to two—the Mahler 5 conducted by Claudio Abbado and the Mahler 9 conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Another bare foot enters the frame and taps the Abbado cover. Lydia caresses the foot with her own—affirming the choice and also signalling a comfortable intimacy. Whose foot? We'll know soon enough. And we’ll later learn that this flat is not where Lydia lives with her partner and their daughter. This is her other flat, the one where she... well… SPOILERS….

On the track, Gopnik's voice continues piling up Tár's stunning accomplishments in a nearly comical parody of overachievement. She was principal conductor at every one of the top five American symphony orchestras before landing the same post at the Berlin Philharmonic. Not only that, but she's also among the tiny elite of artists to have earned an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).

A Bespoke Tailor in Berlin

As Gopnik continues in voice-over, the visuals still have us in Berlin. We’re across from the storefront of bespoke tailor Egon Brandstetter. Oh, look—it's the assistant we first glimpsed backstage. (So, it was her foot that Tár caressed. Is she an assistant with benefits?) We get a Breaking-Bad style “cooking” montage: measuring, patterning, marking, cutting, sewing, and fitting a bespoke suit. But the sequence is studded with unexpected puzzle pieces. Why carry a record album to a tailor? Why is there a closeup insert of a red Caran D'Ache Pablo pencil?

Why are we looking at swatches for linen bindings for the score? Why are workers carrying theatre seats into Lydia's flat?

It all comes together by the end of the sequence. We see Lydia re-creating the Abbado cover at home—duplicating every element—the button-down shirt, suit jacket draped casually on an adjacent seat back, marking an identically linen-bound score with an identical pencil. But we still don't know why she’s done this.

As for the pencil, there will be more to say about it.

While this falls outside the film and screenplay, here’s her template, the Abbado album, juxtabposed with the image that appears on the Tár soundtrack album:

The New Yorker Festival

As Gopnik finishes introducing Lydia Tár, we cut back to the auditorium. We’re at the very back of the audience, looking at the stage in the far distance, past a head of red hair that nearly fills the frame. (Whose head?) Then we see the assistant, standing in a side aisle, mouthing the words that Gopnik is reading. (She’s probably written them. Lydia’s probably approved them.)

And then we’re onstage as the interview begins. Tár charms Gopnik—and their audience—disclosing some of the secrets of the conductor's craft along with anecdotes that anticipate key themes of the film. Disturbingly, she gets her biggest laugh and applause describing how Jean-Baptiste Lully died. If you can make dying of gangrene funny, you're one hell of a raconteur. (Lully died in 1687. So, maybe the laugh is just the old formula, “tragedy-plus-time.”)

In many ways, the interview sequence in this film works like "News on the March" in Citizen Kane—as a vehicle for heavy exposition.

In both, we learn the outline of the main character's biography, setting us up for a film that will peel away their public personas to reveal childhood loss, driving ambition, and currents of dark, manipulative pathologies. The Gopnik interview in Tár runs twice the length of the Kane newsreel. It also carries more freight. Beyond setting out her biography, it also sets up Lydia Tár’s main objective in the film—to record the last remaining Mahler symphony that will complete her cycle of all nine with a single orchestra. Puzzle pieces click in. So, that's what that B-roll montage was all about. Tár was art-directing the cover shot for her upcoming Mahler 5 recording as an homage—or a challenge—to Abbado's. That’s why she’s taken the trouble to find a pencil identical to the one he is holding on his cover—the red Caran D'ache Pablo pencil we saw in the montage.

Stick a pin in that. There’s still more to say about that pencil.

(I wonder if the album-cover sequence was written for this moment in the film, or whether they found this placement in the editing.)

Every one of the film's themes is laid out in the Gopnik interview. Manipulation and accommodation. Transmission of culture and cancel culture. Performance and projection. Love and loss. Power and submission. Telling the dancer from the dance. Embracing art created by problematic artists. As the film continues, we’ll see it adopt the musical form of theme and variation, exploring all of those dichotomies.

If we focus on Lydia’s words, this is a film of ideas. But if we follow her actions and delve into her tangled personal and professional relationships, it becomes a film about power, neediness, and corruption. Never lose sight of the fact that the title of the movie is her name. It’s not Music or Art or Love. It’s Tár. This is a portrait of a woman. More than that, it’s an x-ray of her soul. The interview sequence closes with the same shot that opened it: from the back of the auditorium, behind the redheaded woman, looking at the distant stage. (We'll see that head of hair one more time. But its owner will never speak. At this point, she’s just another puzzle piece. We can only guess who it is. It’s not a hard guess.)

Digging beneath the surface

In each of the remaining New York scenes, Field excavates a little deeper beneath Tár's glib and charming surface.

In the lobby

Tar interacts with a fan. After the Gopnik interview, Tár engages with a smitten young female fan (Sydney Lemmon), while her assistant—we still haven't heard her name—glowers and texts in the background. Although it’s the fan who initiates the encounter, Tár quickly picks up on the fan’s infatuation and closes in. In an instant, she switches from talking Stravinsky to admiring the fan’s red leather handbag. She reaches out to touch first the bag and then the fan’s arm. The assistant, clearly jealous, steps in to hurry Tár off to her next appointment.

SPOILERS: We will see that handbag—or its twin—again. We’ll see its red handles, between Lydia and Francesca as they ride to the airport. When Lydia returns home, Sharon will notice the bag and Lydia will casually lie to her about how she acquired it. We’re never told exactly how she got it. It’s a good bet, however, that the fan brought it to her as a gift. Again, Field says A and C. We have to fill in B.

Another text chat.

Tár is absent. This is one of the rare scenes in which Tár does not appear. A conversation between the same two people we saw in the opening shot. At this point, we might think they’re being set up as a Greek Chorus to comment on Lydia throughout the film. But no. This will be the last time we see them chatting.

Over a live image of a luxury hotel suite furnished with a piano: 

“see what I see"

“placido domingos room”

“she thinks she is being ironic”

Who? Placido Domingo, accused in 2019 by eight women of pressuring them into “sexual relationships by dangling jobs and then sometimes punishing the women professionally when they refused his advances.” He’s is just one in a long list of artists with problematic transgressions who will be namechecked in the film.

Tár's lunch with Eliot

Tar interacts with a donor. Eliot Kaplan (Mark Strong) is the chief manager and fundraiser for her foundation. A very long conversation delivers even more exposition—about the people in Tár's personal and work lives, about her success in mentoring young, talented women conductors, all of whom are doing well professionally—except for one.

“Well,” offers Tár, “she had issues.” (Later she’ll tell her assistant, “She wasn’t one of us.”)

The conversation sets up several problematic strands of the plot. It also establishes Kaplan as a businessman who would much rather conduct. Another Chekov’s gun.

Kaplan tries to bribe Lydia for a look at her annotated score with the loan of his private jet to take her back to Berlin. She refuses. Overnight, he will rescind his offer. Tár will be forced to fly commercial.

This scene is also the first time we learn the assistant's name, Francesca.

One tidbit I missed on first viewing: When Tár complains about Sabastian (Allan Corduner), her assistant conductor, she accuses him of having a strange fetish for “dead-stock pencils he's seen von Karajan hold in photographs.” I had to Google that to decode it. “Dead stock” means old inventory not currently on offer. Turns out that the pencil that we saw Lydia holding in the earlier montage is exactly that—a dead-stock pencil she’s seen Abbado (von Karajan’s successor) hold in a photograph.

Dead-stock Caran D’ache pencil (left) vs current design of the same product (right)

Yes, I'm embarrassed that I took the time to track that down. But it just increases my admiration for Field's attention to detail. The weird fetish that Lydia ascribes to her assistant conductor turns out to be her own. (By the way, I couldn’t find a single photo of von Karajan holding a pencil. A baton, yes. But never a pencil. Unlike most conductors, von Karajan never marked his scores.)

Delivering the bulk of your film’s exposition in two long talking scenes where the characters never budge from their chairs is probably not what they teach young screenwriters in film school. Perhaps some audiences have been put off by it, but I found it fascinating and engaging. My sister, on the other hand, asked for the check in the middle of the Kaplan lunch. “This film’s not for me,” she said.

The master class at Juilliard.

Tar interacts with a student. This may be the most discussed scene in the movie—both for its content and its execution. Much of the analysis focuses on how the scene is shot—in one continuous ten-minute take. The visual design and technical challenges of creating a oner that doesn’t play like a oner are worth their own essay. But this isn’t that essay. I want to keep focused on the script. Nevertheless, I’m in awe of the daring high-wire act peformed by Blanchett, the other actors in the scene, and by the crew led by cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister. Field has said in a video interview,

“The beginning of the script for me was that scene. It’s the first scene that I wrote. And I wrote it and rewrote it for probably four months.”

The scene presents Lydia Tár at her purest. She gets to advocate for her ideas in an isolated environment, free from any concerns about how it might complicate her tangled professional and personal relationships, her financing, or her reputation. (We’ll later learn that’s illusory. There are consequences. This event will later go viral in a deceptively edited form that shows Tár in the worst light. As Filmmaker Sammy Paul pointed out to me, that’s why Field had to film it as a oner. He wasn’t just showing off. He was letting us see for ourselves how the class played out in real time so that we would be able to recognize the unfairness of the edited version when it shows up later. )

The scene gives Tár a forum to argue that the canon of German-Austrian protestant music has inherent value—separate from the gender, nationality, religion or personal lives of the composers. Her student, Max (Zethphan D. Smith-Gneiss), however, is having none of it. As an out, pan-gender, BIPOC, they refuse to engage with the Western cannon. Tár argues that performing that canon is the job. She insists they must embrace it as she does—even as an American “U-Haul lesbian.”

But we’re not watching a pure acadmic lecture. Like every other scene in the film, this is a scene about Lydia Tár—her power, her neediness, and her skill at manipulating people. Every student in the class is keenly aware that Lydia heads a foundation that recruits, mentors, and places young conductors. So, they’re not simply a group of students in awe of a famous guest instructor. They’re a class of supplicants who know that Lydia might be their ticket to a career. As Tár’s Accordion foundation mentors only women, Max has nothing to lose in standing up to the great Maestro. Still, they’re nervous about it. Their leg won’t stop shaking. But they won’t yield.

Field’s writing gives Tár eloquence, wit, and strong arguments with lines that are studded with cultural references that range from a renowned Danish chef to holistic pedagogy to an American comic strip. Her objective is to win Max over. Though she tries several approaches, they will not budge. They won’t give her the conversion she requires.

Max breaks her. And she knows it.

Suddenly her objective flips. We see her harden as she sets out to humiliate them with a personal attack. They storm out, calling her a fucking bitch. This is Lydia’s first defeat at the hands of someone less powerful. It won’t be her last. (I’ll say more on this scene in the Extras.)

On a Computer Screen

Tár buffs her image. The visuals consist entirely of Lydia managing her reputation by updating her own Wikipedia entry. On the track we hear a snippet of an interview she gave Alec Baldwin for his podcast. He probes her with a question about possible home-and-work conflicts with her romantic partner, who is also first violinist in her orchestra. She says there are none. (SPOILER: There are.)

Madison Avenue, NY, Outside the Carlyle hotel,

The Redhead looks on… as Francesca dashes across the street to the hotel. (This is the last we’ll see of her. But it’s far from her last intrusion into the story.)

Inside the Carlyle, in “placido domingos room"

Francesca delivers an anonymous gift that had been left for Lydia in the lobby, (by The Redhead?). She lingers on, clearly angling to have an extended—maybe overnight—visit,  but Tár coldly hustles her out of the room, barely looking at her, telling her not to come back. Tár claims she wants to be alone to use the piano. (Is she being honest?)

In the hotel room, later that evening

As she brushes her teeth, and then her hair, Lydia appears to be getting ready for a visitor. (Is it the fan? Clues in the next scene.)

In a car to the airport.

Tár interacts with Francesca. On the ride to the airport, between Lydia and Francesca, we can clearly see the handles of the fan’s red handbag. During the ride, as they spar over the dynamics of Mahler and Alma’s marriage, the tension between the two dissipates and we see them at ease as they must have been in their past, laughing, and blowing raspberries. But then things grow cold again when Francesca asks, “How was your evening?” with a pointed glance at the handbag. She lets Lydia know that Sharon’s pills have run out, and that she’s had the prescription refilled. Then she mentions the latest desperate email from Krista (finally The Redhead gets a name) and Lydia tells her to ignore it.

Surreally, theirs is the only car in the tunnel.

Aboard the plane home.

Tár heads to the restroom, gobbles some pills and unwraps the anonymous gift that we can now assume came from Krista. Lydia is visibly upset. She mutilates the book, ripping out the signed title page and shoving the book and wrapping paper into the trash bin. It’s powerful, wordless scene and a pivotal one. But Field refrains from surfacing all the information he’s packed into it. Two additional points:

One. That’s an expensive rare book—a signed 1923 first edition of Challenge by V. Sackville-West, with the original dust-cover intact. Abebook.com, an online marketplace, lists a copy—unsigned and without the dust jacket—for $875.00 US. How much for the one we see Lydia destroying? Your guess is as good as mine

Based on its price, it’s unlikely that this is a gift from Krista (even if her father is an investment banker). It’s more likely that Krista has sent back a lavish present she had received from Lydia back in the day. And that has the opposite meaning of a gift. No wonder Lydia reacts so vehemently.

Two. The life and loves of the novel’s bisexual author and the contents of the novel resonate powerfully with the themes of the film and the details of Lydia’s life.

Returning to her seat, Lydia prophetically anagrams the name KRISTA to AT RISK.

Where’s Mahler?

We’re now forty-five minutes into the film and we haven’t heard a single note of Mahler. But all of the plot’s springs are now wound tight. When Lydia Tár lands to Berlin, she will mount the podium, give the downbeat, and her great unravelling will commence.