Cate Blanchett reveals that her TÁR role was originally imagined as a man
The Todd Field film explores the abuse of power in the classical music industry
Aux News Cate Blanchett
Much has been made of how Michelle Yeoh’s multiverse-hopping mom in Everything Everywhere All At Once was originally imagined as being played by Jackie Chan (his loss, bro!). But it’s not the only major 2022 role that was previously meant for a man. In a conversation with Yeoh for Variety’s Actors On Actors series, Cate Blanchett reveals that she wasn’t quite the first choice for TÁR.
“When Todd [Field, writer and director] was thinking about it, TÁR was originally a male role,” the Mrs. America actor says. “Because the film is a meditation on power, you would’ve had a much less nuanced examination of that. We understand what the corruption of male power looks like, but we need to unpack what power is itself.”
Blanchett quickly became an Oscar frontrunner for her performance as Lydia Tár, a woman who has fought hard to become one of the world’s preeminent conductors–and becomes embroiled in scandal along the way. Considering there’s no shortage of stories about difficult, abrasive men in creative fields, the swap makes TÁR stand out even more as one of the year’s top films.
“The character of Lydia—even though there’s a very clear understanding in the community in which she moves of who she is and how she thinks and what she’s achieved—she’s someone who has become estranged from herself,” Blanchett describes. “Being at the head of a major institution and therefore being in a position of being able to, and expected to, wield a certain level of authority, that has separated her from not only her craft and her creative instinct, but also from who she is.”
TÁR is now in theaters and available on demand.
9 Comments
This just further cements the feeling for me that the film is an emperor with no clothes situation. Take a typical contemporary #MeToo story of a man abusing his power, sub a woman for a man to make it look more novel, voila. The problem is the gender change doesn’t come with compelling nuances or complications. It’s a nearly three hour film that says nothing we don’t already know about its subject, and Tar just isn’t written as a character interesting enough to sustain that ungodly runtime.
Agreed 100%. Loved Blanchett’s performance, but that’s about it for the movie (and Cate being amazing is a default setting). Not once did this movie surprise me, or keep me in suspense, and the ending was dumb.
I enjoyed it more or less, but like you, I thought the ending was a real let down. The pacing was abysmal (the last 20 minutes somehow felt longer than the previous hour), and I thought it was deeply problematic, portraying southeast Asia as a rather ugly place culturally inferior to Berlin or New York City.
I don’t think the idea is that the place is culturally inferior to Berlin or NYC. But Lydia isn’t conducting the most prestigious orchestra in her new country, she’s wearing an earpiece for a pre-recorded tempo and playing for an audience that doesn’t care about her.
Not a fan of the movie but I agree with your take here – I think when she goes to southeast Asia, it’s meant to throw us off-center for a bit: Is she running away, is she taking a vacation? And then the stinger arrives, which tells us she’s taking a gig full of audience members who don’t know her or give a shit about what she did. I think it’s really a gag at the expense of uncultured video game nerds…although, it’s true that if she did that exact same concert in America, she’d get protesters outside. It’s just that the audience inside wouldn’t care.
What I found interesting is that we really didn’t see all that much abuse of power from her. The film starts after whatever happened between her & Krista, the viral video of her clearly misrepresents the truth (even if she wasn’t very nice in saying the student shouldn’t want to be judged based on looks rather than ability), the assistant conductor merited being replaced even to a third-party and was not ultimately used to create a spot for her assistant/protege (though that might have been the plan, and not doing so left her in the lurch right afterward). The film is able to stay largely in her headspace in which she can regard herself as a wronged party, which would be more difficult with a more standard issue abusive authority.
No shit. The screenplay makes that really obvious. It’s inspired by James Levine, is it not? But let’s be novel! Let’s cast a great female actor in the role to woo the film critics circles! Yeah! *snort* Yeah!
Cate Blanchett is a woman!?
158 Minutes long?