Actually, Lydia Tár did study under Leonard Berstein, the late conductor’s estate says
Leonard Bernstein's three children come forward to clear up any doubts surrounding Lydia's education
Aux News Lydia
One of the major influencers in Lydia Tár’s career is her mentorship under famed American conductor, Leonard Bernstein. Throughout Todd Field’s faux-biopic, TÁR, the embattled conductor often talks of her hero Bernstein and his artistic philosophies. Despite any evidence undermining Lydia’s claims of being taught by Bernstein, the late conductor’s estate now confirms that she did hone in her skills under the tutelage of Lenny in the final year of his life.
Following the film’s release, even Field called into question Lydia’s association with Bernstein, painting it as a lie she used to strengthen her status in the music world.
“It would be good for the Bernstein estate to let her lie about her association with Leonard Bernstein, even if she maybe never even studied with him, because the optics of that association would be very, very good, given that she’s a woman, given how Lenny’s life ended,” Field told The New Yorker last month. “But I don’t think she ever studied with Leonard Bernstein. If you look at the math—Lenny dies in what, 1990? When is she studying with Lenny Bernstein? I don’t think it happened.”
However, Bernstein’s three children have verified that Lydia was in fact a student of the late Bernstein in a follow-up letter to The New Yorker.
The letter, signed by Jamie, Alexander, and Nina Bernstein, reads: “As representatives of Bernstein’s estate, and in the spirit of the ongoing hubbub over the film, we can assure Field that his heroine was a teen-age prodigy whose talents were so formidable that she was granted special permission to be one of Bernstein’s conducting students at Tanglewood in the summer of 1990, during the final year of Bernstein’s life. His impact on her artistry is indelible, down to her churning ‘washing machine’ movements, an intriguing adaptation of Bernstein’s legendary podium style.”
Firstly, believe women, even if they’re fictional. Secondly, this letter (written in jest), further affirms that Lydia Tár is not fictional but a real EGOT-winning conductor who we all just learned about last year.
69 Comments
Mmm-hmmm.
Well, thank goodness we can put that controversy to rest. Now, what about this that I’m hearing she was actually born in Kenya?
I know she conducted the score for ‘Monster Hunter’ in the Phillipines. I wonder if she’d be up to do ‘Katamari Damacy’ as well?
A plus for the Katamari reference. God what an amazing soundtrack!
What in the ever-loving fuck?I should like Todd Field. He was a student of Stanley Kubrick! But this film, cynically made for no one but those who decide get trophies, has forced me to question my admiration of him.
huh?
A fake composer featured in a faux-biopic claimed to train under a real composer in the film. The real composers family decided to roll with it and announce the character really did train under their father as a joke, despite the fact that this entire movie is completely fictional.It took me a second to get it too.
Usually the term “biopic” indicates more of a person’s life is going to be featured, indicating why they became famous in the first place. Are Pablo Larrain’s “Neruda”, “Jackie” or “Spencer” biopics?
I’m not really arguing if this is or isn’t a biopic. That’s how it’s being sold to moviegoers.
“Biopic” has *never* carried that “indication” or connotation.It’s merely an film-trade adaptation of “biography”, as in ‘book’, which includes lifetime-encompassing works as well as topic- and period-focused studies of actual lives. (The answer to your question is “yes”, albeit ones that are unabashedly subjectified and fictionalized.)
Thank you! I was genuinely confused about what was real and what was not.
I think that’s just living in the modern world, actually.
It sure is. Etch that into my tombstone.
When the hell did THAT become the gimmick? I thought the gimmick was the whole cancel culture “Believe women? But what if the woman… IS ALSO A WOMAN?! Chkm8 lbrls!” thing.
Are you okay?
Everything about TAR’s marketing seems designed to be confusing and muddled.It always presents itself like we should already know who this person is, and it took way too long for me to sort out that it was a completely fictional story about a not-real person.Sites like AVClub endlessly went on about how confusing Lightyear was (Is it based on the TOY?! A real guy?! A movie in the Toy Story universe?! What is the deal?) as if it was impossible to figure out the pretty easy-to-understand meta idea of the film.But to me TAR was way more confusing. Every time I came across this movie it would just be like “TAR! Cate Blanchett stars as the controversial composer!” with like all these dramatic images of Blanchett doing an exaggerated composer pose, like it was clear I was meant to already know all about this person.
Lightyear is a movie in the Toy Story Universe. Tar is a fictional film about a composer. What else can I help you with?
If you look at my post you’ll see that I already figured it out, thanks.
The part I don’t like about it is on the one hand, it seems like a fun little stunt. On the other, it feels like it’s trying to amp up the biopic angle to help Blanchett win an Oscar. It’s just…weird.I wonder if anyone could actually quantify if it sold more tickets pretending it was biopic.
I hear she was a producer on Spider Man Turn-Off-The-Dark AND played volleyball at Baruch College.
“Firstly, believe women”People lie ALL the time. My mom was a pathological liar. So was her mom. Guess what type of woman I married?Women ain’t getting a pass from my skepticism.
Well, thank god we have you to save us from the scourge of women oppressing us all with their filthy lies.
I wonder sometimes if there’s just one Extremely Divorced Guy on here with lots of accounts, or if AV Club is just the new hot hangout for bitter divorcees.
While I too get irritated when some toxically divorced guy starts in on his mom and ex-wife, I admit that every time I hear “believe women” I imagine the speaker needing to affirm Marjorie Taylor Green’s bullshit.
I do know that’s not the point or context of the phrase, and as a society I think we need to strive to give women the same credibility we automatically give men (because, you know, we don’t and historically haven’t.) But the image just pops into my head.
My sister is a habitual liar, as is my aunt, and my mother in law was as well. The only male relative I have that lied on their level is my father.Not saying it’s a plague of female liars, but each had some form of abusive trauma in their youth, which I think is more common for women to experience, with altar boys coming in at a close second on the trauma angle. Come to think of it, my father was also an altar boy… 🤔
“Believe women” doesn’t actually mean that a woman can’t be wrong despite what the mediate would like you to think.“Believe women” means if a woman tells you she’s been sexually assaulted or that she’s afraid her husband is going to murder her or that something happened to her, you listen and investigate. You don’t ignore them, gaslight them or tell them they were probably mistaken.
Sure, in the case of life threats or horrible crimes, sure. But anyone tossing in, as a rule: “Firstly, believe [anyone]”….is fooling themselves. If you’re married, odds are that your own spouse lied to you at least 3 times yesterday.
Sure, but since the term is pretty much used in the instance of crimes including domestic abuse, assault, and so forth that’s the appropriate reaction.The issue is people deciding that it means women are incapable of lying or that it applies to dumb nonsense like Tar.
I’d say a major issue is some of the people who champion the idea being very dismissive of people’s concerns even when reality proves that caution can be warranted.
understad nuance. Not everything phrasedneeds to have a complete 5 page dissertation to iron out all the exclusions. It is a well known phrase with a very specific meaning. If you are having issues with it, that is not its problem.
It is a well known phrase with a very specific meaning. If you are having issues with it, that is not its problem. *pockets that for the next bad faith discussion about ‘defund the police’*
it is all so maddening and stupid.
Not wrong. Remember when well-meaning netivists flooded the Internet with black boxes to the point people couldn’t organize jack for like 2 days?
Obviously it’s a good phrase when you say it and then immediately have to explain that, actually, it doesn’t mean that at all, actually. That’s certainly “nuanced” but you could always just start by saying what you mean to say instead of throwing out the cutesy-poo hashtag-smashtag catchphrases first, and it wouldn’t take a 5-pAgE DiSsErTaTiOn either but maybe a few clear and concise sentences. I’d assume you’re trying to have a conversation with someone or a group of people when talking about women and the quality of being believed, correct? Sentences are allowed in those cases.
“If you’re married, odds are that your own spouse lied to you at least 3 times yesterday.”
And because of that, when she tells you she was raped, you’ll be too smart to believe her.
Jesus man. Assuming this isn’t a bit, I’m sorry you were hurt, but projecting it onto half the human race is not going to help you. This is an article about the Bernstein family playing along with an assertion from a fictional character in a movie. You’ve taken a tossed off joke and somehow made it into a vehicle to assert that all women are liars. That’s like if I went to an article about the Lion King and said that lions killed my sister and that furthermore all lions are murderers. (to be clear, lions did not kill my sister)
Good answer
The problem is, what do you after you listen and the evidence leans against her?Do you keep believing? Do you tell her she’s mistaken? Do you specifically call out her lie?Personally, the voice in the back of my head that makes me suspicious of automatic requirement to “believe women” is Emmitt Till.
“Guess what type of woman I married?”
One that you made deeply unhappy?
Bill Burr: “How about we believe 87% of women? That seems like a reasonable amount.”
This is some Blair Witch Project style multi-platform marketing, and I for one, really appreciate it.
except their kind of marketing sold tons of tickets and videos
Most of her EGOT awards came from her original score to The Berenstein Bears Movie
I’m just waiting for the inevitable Ava-Tár crossover.
pretending Lydia Tar is a real person is still funny to me
I really appreciate the Bernstein family having a sense of humor about it and playing along.
My favorite part is the people playing as the crazy fans who insist she never did anything wrong and the movie is slandering her.
My favorite part is when she played a genie in beloved 90s movie Tazaam.
I do adore the liminal-ness of this identity
First of all, this has been my handle for YEARS on here. Second, I had no idea this was a thing?? The article was so confusing at first because I didn’t know this was a thing.
Was anybody else very underwhelmed by this movie? Like it was technically very accomplished and Cate Blanchett was great but the story just went nowhere and I had no strong feeling about it one way or the other when it was over.
It’s hilariously how out of touch and pretentious for a movie about an out of touch and pretentious character
the story just went nowhere and I had no strong feeling about it one way or the other when it was over The A.V. Club
I think a lot of people feel that way. It’s why accolades have mostly been for Blanchett.
I hate everything about this PR tactic. My mind also immediately went here:
have a handful of amphetamines and wash ‘em down with scotch
Jokes that hinge on repeating homophobia sure do hold up great coming from a guy who’s now notorious for surprise platforming an outspoken transphobe and homophobe, who used that platform to spew more transphobia and homophobia.
I mean he pretty much was suggesting his father *was* homophobic with the joke, but okay.
I think you need to read my comment again. The “joke” was repeating his father’s homophobia. That’s it. It’s “funny” because he’s saying a homophobic thing but attributing it to someone else.There are contexts where something like that can be funny (particularly coming from actually queer comics). From a guy who’s already proven he is homophobic and transphobic? It’s just more homophobia, in a disguise that allows people an excuse to laugh at it.
this is cute. Also, when you have really studied with someone, even if you are smarmily dropping their name, if they’re a big famous person then there would be people around to call bullshit. You can’t be like “I was Prince’s secret protege!” The question in Tar is not whether Tar is talented and accomplished, I never questioned that she studied under Bernstein. Whether she was under any kind of special tutelage is more what would be exaggerated. “Lenny always used to say…” to his whole class of students, not just to you in confidence maybe.
… few have engaged with one of the more mind-boggling
moments of Field’s film, in which Lydia Tár returns to her threadbare
birth home, tearfully watches a VHS tape of her alleged mentor Leonard
Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts in her childhood bedroom, and is
revealed by her estranged, working-class-coded brother Tony to be… Linda
Tarr of Staten Island. This revelation, to my mind, is Tár at
its most outlandish and incoherent, the snapping of the illusion that
Field effectively casts across the preceding two-plus hours. It should
be a doozy of a reveal, but it falls flat precisely because of the
actress who is its raison d’être.
Even an actor as versatile and chameleonic as Blanchett, for whom the
script was expressly written and whose singular persona makes her as
much an author of Tár as Field, is ultimately incapable of
believably being from Staten Island. In this scene, I only see a star
nailing the self-pitying emotions of a moment but struggling to conform
to a character as-written—after years of never quite reading as American
even in some of her greatest performances. The moment thus becomes not
about how far Lydia/Linda has run from her roots but about the novelty
of a globally prominent Armani Beauty Ambassador roaming around
someone’s Staten Island two-story for a day’s work.
– Matthew Eng
I mean, subjectivity, but this strikes me as a dumb criticism. It MIGHT have been interesting if she was simply from some upper-class family to sail onward from that. But, it wasn’t. That wasn’t the story. And to whine about it with this level of intensity is sort of weak, IMO.
I haven’t seen the movie yet and of course thought “wait, this is a non-fiction biopic?”, and a search brought me to her website. My next though was “wow, did they nail the casting ‘cause Kate Blanchett looks exactly like… wait a gosh-darn minute now!”
Hopefully, decades from now our progeny will be confused and reddit will be filled with “I was this many years old when I found out the subject of the vintage film “Tar” was not a real person.”
This is neat. Anyone who has a problem with it is anti-neat, anti-fun, and sucks.
Does the typo in the title factor into all of this, too?
What a pile of bullshit.
Hello, Mr. Bernstein? Lenny? How you doin’? My name is Sam Byck. We’ve never met. You’re a world-renowned composer and conductor who travels the world over enjoying one success after another and I’m an out-of-work tire salesman, so I guess thats not surprising….I’m outta here! I’m history Lenny! Understand?! I’m history! I like to be in America! O.K. by me in America! Knobs on the doors in America! Wall-to-wall floors in America!
“It would be good for the Bernstein estate to let her lie about her association with Leonard Bernstein, even if she maybe never even studied with him, because the optics of that association would be very, very good, given that she’s a woman, given how Lenny’s life ended”, Field told The New Yorker last month.
I’m trying to figure this out. Bernstein died of mesothelioma (the cancer associated with asbestos exposure). What does that have to do with positive optics of mentoring women? Or was it that Bernstein was bisexual and mostly had relationships with men after his wife died? Do bisexual men rarely mentor women?