Lydia Tár is real to me
Oscar nominee Cate Blanchett taps into something genuine in Todd Field's Tár, creating a character more vibrant and alive than most actual people
Film Features Lydia
With her performance as Lydia Tár, Cate Blanchett has not just earned another Academy Award nomination; she’s created a new person entirely. From the pages of Todd Field’s script, Lydia transforms from a figment of the imagination to a tangible, towering artistic figure. When evaluating Tár ahead of the Oscars, I found it impossible to ignore the realness of Lydia and her lingering effect long after the final scene.
After viewing Field’s masterpiece, many viewers looked to learn more about its intriguing subject only to discover that she’s entirely fictional—a hyperrealist creation of Field’s own making. When writing about the film’s trailer last year, I went down a Google rabbit hole trying to conjure details about Lydia Tár, coming up empty. The film spurred a litany of explainer pieces delivering the news that she’s not real (in the strictest sense). The first search result that pops up when typing Lydia Tár into Google is “Lydia Tár real,” to which the big, bolded answer is no.
This hasn’t stopped Lydia from taking on a life of her own, nor has it stopped me from writing that she’s very much real. Upon its release, Tár spurred the creation of Lydia Tár twitter accounts, with fans of the film attesting to her existence in the real world. Even the estate of Leonard Bernstein—Lydia’s oft-mentioned mentor—recently confirmed that she studied under the tutelage of the legendary American composer prior to his death in 1990.
Months after the release of Tár, its eponymous figure remains a standout this awards season, guided by Blanchett’s commanding performance as the enigmatic yet problematic composer. As the film blurs the line between what’s real and what’s imaginary, Lydia herself blurs the same line between the world created by Field and our own. The result is an embattled conductor who feels astonishingly genuine, offering a captivating study on abuse of power pulled from our own society.
Can a fictional character win an actual EGOT?
The trailer for Tár charts a familiar biopic story: A rise through the professional ranks leads to a triumphant career, followed by the inevitable fall from grace. Touting very real achievements throughout, such as earning an EGOT and becoming the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the trailer had me wondering, “Why am I just now hearing of Lydia Tár?” only to subsequently learn that it’s because she technically exists solely within the realm of the movie. Technically.
This sense of realism also permeates the film itself. With Tár, Field and Blanchett not only made a spellbinding film worthy of award season accolades, but they created an intricate person capable of leading a life of her own, with her own history and up-in-the-air future. With her performance, Blanchett becomes synonymous with Lydia—inevitably tying herself to the character for the rest of her career. In 2015, Blanchett gave us Carol, and now she’s handed us Lydia Tár.
Lydia feels as real as she is flawed. Like any of us, she exists within the gray, making her downfall less easy to accept than those of stereotypical villains—ones so reprehensible and devoid of humanity that no deeper analysis is required. This is not to say Lydia’s a saint, and her actions are not without their own grim, life-altering consequences. But it’s Lydia’s moral murkiness that ultimately makes her most interesting, and more reflective of the human condition. Also, like any real human being, she’s an endless well of contradictions.
Lydia’s issues make her real
Although the story takes place in the high art realm of orchestra conducting, the issues at hand—aspiration, ego, power, control—feel close to any of us. So, while the inner mechanisms of composition and and conducting may be lost on many, watching Lydia fall apart in the overwhelming pursuit of achievement still strikes a chord. When it comes to the realness of Lydia, Field himself tells The A.V. Club, “She’s been very real to me for 10 years. There’s a big difference between, as the author of this material, her being real to me and her being real to others. Her being real to others is really a testament to … the art of Cate Blanchett.”
She’ll be real to me for the next 10 years, too, Todd. While the proclamation of Lydia Tár’s realness is ultimately done in jest, as Field says, Lydia’s lifelikeness is a testament to the acting power of Blanchett. While realism is not the chief goal of Tár—with its haunting ghost story elements and alleged third act “dream” sequence—the character at the center of the story feels as nuanced as anyone walking the planet. The result is a work that can be read in a myriad ways about a person who can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, including yours truly.
30 Comments
For a film about a supercilious orchestra conductor abusing their power, I’ll take Preston Sturges’s Unfaithfully Yours any day over Field’s bloated, vacuous movie.
God, Unfaithfully Yours is great isn’t it? Time for a rewatch.
Maybe I’m a snob or a fuddy duddy spoilsport, but I just don’t get it. Though to be fair, I spent the whole first part of my life in that “high art realm,” and while it’s very realistic for a movie, it just seems a little silly to me. Like, 15 year olds at Juilliard Prep or NEC Prep often take classical music really seriously, and they often take themselves really seriously, and they sort of know what they’re talking about, but it’s shallow, and it all sounded a lot more like a pretentious 15 year old than a legend to me.
A film about pretentious unbearable art circles ended up being pretentious and unbearable
Blanchett is one of those rare actors who might not have a bad performance in her entire resume. Might be incapable of *giving* a bad performance. But let’s not get carried away with awful characters and their awful behaviors. I love THERE WILL BE BLOOD and I think Day-Lewis is (as usual) quite masterful in it. I don’t find it impossible to “ignore the realness” of Daniel Plainview.
You could argue that she’s not really “trying” and just having fun with goofy material, but I think she’s usually varying degrees of terrible when she does genre stuff. Thor, Crystal Skull, LotR…
“creating a character more vibrant and alive than most actual people”Get a grip.
You know what, people are giving this a hard time, and can’t understand the power of cinema, but I get it. I do. I remember the first time a film touched me so deeply, in such a bare part of my soul, that I was moved to the point of knowing, at the core of my being, that this was no mere fictional creation; this was a real, living breathing person brought forth through the power of an actor at the height of their powers. And still, to this day, a part of me believes that I’ll turn the corner, and there, standing in the flesh, will actually be, made manifest, the real (and you can’t convince me he’s not real) Judge Doom.
This has a lot to do with the 2010’s -2020’s tendency of reviewers flattening complex characters with reductive analysis such as “another 40 something white guy”, etc. It sort of opened up a pandora’s box of, “well if this qualifies as actual criticism, here you go.”Truthfully, I think Tar probably does work very well for some people who identify with the character and so it probably belongs in the conversation with other character pieces. But like other character pieces, individuals probably just have vastly different takeaways.I remember (it was either this blog or something else) going after the characters in Whiplash. While exaggerated (hyper-real if you like), the core of that movies antagonist was exceedingly close to musicians I’ve witnessed while playing. But my reaction was probably more from the gut than most people who watched that film.
Belief is always stronger than reality.
And yethttps://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/1/9/23547699/marin-alsop-tar-cate-blanchett-offend-criticize-ravinia-conductor
Some folx just can’t handle equality. Even if it’s fictional.
Oh, yeah! I was looking Bernstein else up and came across Marin Alsop—a female Bernstein protégé who, like Lydia Tár, is a lesbian composer and conductor.I can completely understand where Alsop might not appreciate Todd Field, whether through accident or design, apparently lifting aspects of her own life and personality in the creation of Lydia Tár.
With the greatest of respect to Ms Alsop, I think she misses the point of the film. It’s about power, and narcissism, and celebrity, and how all of those things can corrupt, or, at least, excuse behavior, regardless of gender or orientation.
problematic? Grey? Murky?No. She is a predator. Not an “anti-hero,” but an evil, damaging, murderous woman. That we watch this evil for “entertainment,” is the horror of Todd Field’s film. It should be excoriated, yet the ‘acting performance’ and ‘stunning realism’ puts blinders on everyone. This is the secret trick of Modernism — mask a despicable subject-matter and protagonist behind tricks and see how many people you can fool into lauding the work of art. Kubrick would be proud.
I was really taken with this film. They got so many nuances of the orchestral world right. Except her concertmaster wife not really playing violin, and that Masterclass was nothing to get upset over, I’ve seen and experienced much worse. But I really was struck by how many aspects they nailed.
I was shocked that they referenced Gilbert Kaplan! Field apparently had very little classical music knowledge, but did a crash course with John Mauceri while writing the movie. Still, Kaplan is so relatively obscure, except among Mahler fans or serious classical music fans that I’m amazed that he came up as a direct inspiration for a character.I’m sure there were some references that impressed people in the orchestra world. I definitely may have missed some. For me, I wasn’t terribly impressed with some of the other depictions, which seemed on a similar level as the problems I had with Mozart in the Jungle. For example, there’s no way the Berlin Phil rehearses Mahler 5 for more than a few days, at most. In the movie, they are rehearsing for weeks if not months.Also, do any famous conductors really criticize their colleagues while listening to a recording of theirs being played on classical radio?
This article definitely sounds like one of the obsessive characters in the movie. Just don’t do anything drastic when Lydia doesn’t return your calls.
I think I’ve maybe never seen such a clear-cut example of the internet’s desire to swing contrarian than when EEAAO pulled ahead as the clear Oscar favorite. Years ago, a movie like Tar would fuckin’ sweep and it would be called “Boring” so many millions of times that the collected tweets could overflow Madison Square Garden. But now the kung-fu buttplug hot dog movie is gonna win, so Tar is some kind of (checks notes) riotous dark comedy. Incredible work.Full disclosure, in case it wasn’t exceedingly obvious, I didn’t really like Tar.
Remember that part in Iron Man when they are doing a big award presentations and talking about all of Tony Starla achievements? Did people think Tony Stark is real because someone said he graduated from MIT at 15 or some shit?
I’m enjoying the idea of Tony Starla being Tony’s drag name because he’s too vain to hide his identity even then.
Lol. That is a weird autocorrect
why can’t people be fans of this movie without being fucking dweebs about it? this is like those tumblr people who invented a movie. it was funny at first, and then it was sad
On paper, Tar is Oscar baity — from the cast to the subject matter. But in execution it’s so idiosyncratic, so loose (but clearly written within an inch of its life) and vibrant. The run time didn’t even register with me. Blanchett created one of the great anti heroes of recent years. A monster who you can’t quite look away from. It’s hard to find new ways to talk about subjects like me too without falling into tropes or getting preachy and made the most of its magical realist bits and ambiguous elements.