From the opening credits — moved to the start of the film, and played in reverse with Field’s name appearing last — the writer-director establishes this movie as one of power structures and their dismantling. For a large part of the film, Tár is placed in positions of power, whether in front of an adoring audience, a giddy fan, her assistant, her students, or her wife Sharon (Nina Hoss), who’s the first violinist in her orchestra. Her German isn’t subtitled, deliberately throwing the audience for a loop, an effect compounded by her imposing presence. Blanchett is superb, an artist in full control of her craft even as her character begins to grasp wildly at the receding notes of hers. Her intonations make rehearsed statements sound spontaneous as she navigates playing a woman whose exactingly precise line of work is offset by the gross miscalculations she makes in her personal relationships. As the camera moves through the hallowed halls she inhabits — large, white, sparse — she’s the vortex into which we’re drawn. Despite her public-facing profession, and the ease at which she commands the stage, Tár’s death grip of control is so absolute, she’s the only person she can trust to author the book about her life. Tár on Tár, it’s called. That’s the thing about people this meticulously put together though — it only takes a little manoeuvring to make them fall apart.
Tár might she’s embraced the ghosts of the past, dining at the same places composers like Beethoven did and celebrating their work, but what she doesn’t realise is that her actions have put her in the position to be uniquely haunted in the present moment, defined by social media and the #MeToo movement. If every relationship in Tár’s life has been transactional, the film is a fascinating account of how the bill has now come due. Ghostly figures appear in the corners of her apartment. When a doctor diagnoses Tár with notalgia paresthetica, she mishears it as “nostalgia”, a perverse joke to a woman who has none for the past she’s been trying desperately to outrun.
