<em>Tár</em> Takes on the Devastating Spectacle of ‘Cancellation’
In Cate Blanchett’s career-best performance, an icon’s fall from grace breaks down to its most elemental form.
Todd Field’s new film, , opens with a scene that should feel inherently uncinematic: an onstage Q&A. The conversation, between Lydia Tár (played by Cate Blanchett) and Adam Gopnik (gamely playing himself), is the kind of hoity-toity event that’d be a coveted ticket for a certain highbrow milieu. Tár is the preeminent conductor of her generation. She leads the Berlin Philharmonic and has a list of accomplishments that Gopnik could rattle off for at least an hour. (Among other things, she!) But why start her story in staid territory, via a back-and-forth on classical music that mostly feels like a big pat on the back for a fictional character the viewer has just met?
