Tár is a waste of time

A long time ago, I tried to watch the 2022 movie Tár starring Cate Blanchett. The digital copy that the theater had wasn’t working and so I didn’t see it. I meant to see it on several other occasions but didn’t get around to it until this week. I had a sneaky suspicion that I wasn’t missing much based on some limited conversations. After spending two hours and 38 minutes watching the film, my suspicion was confirmed.

Lydia Tár is a fictitious all-powerful conductor who miraculously headed The Cleveland Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Boston Symphony Orchestra, The New York Philharmonic, and The Berlin Philharmonic. We were told about these achievements. The only orchestra we saw the character interact with was Berlin. She also teaches at Julliard. We get to see her interact with her Julliard students in the best scene in the movie.

While with The New York Philharmonic she founded a conductor program for women entitled Accordion. We don’t see Tár interact with the program students. We are told about it in conversations she has with her assistant who was a former student.

In fact we don’t see much of anything in this movie. What we see are characters talking about incidents that we should be seeing. Tár commits the sin of telling instead of showing. Why should I watch characters talk about events that I should be seeing? The pivotal event of the movie is a former student from Accordion committing suicide. That character commits suicide based on her relationship with Tár but, you guessed it, we never see that relationship. We hear about that relationship.

I was bored out of my mind by this movie that sought to teach me something by having characters talk about themes that should have been incorporated into something I like to call a story. All the movie gives is a series of important themes that the characters talk about.

The music in the movie was good but extremely limited. I think there were more scenes of Tár running than there were of her conducting. However, Blancett’s conducting was pretty good. It was much better than Tom Hulce’s efforts in Amadeus. It was also better than all the conducting in the charming Mozart in the Jungle but it was still far from an accurate portrayal of a legitimate conductor. However, the character did tell us what a conductor does.

Tár is yet another movie that tries to catch the essence of classical music without focusing on the music. The only great classical music movie is Amadeus because the leading character of the film, the star of the show, is Mozart’s music.

If you’re considering spending the time on Tár don’t. Spend it on something useful, such as doing the laundry.