Tár - this again?

Okay, so firstly, this is a much more palatable take on “suffering for art”, “art vs. artist”, “power and identity”, etc. than Whiplash for me. I’m not gonna summarize or analyze the movie - it’s been done and better than I could. I liked this review and this one in particular (I only watched 5 or 6, the others were either light or more interested in hotter takes that have been done to death). I do want to try to articulate a thought I’ve had before with content that tackles these themes.

Can we please get some other voices? I’m tired of all sides of the questions of this movie only using the most egregious, far-out edge cases to take them on.

Fine, the extremes are more interesting - no one wants to watch “well-adjusted, therapy-going individual carefully overcomes their biases and shortcomings through meditation and a diverse, actively-curated community of friends, family, and coworkers”. I get that. But we should want to watch it. There can be great complexity and profundity even under such moderate conditions.

Lydia Tár is the only voice we get in this movie. Sure, we get some other bits that filter in, and you can make an argument that the movie fixates on her intentionally - in fact, it likely does. But that intentional decision is the one I find tired.

Give me more voices! What do other conductors think of Lydia Tár? Show us the scene of other conductors rolling their eyes when she goes on her masturbatory, narcissistic diatribes about art and sublimation. Bring up modern examples of conductors or composers living extremely normal, even boring lives, and reaching similar heights. Martha Argerich doesn’t groom people, Olivier Messiaen was so routine it was almost boring, hell, most of the composers named in this very movie seem pretty well-adjusted (Wolfe, Higdon, Shaw, Thorvaldsdottír).

By highlighting more voices, we can wash out the overwhelming gravity of the edge case. Show that they are indeed just one byproduct of the world that raised them, and many many more are possible, indeed probably more likely.

By choosing to showcase the extreme that is Tár, I think we’re keeping the conversation exactly in the wrong place. There will always be individuals we can cherry-pick to prove whatever point we like. The more interesting questions are around environments, trends, contexts - does the world we live in produce people that find doing the right thing to be easy?

But instead of tackling that, no, we get yet another nuanced, careful, well-done take on a damn edge case.

p.s. if your representations of queerness, youth, and alternative artistic worldviews are being used by the alt-right and anti-woke social media forces as examples of “cancel culture getting destroyed”, you might need to hire new script consultants and check in with yourself.