The race for Todd Field’s TAR started in Venice and passed through the Golden Globes, which at the Oscars on 12 March will be one of the leading films given the six nominations obtained including best film, best director, best leading actress Cate Blanchett who at the Mostra won the Coppa Volpi for best actress and then best actress at the Golden Awards. Now the film hits theaters on February 9th.
At the center is the story of Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett), a great homosexual conductor from Berlin who at one point finds herself in the crosshairs of a #MeToo scandal. “I have never considered the LGBT aspect of the film, of course my Lydia likes women – said Blanchett – but I firmly believe that gender homogeneity in the art world is not important, in fact I believe it is the death of it. What people do after their work isn’t important. I mean, I never thought about gender, about Lydia’s sexuality. This film is a very human portrait of a person with all their weaknesses.”
In the film, the conductor, now close to 50, has her first violin as a companion, with whom she lives together with an adopted daughter. In the process of conducting the Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler (the whole thing was filmed during two performances by the Dresden Philharmonic in September 2021 at the Kuturpalast), Lydia is accused of having favored the entry of a cellist into the orchestra: an element to which a series of compromising videos are added put online by a boy and, finally, a shower of complaints of other alleged harassment.
“Lydia, the protagonist, seems to be asking all the big questions that divide public opinion today. For example, the dilemma of the passage of time. She is about to turn fifty – the actress underlined again -, a truly delicate moment because you know everything you’ve already done and you wonder how much time you still have ahead of you and what use to make of it. You are, in short, at the peak of your life, of your career and now you can only get off the mountain. The climb to achieve success is definitely easier than the descent, the failure. The film also deals with this topic”. Todd Field, back behind the camera after fifteen years, pointed out: “There are almost horror moments in this story, but it must be said that every time I see it I find different things in it. It was a very long journey in a period short three weeks. In all this time Lydia was busy with a book presentation and with her orchestra, then something happens and her life inevitably changes”. In the cast, in addition to Cate Blanchett, there are Noemie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner and Mark Strong. Tar has music by Hildur Gudnadóttir, the Icelandic composer whose 2020 original score for JOKER won an Oscar
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