At least one film where the critics get to view it super early in a like-minded environment and subsequently praise the ever living hell out of said movie.
That praise gets me hyped for a hopeful Oscar contender that I can get behind and enjoy just as much as any blockbuster or more mainstream drama.
My excitement is slowly dismantled throughout my viewing as I realize that it's not much more than pretentious art-film nonsense and I have to stray from critic praise to call it how I see it.
After all, that is why I started this whole site in the first place. To provide my opinion...my take/score/thoughts on each film.
And for Tár I'm definitely differing from the critic crowd.
It's a shame too because I really wanted to like this one. It felt like it had the opportunity to be a character study of the conductor from Whiplash (in a sense), has a ridiculously-praised Cate Blanchett performance, and deals with orchestral music. Not an interesting scene for many, but for me, who played trumpet all throughout high school (including in Carnegie Hall and at the Vienna New Year's Day parade), I'm always missing that part of my youth, so I love the "conducting" environment. It's probably a huge reason I take original scores in movies so seriously.
Some of the things I mentioned there are definitely not disappointing for Tár. Cate Blanchett definitely gives a powerhouse performance that is one of the best of the year. I'm not sure it's at the levels of There Will Be Blood or "best performance ever" that I've heard snippets of, but that shouldn't take away from it just because others speak in hyperbole.
Similarly, the musical segments are fantastic and captivating. Both because these are the moments where Blanchett's performance feels the most studied and nuanced, but also because the music is captured incredibly well by the sound team. It soars in a large theater and explores various layers of volume, dimensions, speaker location, etcetera. Unfortunately, the musical segments in a film about a conductor prepping for the biggest live recording of her life are few and far between.
Tár instead chooses to focus on being nearly as ambiguous as possible as our central character, Lydia Tár preps for this recording. There's perhaps a compelling story here - and certainly an interesting character study - but it's drawn out ad nauseum over the course of its 2 hour and 38 minute runtime. It annoyed me with its approach and I lost interest quickly. By the time we reached the 90 minute mark, I was actively only looking forward to the next place where the film would be invested in the music and was even rolling my eyes in a few clearly unnecessary scenes. Not helping matters at all is the pretentiousness within. Tár is a character that's pretentious just by the profession she holds. It's part of what makes her unlikeable, but it's strangely something I'm not sure the film recognized about itself either. The thesaurus-laden script becomes obnoxious...like that kid you remember from college that was taking gender studies or literature and would speak "above" everyone else (or rather "down" to them). Tár is a film about a character that's supposed to be unlikeable - which it somewhat achieves - but by emulating it's core character, it's also an unlikeable film...and also a boring one.
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| Best parts of the film by a mile are when it lets Blanchett do this! |
This is all a massive shame because A) I feel like I truly missed something...the praise for this has been near-stratospheric and B) IMO there's a really good version of this film out there that's less aggressively ambiguous, an hour shorter, and features more music "action". Frustratingly, I feel like I can see this movie in my mind, but the current nearly 3 hour long, pretentious, bore that is Tár is far from what I think this could and should have been. I'll chalk that up to me being in the critic minority on this one...like I said, there's always one.
CONS
- Overly ambiguous for seemingly no reason. I struggle to not spoil elements, but multiple specific examples come to mind
- This also creates a lot of unnecessary time. I believe it could have been an entire hour shorter
- Uninteresting story overall. Largely due to some of the other CON bullets, but by the time we arrived at the ending I didn't really care what happened to her
- Pretentious script that felt like it was beefed up with a thesaurus (not a compliment)
- Performances across the board are great with Blanchett's being award worthy. IMO people need to calm down about "best ever" status, but it's damn good
- Anytime the film is focused on Tár being a conductor and she's in her element, it's soaring
- Fantastic sound design, specifically during orchestral elements
- Technically strong film. Editing, cinematography, etc. are all top notch
- Great music when it's there!
Rath's Review Score | 5/10
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