Riveting: Tár reviewed

Todd Field’s Tár stars an insanely glorious Cate Blanchett – if she doesn’t win an Oscar I’ll eat my hat – as a world-famous orchestral conductor about to record Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. There is also Elgar’s Cello Concerto in this film, and a bit of Bach, but it’s not about music. To say it’s about music would be like saying Citizen Kane is about tobogganing. It’s about power: how you attain it, what you do with it. We enter the world of cancel culture and identity politics and address that old chestnut: can you separate art and artist? It’s basically everything you are certain will bore you to death, but it doesn’t here. It’s riveting. The film is 157 minutes long and doesn’t drag for a single second.

Field wrote this for Blanchett, who commands every frame, as befits a character fully in command of her life, at least at the outset. She is Lydia Tár, chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, philanthropist, teacher, composer, winner of multiple awards, writer of a forthcoming coffee-table book, Tár on Tár.

The film opens with her being interviewed on stage by Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker (played by Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker). She has firm views about gender bias, telling him she has no wish to be called ‘maestra’ instead of ‘maestro’ because ‘we don’t call astronauts astronettes’ and as a woman in this industry ‘I have no complaints.’

Her wardrobe is exquisite: bespoke suits and expensive linen or cashmere in tasteful neutral colours. She has a wife, Sharon (the masterful Nina Hoss, unless that should be mistressful?). Sharon is the orchestra’s concertmaster and the apartment they share with their young daughter in Berlin could be an art gallery.