Tár (Todd Field, 2022)

[furbicide]

I was at this screening too and it was a really great moderation job by Anderson. I mean she spoke a lot, but she did a really good job of incorporating everyone and articulating her own thoughts in a way that allowed Field et al. to run with them in their answers. I mean I was almost more excited to see Laurie than the the rest, so I didn't even mind her loquaciousness.

Me neither - I actually skipped the NYFF screening because Anderson was at this one! It was nice to know Blanchett was a fan of Anderson's work and vice versa - Anderson mentioned a visual art piece featuring Blanchett, and they discussed it a bit as well - I wasn't aware of this work having never seen it, but maybe someone else is?

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing this is a reference to Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto, where Blanchett embodies various guises while reading out historical manifestos – it was shown as a gallery installation at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image back in 2015 and later as a feature film at Sundance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXHJs8DypZ4

[domino harvey]

We have a thread for it here as well

[DarkImbecile]

Richard Brody on TÁR

In my opinion, a wild misreading of the film's intentions and substance, almost willfully obtuse about fairly unambiguous plot and character elements. I've read dismissals of the film that I disagreed with but at least respected the thought and critical effort; this is not one of those, and frankly will make me look askance at Brody's criticism going forward

Really? Richard's review was as straight ahead and specifically pointed as it gets. In fact, one of his many problems with the film was its bad attempt at obtuseness which he, rightfully, skewered. No idea what you read.

TWBB addressed a lot of this already, but for me the fundamental flaw in his reading is his transposing of the protagonist's point of view with that of the filmmakers': he seems to be claiming with his "regressive aesthetics" argument that because the film is presented from Lydia's perspective that it must therefore also be Field's perspective on the events being depicted, which seems like an absurd way to interpret narrative art.

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To take just one example, he argues that because the film only indirectly alludes to the specifics of Lydia's role in Krista's exploitation, blackballing, and eventual suicide while treating us to multiple scenes of Lydia discussing her success and brilliance as a composer, Field must be arguing that the former is insignificant compared to the latter. In addition to completely overlooking the way Field foregrounds Tár's ongoing unethical, cruel, and selfish behavior towards those with whom she enjoys unbalanced power dynamics, this complaint also seems to demand a kind of handholding and explicit finger-wagging Brody himself has complained about in other films. Pretending like the film isn't clear enough about what Tár did to Krista and others because it doesn't feature flashbacks or a sobbing confession or something falls into the "willfully obtuse" category for me.

Amusing sidenote: after I made my original post criticizing Brody's review above, a writer for the zombified version of Gawker wrote a silly, seemingly tongue-in-cheek criticism of Brody that prompted a wave of angry denunciations from fellow critics and cinephiles and a vehement championing of Brody's esteemed place in the field... basically, treating the young writer of the piece with same disdain and reflexive defensiveness Brody accused TÁR of directing at youth-driven criticisms of its protagonist!

[Jack Phillips]

The obvious film to compare this with is Citizen Kane, not only because both take their titles from the names of their lead characters, not only because both films are character studies, and not only because the characters studied in both are scoundrels, or worse, but because the revelations regarding their concupiscence occur only gradually, as the two films unspool. In fact, both films begin, before the investigations into their subjects' private lives, with overviews of their public personas. In Kane the newsreel footage serves this purpose; in TAR, it is the New Yorker-style interview conducted by Adam Gopnik with its prefatory bio.

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The difference, though, is that Charles Foster Kane, a great man in public who was actually a nullity in private life, was always a philistine. He never knew why he was collecting all that art he couldn't appreciate. Lydia Tar, on the other hand, is a highly cultured woman, standing at the very pinnacle of Western achievement in art, a representative of that tradition. But she is also a sexual predator, who, when exposed, has all of her positives cancelled. Much of the film occurs (unlike Kane) from the protagonist's point of view, indicating that she is self-deceived about who she really is. Her understanding of the music she conducts may be deficient also.

Field seems to be saying Western art isn't all that, anyway. The final sequence in Thailand demonstrates that today the West's most important cultural export is neither Bach nor Beethoven, but Monster Hunter. Kane was about a man with a hole in his soul; TAR posits an entire culture with an empty center.

[soundchaser]

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to encapsulate my feelings on this film — in a very Bersteinian sense, it made me have emotions too deep to really be expressed. It’s one of the best films I’ve seen in years. To say I was slack-jawed at Blanchett’s performance may be a cliché, but it’s also true: I sat through much of the first act mouth agape at what I was seeing. She deserves every plaudit available. If she doesn’t win the Oscar, I’ll going to put a group together like those students at her book launch.

I understand why some would criticize the last act, but the tonal magic trick it pulls off it just astonishing. I cried; I grinned like a madman. Just stunning,

[Persona]

Wow, Amy Taubin really hated this.

[Big Ben]

Wow, Amy Taubin really hated this.

Hated appears to be an understatement.

It's a dreadful movie, it has to be one of the stupidest movies I have seen in long time. It's absolutely a one note movie … it's turns into one of the most racist shit I have ever seen in a serious movie. I loathed this movie and I think her performance is terrible.

[soundchaser]

"One note" is the last descriptor I think could apply to this film. If anything, it's a little too emotionally complicated to be grasped -- which can be either frustrating or invigorating, depending on who you are.

[Persona]

I think in full context if you listen to Last Thing I Saw podcast maybe the "one note" comment makes a little more sense.

However, I also think if you listen to the whole thing or read her piece on Artforum it's clear that she had a really hard time getting on the film's wavelength, feeling its tone, seeing the intent. Her comments across a bit like she knows what the film is doing but simply doesn't accept its approach, whatsoever.

[therewillbeblus]

I think sometimes in an effort to remain aloof, "emotionally complicated" can fold in on itself and translate as "one note." Whether that's out of respect to complex human experience/our restricted vantage point outside the character's psyche, or due to risk-aversion, or bewilderment as to how to approach the subject, etc. is up for debate. I believe it's a mix of the first and the third here, and fails in part because it does come across as sustaining a single key while clearly posturing at the existence of others. I don't think Taubin's emotionally reactive blurb is fair, but my biggest gripe with the film is related to the "one note" accusation. It's hard to watch scenes like Blanchett emotionally abusing a little girl on the schoolyard, played for laughs with a dash of horror at her power-imbalanced egoism on display, or the repercussions of thieving her partner's meds immediately repressed and not revisited, and have that weave into a path of validating our protagonist's 'complex' humanity. We're meant to view her as complicated and weigh humanistic blanket-dignity with condemnation for behavior, but clear markers are bypassed without explorations that are necessary to sell the empathy for her subjectivity, particularly the obfuscated intentionality of actions even to herself, which has to vie with the objective outcomes of harm. I think spelling it all out would be less charitable, so it's hard to give direct 'notes' to Field on what he could've done differently, but either finding a way to make this obfuscation self-reflexive with the film grammar in blending our pov with her subjectivity or lending space to some of these isolated interactions would be a start; not to fully flesh out but maybe detail beyond a drive-by punchline. It's a frustrating film because Field and Blanchett want to pitch Lydia Tar as inherently unapproachable with respectful detachment, but also approach her with depth when they feel like it, including implementing physical manifestations of her psychology(!) randomly spliced into a design of austere neutrality. I realize my hopes were impossibly-high for this one, in part because a nuanced look at a target of cancel culture seemed tailor-made for me, but the more I think about it, I kinda hate this movie. Oh well, I'll see you at the 2023 oscars with pistols at dawn when the best actress category gets called up

[soundchaser]

I think that's fair, in the sense that Lydia is clearly not a "good" person at all times. But I would argue that there are counter-balance moments to the ones you mentioned here: and that, importantly, some of the choices you cite are built out of love for her daughter. I don't know that it's humanist, per se, but the film does a good job of making it explorable.

The ending of the movie has been running through my head every day since I saw it -- the bizarre combination of triumph and debasement, the comments Jack Phillips makes above about its cultural connotations...it's brought out more emotions in me than a film has in ages.

[therewillbeblus]

I think that's fair, in the sense that Lydia is clearly not a "good" person at all times. But I would argue that there are counter-balance moments to the ones you mentioned here: and that, importantly, some of the choices you cite are built out of love for her daughter. I don't know that it's humanist, per se, but the film does a good job of making it explorable.

Well I don't believe in "good" v "bad" people so I agree that the counter-balance moments are necessary to stomach this at all and contribute to its ethos, which as I stressed isn't uniformly humanist, but more interesting and fair: pitching humanism vs some outcomes-based philosophy of behavior like utilitarianism, with the humility not to pretend like there's a reductionist solution to arrive at a faux-summation of a human being's identity, worth, or soul. That's all great! The problem is that I agree with you- the film does a good job of indicating that this is explorable material- but.. I don't think it explores what it sets up at all. That feels like a cop-out, and the cinematic equivalent of an incontestable argument of devils advocacy via phantom commitments; where if challenged on its lack of commitment to its emotional undercurrent of subjectivity, the answer is that it's too complex to be spoonfed to us and that we can't really 'know' her at all, but if challenged on its lack of commitment to its objective detachment, the answer is that she's obviously vulnerable and loves her daughter etc. That may all be true, but I think the film is trying to have its cake and eat it too without making choices (actually, now that I write that, I think Grady's ethos regarding a writer's primary responsibility to "make choices" from Wonder Boys is an appropriate launching pad for criticism here).

To use the most interesting aspect of the movie we both singled out (and its heart, though I'm not convinced the film knows it, and is a failure for obfuscating this significant point because it itself neglects the neglected character in favor of the one doing the neglecting without modeling itself on her psyche as a form of critique or critiquing her in this specific area from an objective position- either would do just fine): Yes, Lydia may love her daughter- but the idea that the film convinces itself the way Tar convinces herself of this without self-consciousness to its reflexivity- is problematic, and that's before accounting for the elisions that cast doubt on the value of this love altogether. More pointedly, the film seems convinced that its examples of Tar's behaviors on behalf of her daughter are 'enough' to counter the clearer examples of neglect; not oust the opposition, but coexist to form a conflict of some equity. This bothers me, not just because I think they're self-indulgent and vapid, but because Field don't acknowledge their nature as he presents them is abstract in reference to the more tangible effects of neglect. I 'get' that he's pitching the abstract unknowability and complex innards of a person against the friction of outcomes-based consequences of the external environment as an overall portrait of Blanchett's humanity vs The World, but it's disingenuous to give different rules to Blanchett vs her daughter within the internal logic of a micro-level parental relationship as far as where the value lies (again, unless of course we're blended with Blanchett's pov, which we are not). Blanchett can then have her cake and eat it too any way you slice it. The film doesn't recognize this, and within its own film grammar, aligns itself with Blanchett in this automatic-win power dynamic against all else, and that's unfair when you're dealing with a relationship that's blatantly neglectful but also "loving" and asking the audience to weigh these on fair ground. Field is manipulating these variables and holding them to different rules in how he approaches them, and all as a consequence of reaching too far and wide with the scope of his intentions. It caves in on itself and reads as "one note" to people like myself when I believe there's nuance there just begging to be delivered more honestly and, frankly, bravely.

I think there's a great movie in there somewhere that acknowledges the neglect just a bit more obviously and also layers evidence that Tar cares for her daughter as more than just a piece of window dressing or vehicle to make her feel better about herself and achieve a marker of the American Dream she fantasized when she was growing up in an environment that alienated her and didn't support her genius, and then actualized over the course of a long career of resiliency and understandable ego-inflation. There's even a film in there that dares to recognize more concretely that in western cultures such as these, with ideals of personal excellence hailed as diamond lives above all else, it's 'normal' for a parent such as Tar to have a relationship with her child that is intrinsically and inescapably going to be rooted partially in conceit. A film like that could draw from the well of sadness pertaining to the incongruity of where each party in this relationship needs to give and get their love from, and feed into the collective consciousness of pain regarding the current hot (and very real) topic of generational trauma. But it doesn't do any of that, and I believe that it believes that it is succeeding in charitably addressing their relationship dynamic. I think it's an interesting concept to drop us off at this stage for Tar, giving us peripheral nods to how she wasn't always this way and keep them elided so as not to risk them usurping her current actions in 'today' with intrusive sentimentality. That's an admirable play. But I do think the relationship with the daughter is the key to unlocking the film, and Field is trying to engage with this relationship in a manner that doesn't compute with his overall approach outside of it.

[soundchaser]

I see where you’re coming from. And while I can’t articulate it as well as you probably could (in part because I’m typing on my phone!), let me just say that I feel one of the great strengths of the film is its elision of those situational circumstances you bring up re: the American Dream and such. Where I disagree is that the choices made here a) “counter the clearer examples of neglect” and b) don’t go beyond an interesting concept.

I should also say that I’m coming at this from a different background than you — I’ve been in a music school (albeit not one as prestigious as Juilliard!), and a lot of the power dynamics here — not just with Lydia, but with the whole system of conductors, the art/artist conundrum and its use by varying groups — ring true to me. It’s likely I’ve latched on to those over a more psychodynamic reading, and I may be inclined to cut the film a little more slack because of it.

[therewillbeblus]

That's fair. I realize I'm coming at this film rather harshly, but that's really only because I liked so much about it and felt it bit off more than it could chew, and in the process diluted the power and directionality of its bite. I completely agree that the elisions deliver the richest material, it's just at the expense of exploring markers of significance Field is clearly establishing as vital fruit for exploration. I'd be interested to hear a defense for why it feels appropriate for him to pick and choose what content to keep in the elisions or in abstract condition vs bolded palpable form, especially when a) he's deliberately attempting to engage in both pools but without thoroughly exploring these channels with remote equity in a film ostensibly about neutrally approaching these concepts with equity; and b) doing so inherently models an approach of artistic manipulation, creating a disproportionate engagement with voices its (supposedly) concerned with, and this imbalance naturally skews toward enmeshment with Blanchett's own power dynamics and delusional mindset. I haven't heard anyone address Field's responsibility and unintentional reinforcement/encouragement of Blanchett's position in her power dynamic except by the film's opposition, nor have I heard an argument that he is intentionally mimicking her powerful position/eliding the daughter or other voices reflexively as a director and subjecting himself to similar criticisms, and I imagine there's a charitable reading somewhere that can engage with these charges.

[soundchaser]

Thing is, I'm not sure it's necessarily trying to earn that self-reflexivity. That it may be there is a product of the nature of art and its creation - but I find the film simply an exploration of the disconnect between our actions and our words writ large. I hate to bring my favorite comparison back into it, but it felt to me very much a Lolita of the music world, in that it is about our inherent hypocrisy, and it uses other issues (child abuse in one; "cancel culture" in the other) as a heuristic. I don't know that it necessarily needs to engage with Field's choices within itself. I'd say the reason it's appropriate for him to keep certain things in the elisions is because he wrote and directed the film, and because it both adds to the tone and gives more of a "break-in" for non-musos.

[therewillbeblus]

I really appreciate that reading! I agree that it's definitely not trying to earn a self-reflexive position, but some of the choices around what is shown and not and from whose perspective via the daughter seemed to be attempting to earn a fusion of perspectives here that it just didn't from where I was sitting, which complicates the otherwise fair advocacy that Field can do what he wants with his film. I don't think an artist has an inherent responsibility to always acknowledge their mastery (that would be absurd!) - but when working with material like this, and specifically in administering the interventions Field is in the way he is, I think it's fair game to take issue with them. But I really like your Lolita comparison and maybe it'll play differently for me next time. I really wanted to see it in those terms, but I felt like Field was stirring me off course each time I tried, and not in a way that provoked greater insight or richer thematic rewards

[Persona]

For myself, there are a few bum notes (or lack of better notes) in the last act where I can see how the criticisms are originating, even if I don't fully agree with them.

I don't think TAR is a racist film, or at least I don't think it is any more racist than many other white male written and directed films. Certainly there are things to be parsed between the attitude and perspective of the central character and the context and mood in which she experiences things vs. whatever satirical or critical intent the work as a whole has. I admire the film for allowing its questionable central character to be a human one and not purely a victimizer or victim, a token upon which to pin its screed. At the same time I think the moral heart of the film very clearly leans against this character in most ways, so some of the outrage I have seen about what the character of Lydia Tar looks down upon... yeah, I don't know, I am confused about the issues being taken here and maybe need to read through some of them more carefully. Are we offended that her viewpoint can contain elements of truth mixed up with the things about her that are abhorrent? Do we need our films to be more didactic than so many of them already are?

I read a reaction that said it would have been a better film if Lydia Tar had been a more righteously empowering lesbian. This, to me, comes off like a fundamental misunderstanding of the film and what it has to say about the subsuming of personal identities to social power structures, or how those structures can sculpt and/or destroy those identities.

The "one note" critique of Taubin's strikes a little more true for me, as there is a bit of cyclical redundancy to much of the film, though it's easy to see how that might be part of the point. But the last act of the film tries to break that up and be a bit rawer and messier--in a way that doesn't quite work, and the development from the more considered first couple hours does not feel fluid, nor do I quite understand the apparent dodging of culmination for a couple story threads. So I don't think the conclusion gives us exactly what Field wants to offer, even if there are still some strong moments and plenty of food for thought in that last half hour or so.

All that said, I think it's an intelligent film, handsomely made and engagingly performed by its cast (in addition to Blanchett I thought Nina Hoss was just terrific, maybe even my favorite performance in the film), covers interesting subject matter, and takes time with scenes and details that other films would skip through or edit to pieces (or out entirely). And I think Lydia Tar is the most compelling "bad person" protagonist since Daniel Plainview. I'd watch many more things with Lydia Tar in them. Make her the villain in a Bond film, or the lead in a rom-com, or give her a whole TV show. It'd all be great.

P.S. And as someone who loves music, yes, that dimension of the film and how it explored it was really inviting for me. The musicality of the film itself is extremely subtle, probably the most subtle aspect of the film, which I was not prepared for and so that really drew me in to the form while the music-focused discussions and scenes themselves were some fun nerding out.

[therewillbeblus]

Great thoughts, Persona, agreed on most accounts. I don't really understand where the charges of racism are coming from- Is it something to do with the final surreal moments? Because the only other situation I can think of is the teaching scene, and there's just no way that Field is having a field day (sorry) about 'cancel culture' here- Lydia Tar may have a few points, but it's at the expense of other people's feelings, like nearly all her actions in the film, and the way she goes about 'educating' the class to make her point is blatantly off-putting and emblematic of wielding one's position in a power imbalance (which is, you know, the most lucid theme woven throughout nearly three hours of documenting one person's actions)

[Persona]

For Taubin it's almost certainly the final sequence that is the most racially problematic, but to me that's a very un-generous reading she is taking, especially to the point where she would call it one of the most racist "serious" films she has ever seen. Really, Amy? Because I know you've seen far too many movies for that claim not to come off like hyperbole.

[Altair]

Zane Lowe, one the best music interviewers there is, interivews Cate Blanchett on Tár

[Drucker]

Count me in as someone who found this film to be pretty darn good but I don't think it sticks the landing. It sets up a lot of interesting ideas and sub-plots but fails to flesh out any of them fully enough to come to a cohesive whole for me. It's funny that earlier in this thread the first two scenes are described as long-winded and a bit unnecessary, because I thought they were the best part of the picture. That opening scene I found to be a perfect send-up of Upper East Side / NYC / New Yorker-reading snobbishness. The conversation stayed interesting, and it tells you everything you need to know about this character. Her constant referral of Leonard Bernstein as "Lenny" was one of the more humorous things I've seen in film in the last few years.
Similarly, the second scene at Julliard is patient and effective. The camera comes and goes with Blanchett. It follows the students effectively. We surely get to learn how Tar really feels about cancel culture and the current cultural moment, but she is forced to keep her composure in a very effective way, setting the stage for her to lose that composure later on about the same subject. Within the first two scenes, we know that she scoffs at the notion of people judging artists by anything other than the art they create, and that she will be tackling a composition that is famously difficult to complete. We have an obedient assistant, knowledge of her homosexuality...really I think all of the stakes are set very effectively early on.
I really enjoyed the patience and time spent in the first two scenes of the film.
The rest of the film is hit and miss for me.

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She has a wife, but enjoys the attention of other women. The subplot with the cellist was great, but it was a bummer to only get it from Tar's POV. She has a daughter she doesn't really seem to give too much attention to and is really another victim of her personality? She has some foundation person she is forced to deal with...which is sort of funny early on but then it turns out he's an antagonist two hours later? Tar is every bit as guilty as the damn kids about being glued to her smartphone and looking for comfort on Twitter, but there's nobody to really call her out on her bullshit. Is her assistant just as bad as her? Putting up with the bullshit until she gets her call to the big leagues? And then once she is passed over seeks her revenge? Is she just as bad as Tar? Or is the ending really everyone in her life extracting their revenge at the same time? If so, what about her wife? Or the neighbors trying to sell their deceased mother's apartment?
For a film that had the potential to be really complex and point out the contradictions and hypocrisies of cancel culture and online narcissism, we instead get a beautifully shot film that ends up just showing what a one-dimensional monster Blanchett is. There is some really amazing scenes and acting in this film, so I don't mean to come down on it, and it is at times very very funny. But as I said, I don't think it sticks the landing, and that's a bummer.

[ford]

I read a reaction that said it would have been a better film if Lydia Tar had been a more righteously empowering lesbian.

Everyone, it seems -- even critics who think they're above such things -- wants Marvel-movie moralism these days. Which isn't too far from the rally-around-the-flag moralism of the postwar period.

[DarkImbecile]

Similarly, the second scene at Julliard is patient and effective. The camera comes and goes with Blanchett. It follows the students effectively.

The camerawork in that scene is the best I’ve seen all year; just tremendous execution by the actors and technicians to make that shot work.

Drucker, I suspect you’ll find a lot more to appreciate about this (particularly the second half) if you catch it again after some percolation

[therewillbeblus]

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The subplot with the cellist was great, but it was a bummer to only get it from Tar's POV. She has a daughter she doesn't really seem to give too much attention to and is really another victim of her personality? Tar is every bit as guilty as the damn kids about being glued to her smartphone and looking for comfort on Twitter, but there's nobody to really call her out on her bullshit...

For a film that had the potential to be really complex and point out the contradictions and hypocrisies of cancel culture and online narcissism, we instead get a beautifully shot film that ends up just showing what a one-dimensional monster Blanchett is.

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I think Field is placing himself into an impossible position here. It would be disingenuous to the way he's approaching Lydia Tar to switch up POVs to the daughter or cellist in isolation (though he does briefly with the former, only to cut back to Lydia immediately, which is pretty obnoxious and not really playing by the film's internal logic of perspective); however, the film also seems to believe that Lydia's relationship with her daughter is the one 'authentic' relationship she has in the film. It's stated as such at one point and never challenged, and we have no reason to believe it's challenged by Field either... except, you know, all the absurd neglect. I can appreciate that there's a middle ground between challenging and not challenging- I've taken that stance many times on the issues addressing in this film on this board- but the nature of their relationship isn't granted a shade of irony by the film or pronounced enough as tragically dissonant: Tar is repressive and self-absorbed and her daughter sits alone in the room listening without the confidence to seek her mother; they're loving past one another but outside of such a minute drive-by wink, Field doesn't do anything with this middle ground that would make it rich material for percolation.

I think the biggest problem with the film is that Field is peripherally recognizing that, as you say, "there's nobody to really call her out on her bullshit" but then plays both sides by kinda-calling her out on it and also not really doing much of anything intervention-wise. I think that's what leads her to come up as "a one-dimensional monster" as you put it, though I don't see her as monstrous at all- just as a character I sympathize with in theory but who I feel is being approached by the filmmaker in an obtuse manner when the film demands fuller measures.

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Is her assistant just as bad as her? Putting up with the bullshit until she gets her call to the big leagues? And then once she is passed over seeks her revenge? Is she just as bad as Tar? Or is the ending really everyone in her life extracting their revenge at the same time? If so, what about her wife? Or the neighbors trying to sell their deceased mother's apartment?

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I think the film is pretty explicitly refusing to compare "badness" as if on a two-dimensional scale, and Field does do a decent job at detailing how impossible it is to be reductive if we are to be truly objective, even if it (admirably) refuses to take a position on actionable justice's relationship with moral relativity. But that's a good point about the assistant and another semi-strength of the film: in obfuscating intentionality of all other players, since we have no entry way into their minds, Field is placing them on the same playing field as Lydia regarding the question of value in psychological drives (intention, emotional baggage, trauma history, etc.) vs behavioral outcomes that can be measured. The problem comes with his empty gestures after that.. he's kindasorta recognizing that we subjectively assess behavior and that this takes on value, so he's both showing that behavior can be measured by others and also measured differently by ourselves to defend our behavior- but also showing how there's an honesty to our defenses since we only know our own rich histories of trauma, intention, etc. However, Field doesn't seem interested in exploring any of this and it's terrible unclear that he's treating his film as an opportunity to 'show' what he is from a rather myopic position (and, again, not one that emulates Tar's subjectivity, which could work really well- or at least... not until the last act?)

The unraveling of everything towards the end has the potential to function as the perfect narcissistic defense mechanism- an externalization of Tar's psychological erosion in every facet of her environment, and there are plenty of movies that have successfully pulled that off... but Field plays everything so straight and non-delusional while observing delusional behavior, that I just don't think he earns the ability to switch gears from austerity and behaviorist approaches into subjective psychological engulfment. This is a film that wants to have it both ways, and I really want it to work, but it simply doesn't because it refuses to engage too far with any side.

I really don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I continue to explore this frustrating position of the film (or rather unpack why I'm frustrated with it) largely because I haven't felt that the film's fans have engaged thoroughly with many criticisms lobbed by the frustrated parties. Sure the artist can do what they want, and mass audiences want binary moralism, and maybe repeat viewings will help... I agree with all of that. But none of those vague defenses address the specific concerns. A few people here have dug into them a bit upthread, but I suppose I feel that a film like this warrants more in-depth defending, given the audacious, dynamic, and spirited tightrope it's thrusting itself upon

[ford]

I don't believe one should ever criticize young people, even more so these days, and the film does a lot of that in the worst angry dad ways possible.

Do you genuinely believe this or are you just afraid of being accused of being “out of touch”?

I have some bad news for you: the “kids” (mostly in this case highly online highly educated upper middle class kids competing for virtue in the new ever more competitive economy for high income high prestige jobs) believe a lot of demonstrably false or insane crap at the moment. Sorry.

It’d be funny to see someone keep up this “don’t criticize the kids” thing while reading about the myriad of atrocities largely perpetuated by “in touch” kids during China’s Cultural Revolution. Of course it turned out they were nothing more than puppets of a much older center of power desperate to hold onto that power but hey: maybe it’s the exception that proves the rule!