The Maestro is a Monster: Lydia Tár, the Fictional Female Karl Böhm
Is Lydia Tár a real person? No — in reality, a woman can’t get that job — the movie mimics and mocks hundreds of years of real male ones
God knows I seldom watch television. I’m so sick of bullshit-frosted Hollywood superheroes that the last thing I want to do is sit down in any movie theater.
I’m not alone, but you’d never know that from the endless stream of appalling, sad, overproduced, underwritten time-wasters produced by Beelzebub’s hardworking staff.
What do I mean? [link]
I think you’ll like Mr. B. L. Zebub. I did for the short time I apprenticed in his shop.
In the linked novella that I wrote “back in the day,” Emilia Bassano is the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets and she, like the Bard, was also a writer. Emilia deeply resented having to take a back seat to Will and the other men.
She was a woman who wanted to do a job almost wholly-dominated by men.
I just invested nearly three hours of my life watching an oddly-made movie starring one of the best performers of our time: Cate Blanchett. Cate’s acting is incredible. Blanchett portrays fictional orchestra conductor Lydia Tár — who presents herself as an above-the-composer level maestro with one of the world’s best orchestras: the Berlin Philharmonic.
So, right now, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic is Kirill Petrenko. He’s a man.
No woman has ever been the maestro of this orchestra: a few have been guest conductors, an issue that’s discussed several times in Tár.
Both Bruce and I thought that Tár, written and directed by William Todd Field, wasn’t a very entertaining movie.
One review praised the film, saying “It makes viewers work for every scene.”
Uh, yeah.
I got done with this, and this morning I think —
Tár is about a profound subject. I just skimmed all of the reviews, and since this type of thing is written by a certain type of person, none of the reviewers understood what this difficult, challenging movie is all about. I think Cate Blanchett did, which is why her performance is the most rewarding thing about the long, unfocused, and overly affectionate (toward Tár) film.
So the problem I have with Field is — if you were going to make a movie about the time-honored tradition of “maestros are predatory assholes” and “cancel culture,” why did you choose to make the maestro not just a woman, but a lesbian?
Is it true that sometimes there are “communities” of lesbian women in fields like classical music, ballet, or occasionally, fine art?
Yes, of course!
But the movie poses a bigger question, which is about so-called “cancel culture.” It asks questions about how power corrupts. Tár runs the Berlin Philharmonic in the same gross, power mongering, brutal and sociopathic way countless other real male maestros have throughout any big orchestra’s history. That’s the stereotype. It’s a common way such men have always acted, and classical music, like ballet, is a culture that has always rewarded such behavior.
There’s an intense scene somewhere around the one hour mark in the movie where Lydia Tár goes to Juilliard and works with a group of current students.
At length, she harangues a young man who attempts to conduct a contemporary piece written by a (fictional) female composer with a student chamber music ensemble.
Just about every person who watches this scene this will recognize a conflict that’s repeated across the world these days. The student isn’t interested in Bach, because he says Bach was a misogynist and did some bad things. Tár believes that the student should be into Bach based on Bach’s music, not a more contemporary composer.
“It reminds me of those late 60s/early 70s movies,” I said to Bruce.
Like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
But in that movie, Sidney Poitier did not go to dinner at the house of the lesbian newspaper editor and her wife with his white fiancée. He went to the house of a traditional authoritarian male newspaper editor portrayed by one of America’s most famous leading men: Spencer Tracy.
At the end of this uncomfortable scene, after much insensitive bullying, the student finally leaves the class, calling Tár a “fucking bitch.”
I’ve been in countless classes like that: I’m sure you have, as well.
The irony here is, 999 times out of a thousand, the bully is not going to be a tall, elegant lesbian who looks like Cate Blanchett.
It’s gonna be this guy:
People have been searching the internet: Is Lydia Tár a real person?
No, she is not a real person. To my knowledge, none of the female contemporary composers named during the Juilliard scene are “real.”
I’m really not sure if, in this movie, Field is saying, “Watch out — if they let women become maestros in any great numbers, especially if they are lesbians in cahoots with their concertmistresses, this is the terrible result — ”
or if Field really is trying to make social commentary about how corrosive, a-creative, and wrong the time-honored tradition of abusive, sociopathic and narcissistic maestro for a big Philharmonic is.
From early on in my writing, I chose to examine what it would be like if a woman did take what our culture has seen as a man’s role. Emilia, the Dark Lady, never got the chance to have a play of her own produced. “The Lady” in “Heart of Jade” did not want to become a ruler after her father died. She chose to leave Copan with her great love, the humble jade carver Two Frog. All the Mayans left that city after the last battle.
For much of the film, Lydia Tár acts like a man. As I’m not a lesbian, I can’t really judge if this is something a lesbian woman would choose to emulate. From my straight perspective, yes — it may be shocking to some — I’ve not only already been in charge of fairly large numbers of other people, I’ve had positions of influence …
And even more shocking — I didn’t go full sociopath or narcissist. I had the well-being of those I was responsible for in mind at all times.
“Oh no one wants to read about that, Amy.”
Cate Blanchett is a great actress, but the character she portrays — is fundamentally a cruel, self-centered idiot who does not get everything she deserves.
The Lydia Tár character runs on stage, tackles, and viciously kicks and beats a less-narcissistic and sociopathic male conductor who has been the leader of a charity that she sponsors. Nothing happens to her. She grooms, exploits, and ultimately causes a younger woman who was a member of that charity to commit suicide. She treats her wife in an appalling, completely disregarding way, and she narcissistically abuses her assistant (also an aspiring conductor), and callously terminates an older, respected assistant conductor. A lot of people say that Tár’s only redeeming characteristic is her defense of and care for her daughter, a young girl who is being bullied at school.
Actually, she sociopathically threatened a school bully on her daughter’s behalf.
Yay!
So, having lived this, unlike auteur Field — no, Mr. Field, I have not been a maestro of a major Philharmonic orchestra, no woman has —
I wrote another couple of stories that were sort of bookends to a basic concept. If human cloning becomes possible, why would someone do it? If you cloned yourself and raised the clone in your own home, would this be your child, or another relationship?
I told the first story, “My Son, My Self,” from the point of view of a father and son. It’s Gary & Denny, also as seen in “Perfect Stranger.” This Gary wasn’t as nice as Gary from “Perfect Stranger.” Diagnosed with terminal cancer, the perfect donor was Gary’s son, Denny. That worked out one way.
A few years later, I used the same basic idea for “Everything I Have Is Yours,” in which the first great, awarded female filmmaker, Helene Bacon, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And her daughter, whom she has raised, is the …
You get the picture. Helene, a somewhat similar character to Lydia Tár, though less of a monster, makes a different choice.
So, the moral of this story is —
Tár isn’t about how “power corrupts.”
It blunderingly documents every asinine thing wrong with our society. The real heroes and heroines of the story are every character except Lydia Tár.
Tár’s assistant, portrayed by Noémie Merlant — this young woman patiently waits and serves the maestro in every way, only to get completely screwed over … but the cruel betrayal does end up revealing Tár’s horrific treatment of the young conductor who committed suicide. Tár’s wife Sharon, played by Nina Hoss, is a true concertmistress, whose decency and sensitive nature shines through. This is how a good woman with a bad husband and father would act.
The amateur conductor Eliot Kaplan, portrayed by Mark Strong, is decent and caring. For his trouble of supporting her career and the charity, Tár tackles him on stage and viciously kicks him. In real life this would certainly break ribs. In this movie’s world, Kaplan gets to his feet and tries to “reason” with a hysterical Tár.
“She just beat the crap out of him on stage and nothing happened to her,” Bruce said.
Finally, the “next young thing” for the exploitive and predatory Tár, Olga Metkina, portrayed by Sophie Kauer, is an unselfconscious, highly-talented young cellist. When Olga gets the picture about who Tár really is, she cuts her off brilliantly, in one of the film’s few genuinely gratifying moments.
This movie is more of a fantasy than any sci fi I ever wrote.
Hollywood really is a screwed up place.
It took one of this era’s most talented actors, Cate Blanchett, and had her do a nearly impossible part.
And it chose to make a movie about how society and so many “time-honored” institutions that have supported predatory, sociopathic, and narcissistic behavior in the utterly false service of “talent” for hundreds of years — are now changing.
Many may see Tár as being about power and corruption and the ultimate downfall of those who, go too far these days. The film’s ironic ending doesn’t quite have enough juice to make up for nearly 3 hours of nearly-nonstop psychopathic abuse on the part of someone who just says they are uber-talented.
The film never shows Tár as being anything other than a massive blowhard.
Which is what every single one of those so-called “great conductors” were and remain to this day.
I really did not need to spend almost 3 hours to learn that supposedly, a lesbian will be just as much of a prick as these men.
I knew there was something really off about this movie from the trailers, I extrapolate really well from trailers - annoyingly so at times - and I could see elements of what you've just conveyed. Between that, and the other reviews I've read, I decided just to avoid.
Indeed, I am unsure what the director's point was. He said in an interview "I’d been thinking about her for a long, long time, probably easily 10 years before the studio came to me and said, “Would you be interested in doing something about a conductor?” And that’s the only reason that she became a conductor. I had someplace to put her."
Odd. I don't believe a woman would act just like a man in this position. She'd probably never get to hold that position, and if she did she would have to use a whole different set of wiles and power plays on her way up than a man would, so she'd likely behave quite differently, even if she was a megalomaniac.
I found the trailers irritating, and the reviews unappealing, so will avoid.
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Apparently, you have to be a jerk to succeed in classical music...