Tár

Did ya ever see Tár?  It's getting some serious awards buzz.

Tár is one of those movies that gets released just before Christmas in the US but a month or so later elsewhere.  I showed up on a number of 2022 Top 10 lists.  Of course I couldn't make my list, being that I didn’t get to see it until 2023.  But to be honest it would make the list.  Last year I watched 25 (new) movies in the cinema, one a fortnight is too bad,  the rest were all released on streaming or I got a loan of a copy.  There were plenty of good movies last year.  My first 5 posts/episodes for this blog/podcast (blogcast?) were my favourites from those I watched last year.  Tár is the first new (for me in the UK at least) movie I’ve watched this year.  I won’t be in my Top 5 for 2023.

Maybe it was the front baggage of seeing it top a load of lists around the time it was released here.  Maybe it is the awards hype it was getting…

It wasn't.

Before I give my reasons for disliking this movie, a positive.  Cate Blanchett is incredible.  I never saw through the character to the actor, I only saw the character she was creating.  She was excellent.  So good in fact that I think she might scoop up plenty of statues, and deservedly so too.  However, I really want to see Michelle Yeoh get the glory for Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Cate Blanchette already has a well stocked trophy cabinet and the big awards have a history of giving statues for career performances, so fingers crossed for Michelle Yeoh.  to be fair Blanchett has earned every accolade for this role.  Her character is an eccentric, unusual woman who falls off her pedestal and she performs it like a master.

And this is probably my first issue..  The movie is one performance.  An excellent performance yes but it is not surrounded by much else.  For me at least.  The film felt baggy, drawn out and at 2 hours 38 minutes, it did feel like much happened.  The run time wasn’t deserved.  Around hours in not much had happened and I was checking out.

Tár leaves bread crumbs along the way and they mostly get picked up at the end.  But they were too thinly spread out and only collected in the last half hour, when i was checked out.  One early one involves Blanchett’s titular (Lydia) Tár being videoed on a phone with text messages over layed and does it get resolved?  I don’t think it does.  In fact I think it only happens three times in the movie.  And for what?  Don’t know.  We have occasional dialogue that leads to Tár’s demise but over the long run time it's too little and too sparse.

The thing is, that, the end of the movie suddenly opens up her back story of two minutes? Before pacing on to a hasty conclusion.  I don’t get it.  Everything up until the last 30 or 40 minutes is reasonably interesting but when the ‘payoff’ comes it just feels like a let down.

I think that's how I’d best describe this movie… a let down.  Cate Blanchett puts on screen an absolutely mega performance, which has a stunning one take regarding separating the art from the artist, very current that is a high mark for this film, but ultimately is doesnt follow up on its early success.   Shame, I was curious to see if anything would top Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I think I’ll go watch Footloose to feel better.