Notes on TAR | Cate Blanchett | EkChaupal

TAR is a 2022 film by Todd Field. The film stars Cate Blanchett in the role of Lydia Tar. Nominated for and awarded for its screenplay, music, performance and direction, TAR is a film that surpasses the standards. These are the notes that were written during the 2nd and 3rd watching of the film.

That humming at the start during credits. The haunting nature of it. It gets deep into bones. There is a certain edge in that humming. Alien yet familiar. Want to keep listening to it. Terrifying. Intriguing. Inviting on a journey full of things unknown yet known deep down.

First shot. Cate Blanchett as Tar. Strong. Poised. Straight neck. Hand clasped. Face thrust forward. Focused, penetrating eyes. A force. Intensity. Sudden jerky movements. Like the drops in music. Uneasiness in her. Breaths that break. The way she smoothens the hair on her forehead. Her composure. Eyes closed. Finding her centre. Changing herself in front of her assistant. So known yet unknown. Why does she seem so disarranged, yet like Roark from The Fountainhead… Strange Mix.

Reporter citing her introduction. She sitting there. In pose. Listening yet distant. Accepting yet unaffected by it all. Like she is far away. Half-side illuminated. Half in dark. The contrast between a human and something else. Fingers resting gently on the side of the sofa. Legs crossed. She is listening to something else.

Her fingers repeatedly counted something on the armrest. She looks like a painting. So far away. So unreal.

When she talks about time. Her hands. Painting music in the air. The slow rhythm broke in between with the jerks of her hands and the tonal inflexions in her voice. Each gesture is a precise mark in the air. Confidence, precision. Understanding. Control. She is conducting time. Can’t look away. The way her hands move in the air. They are beautiful, elegant, and sharp yet so distant. Can’t stop me from trusting her, admiring her, falling in love with her. At the same time, fearing her.

Her passion for music. The way she explains. The sheer energy in her voice and body when she talks about the effect of music. She lives it. Can I live this strongly, this purely? She is pure in her work… and that’s why she fights for it… Her core!!

The same debate… art vs artist. Can we still not see art apart from artists? And how she sees it…

The whole sequence without any break… the way she carries herself in every frame. Every tone of her body, her voice, her silence… Cate Blanchett disappears… I can literally see nothing of her, yet she is there… where is the technique? Where is the art? The music in her acting… she is the character… she is Tar… and Tar is here…

“Don’t be so eager to be offended. The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.”

Can’t get over this line…

***Spoiler***

This screenplay… The kind of foreboding music she plays and the introduction of that book. It is perfect. After watching for the 3rd time, can’t stop smiling at this conjecture of music and object. Brilliant.

The music when her assistant is leaving her. She is engrossed in those tones… the sense of foreboding it brings…

Does she know she playing the music of her own fate??

The way she melts in her lover’s arms. The softness of her body. This is the Tar we have not encountered yet. The way she lets herself go. Those lines of her body getting soft… letting us enter into her life a little more. She is human. She is music, that dips at times to rise again… the softness in her voice but with the intensity of the same toughness she is made of.

The effect of Olga’s music on them. On her. The faint smile on Tar’s lips when she hears it. It has reached out to her. Calling her.

The first time we see her conducting music… the way she moves. Her breathing is changed. She is there completely, in the music. She has become one…understanding everything yet remaining there… still in motion. The lines her body and arms make while conducting… music in the air, painting it on the canvas of the universe. She is untouchable there. Almost above this earth… Divinity.

The admiration and newly found love in her eyes when she watches Olga. She sees music in her. Music that she loves, breathes and lives. Can’t look away from her eyes.

Of course, she is going to be attracted to Olga. Olga is the sole person who is not affected by her presence… unaffected, like her… the perfect competitor…heir in a way? Olga doesn’t lose her identity in front of her like everyone else. Defying her, respecting her… Tar finds her own identity through her defiance… Light exists because, in the absence of light, darkness is there.

‘Light is the visible reminder of invisible lights.’

The way her hands move up at the end of one piece. Her eyes, her face, her forehead tight. She is feeling it. She is living it. Can one live so purely something? So completely?

The admiration in her eyes when she watches Olga’s video. The longing… she is seeing something else… something…

Olga’s music. The purity of it. The things it expresses and makes everyone in the room remember. I know that face. Those eyes. It is having the same effect on me.

Why does she lie about the wound on her face?

The dreams… surreal. Alluring…haunting…

The water in her eyes before the commencement of the program… the defiance state. Hair open… cheekbones sharp… but she looks youthless… corrupted… old. Not in her element… she is not the Tar we knew, we saw, we loved… she has changed…

Why does it need to happen to her?

Changed city. The constant sound of progression…actually noise… and she is a musician… there is no music, just noise… she has come to the land where no music exists… a symbol of her life now? No beauty left, no nature, no softness… just concrete, asymmetry and machines…