Hi! You’re reading an entry in the Jscars 2022, a series on my favorite movies of the year 2022. Read the previous entries here:
All Quiet on the Western Front
“You cannot start without me.”
You guys hear about this cancel culture thing? Crazy. In all seriousness, for years now we’ve been in a debate over the consequences individuals should face when allegations of questionable behavior surface, and how much “proof” is needed before anyone does anything. If you ask me, the whole debate takes away valuable space from the people who actually need support and care when going through the kind of situations described. And so at this point the mere mention of the term “cancel culture” can be enough to make me groan, let alone art about the subject. So to be completely honest, despite how much praise I had seen for it, the deck was a little stacked against TAR going into it.
And one of the main ways the film does this is by leaning into the absurd and not being afraid to be genuinely funny. Sure, there are many very serious moments in the film that are delivered with the necessary gravitas, as is needed when dealing with a subject matter such as predation. But when Lydia Tar finds herself attracted to a young cello player and peaks under a bathroom stall in order to get a better look at her shoes so that she may be able to tell which performance is hers at what is supposed to be a blind audition for a spot in her orchestra, it’s all evidently ridiculous. This woman is utilizing actually Looney Tunes style antics for the sake of being able to groom a younger colleague. What predators do is serious and we have to be there for their victims and hold them accountable, but these people are also deserving of mocking for just how outrageous the way they go about carrying out these actions. Something that the movie skewers perfectly.
But it’s not just predators as a whole the movie does a great job of investigating. The character of Lydia Tar herself is meticulously unraveled throughout the movie to reveal a type of public figure so complex yet familiar that to this day I see people online who think this movie is a biopic about an actual composer. Is it her jokingly referring to herself as a “U-Haul lesbian” to endear herself to a group of college students she’s guest lecturing before, only to then verbally embarrass and humiliate one of them to the point that they leave the lecture? Is it her referring herself to her adoptive daughter Petra’s father, subtly placing herself in the role of a man and trying to reap all the power that comes with it? Or is it simply how in the face of multiple clear signs that her world is about to come crashing down around her, she pushes forward, insistent that whatever raw talent and power she’s convinced she has will shield her from it all? All of it leads to a character that is both reprehensible and impossible to stop watching, as every action she makes and every consequence she faces leads her further down a twisting path that results in an ending that I consider to be potentially the best of 2022, if not the last few years.
All in all, TÁR works on basically every level you can want it to. If you want it to simply be a human drama about a woman facing consequences for her actions, it’s great. If you want it to be a farce that incorporates more comedic elements? Also great. And as an indictment of the kind of people we as a society continue to allow to gain admiration and power, it is excellent. The fact of the matter is there are a staggering amount of Lydia Társ in the world. And if we are going to continue to fail to provide their victims with the comfort and safety that they need, the next best thing we can hope is that they all implode under the weight of their own irrational sins.
another incredibly common j nort double yew