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fandomsecrets2022-12-17 04:35 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2022-12-17 04:35 pm
[ SECRET POST #5825 ]
⌈ Secret Post #5825 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 46 secrets from Secret Submission Post #834.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: TÁR
(Anonymous) 2022-12-18 01:19 am (UTC)(link)I went into it having read the reviews and thinking Cate Blanchett was a goddess, and I had high hopes just based on that, but damn. That movie instantly catapulted to my top 5 favorite all-timers. Best movie I've seen in at least 5 years.
I was curious if there had been secrets because obviously the subject matter is contentious and the screenplay and performances defy a black-or-white take on it. And because of that, it's been interesting to see how journalists have tried to approach it in terms of its clear theme of cancel culture, and then you have the Julliard scene, which is challenging to process, no matter where you fall on the political or cultural spectrum. I've admittedly watched that scene more than 15 times. I just put it on repeat. And every time, I think and feel something different, but fundamentally what I think is going on in that scene is a dichotomy of old/established/jaded vs. young/experimental/impatient. The identity discourse in the scene is irrelevant IMO, almost a red herring for anyone who would try to reduce it to that. Max is not as genuinely offended as he is bored with tradition. And Lydia, oof. Max had every right to call her a bitch, and can we talk about the absolute GENIUS of the scene ending with her walking BACKWARDS down those stairs? It makes the later scene so gratifying, when she faceplants in her scramble to get up a staircase and away.
Basically, I came away from it feeling sympathy for Lydia but also feeling a sense of satisfaction in watching her get her comeuppance. And it almost plays like a horror movie? I mean, solidly a psychological thriller. Apparently this writer/director came out of a 15-year or so hiatus to make this film, and he made it specifically for Blanchett, and it's a masterpiece of a headfuck, and I hope it sweeps all the awards.
Re: TÁR
You're spot on about old/established/jaded vs. young/experimental/impatient as themes for the movie, although I think the old/established isn't quite totally jaded — and in my opinion, Tár (and these ideas, which you so astutely point out) become even richer when you have an understanding of classical music. It cannot be overstated just how rife with drama, secrecy, mythos, and politics the classical music world is, how it has struggled for decades to find its place in modernity as an institution. Max's question is one students have been asking for many, many years: Can you separate art from artist? Do the old masters — Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, et al. — still have worthwhile lessons to teach us? This, you'll notice, neatly parallels your understanding of Lydia as a viewer: If you can separate art from the artist, how do you process what Lydia experiences over the course of the film (her "cancelling")? How do you feel about her, can you reflect on those feelings and sift through them, what does the movie mean to you?
Another important theme in Tár is beauty and ugliness — demonstrated by the divide between Lydia's public face and her private one, her home with Sharon (ugly, brutalist, modern architecture) versus her own (more neoclassical), the choice of Mahler's symphonies versus the atonal music presented in that Juilliard seminar. The question of whether there's still merit in beautiful music is a real debate that composers and musicologists have today — see Alma Deutscher's "Waltz of the Sirens", which she composed in defiance of the contemporary academic focus on ugliness — and I'm quite running away with the point now and just rambling about everything I've noticed, but I just can't help it, there's far too much to unpack and I'd be here all day.
And then less important, but the last thing I'll mention in this comment — I'm certain I'll have more to say when you respond again, OP — is how much my linguistic background really added to this movie. I know English, German, and Tagalog, so watching Tár was somewhat of a wild experience for me since it includes all three. When Lydia goes up to Johanna and talks to her, and that particular bit isn't translated in the English dialogue? Somehow, not seeing "I'll destroy you, and if you tell anyone, no one will believe you because I am an adult" in text made it even worse (and what a treat for the German speakers in the audience)! "Forget Visconti," she says during rehearsal — my god. I'm in love with this movie. Children of Men (2006) was my favourite before this one, but I think it's safe to say that one's been soundly overthrown. I will probably also watch Tár a fourth time, perhaps even before the year is out. I can't.
Re: TÁR
(Anonymous) 2022-12-18 02:49 pm (UTC)(link)Oh man, this reply is going to be meandering because there is so much to unpack, indeed. Yeah, that opening interview is perfect not just as exposition, but also as Todd Field's way of throwing down the gauntlet for the viewer. I'll admit I have next to zero interest in classical music, but I'm a jazz person, which is arguably just behind classical in its race towards irrelevance. (And jazz is perhaps even messier because we have to reckon with the fact that the Problematic Greats were marginalized people whose music was, for lack of a better term, appropriated by the general population and then the academy, almost to the point of excluding them, but yeah, many of them were addicts, thieves, wife-beaters, literal pimps as well as being groundbreaking geniuses.) And I work in academics and am all too aware of the drama, the gatekeeping, the narcissism, the highly questionable behavior and general nastiness that goes on in commercial music programs, and I can easily see how the classical music world is like all of that on steroids. Yikes.
So yeah... can we separate the art from the artist? Clearly the overarching theme of the movie, and how relevant to our times. And how genius for Field to use the world of classical music to tell his tale because it is an art form that is so detached from popular culture. It's not Will Smith or Johnny Depp or JKR. Here is a fictional EGOT whose name would likely be unknown to the average person within this tale. And the theme of beauty v. ugliness, yes! Wow, I had not even considered how that juxtaposition played out in terms of Lydia's housing, so that we see how she began in this quaint, cozy room with a VCR and "rose" to the cold, sterlized, brutal living space she shares with Sharon. It's amazing how every single detail of this movie - wardrobe, lighting, set, cinematography, score, everything - serves the whole. And how every scene is like its own musical movement. I almost feel like chunking the movie into those movements and rewatching them over and over on their own (as I have, indeed, with the Julliard scene) because some new detail jumps out at me every time, to the point where I almost want to punch Todd Field for being such a genius. LOL! He should win everything. And Cate. My god. Something my partner and I have talked about is how, for the first 30 minutes or so, as we were introduced to her character, we were thinking, "wow, this is Cate at the absolute top of her game." Every movement she makes, every micro-expression, is meticulously considered. The tic she has of wiping off clean surfaces! Every movement she makes is like a mini act of conducting. And by the middle of the movie, Cate Blanchett has totally disappeared, and she has become Lydia Tár. The performance of a lifetime, for sure, and I can't imagine anyone else in the role.
Wow, I'm rambling. I do not speak German, and right, the English translation is "I'll get you." To learn that she is actually saying "I'll destroy you" to a little girl. OOF. And can we talk about that ending?? Here she is, riding an open-air bus through dirt streets to conduct that, and yet she approaches it with such beauty and such deep respect for her art that you almost come away feeling that she hasn't fallen from grace as much as she's experienced a rebirth. I, also, just. Can't. It's been a few weeks since my last viewing, and I'm definitely all ramped up now to watch it again today.
Re: TÁR
Yeah, I think classical music as the vehicle for this story can really be substituted with any institution that's remained unchanged, sitting in its own shit (so to speak) for a long time — classical music just happens to, I think, be one of the most senior members of this club, and certainly the most illustrious. It's sort of evolved over the years into a symbol of elitism and sophistication despite the fact that many members of its canon were (at the time) subversive, rebellious, ingenious, and radical — they've been co-opted into the "class" part of "classical," you could say. Jazz is still seen as accessible, so too with animation, so too with acting and theatre (even if the bar for entry is just as stringent) — classical just happens to have the gold, Old World finish that gives it Something Else, especially in the United States where we eschew tradition for innovation. (Another feather in your young vs. old cap!)
I'm not a film buff, so I can't speak to the topic as someone with more knowledge than me, but yeah, the cinematography in Tár is just mind-blowing. The ever-so-slightly crooked angle in "Apartment for Sale" (also the fact that Cate has writing credits for this little ditty lol), the fact that Lydia has a black-and-white photograph of her and Krista hanging in her old apartment, the very same shot that appears in the dream sequence about Krista in the final act of the film, the contrast of warm and dark tones across the different environments, everything feels so purposeful. I know all films are technically a work of art, but Tár is a work of art and looks as good as it's written, acted, scored. Cate, as you said, gave the performance of a lifetime; I actually hadn't seen many of her other films (see: I am not a film buff), but holy God lol what an "introduction." I can't rave about it enough.
Oh, the subtitles get it right — the contemporary translation of "kriegen," which is what Lydia uses ("ich kriege dich"), is "to get" or "to catch." But an older and alternate meaning — with which the noun "der Krieg" shares a root — is "to make war against," and I don't think that was unintentional. Although the literal translation is "I'll get you" and the implication might be "I'll wage war against you," it really gives the feeling of "I'll destroy you," which is why I chose to translate it that way.
(And don't even get me started on the other aspects of German culture and allusions to nationalism exist in the film...! Sharon's mother saying "das Kind ist in sein' Zimmer" [the child is in its room, technically not wrong but o o f] instead of "das Kind ist in ihr' Zimmer" [the child is in her room], Sharon's concerns about the Biodeutsch discrimination, Gustav Mahler himself having been a Jewish composer who was widely caricatured by publications at the time... there's so much, anon. There's so much.)