Tár Sets a Trap for Proponents of Cancel Culture to Fall Right Into

It’s a familiar narrative in the headlines by now. “Genius” gets accused of abuse/sexual impropriety, “genius” is exiled after a snowballing of bad press and more accusers coming out of the woodwork to corroborate claims. What we haven’t seen so much documented in pop culture is when a woman is accused of such (for no biopic has yet been released of Asia Argento). That conductor/composer Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) happens to be a lesbian is perhaps writer-director Todd Field’s way of making a woman more “believably” predatory. Then again, look at Demi Moore as Meredith Johnson in the ahead-of-its-time movie, Disclosure. In it, Moore plays the new head of the CD-ROM division (it was 1994) at a tech company. She immediately uses her newfound power to force herself on the employee everyone thought would be promoted, Tom Sanders (Michael Douglas). Based on a book by Michael Crichton, screenwriter Paul Attanasio is sure to play up just how diabolical a woman in power can be. Feminism, after all, technically means a woman can (and should) be as ruthless as a man in her bid to climb the proverbial ladder.  

With Tár, Field’s intent is less about that and more about the witch-hunting nature of the present era. Shit, Arthur Miller could have made a new version of The Crucible based on the #MeToo movement. What’s more, Field himself knows all about working with formerly celebrated and now “exiled” artists, having collaborated with Woody Allen after being cast in 1987’s Radio Days. And then, of course, there was the fact that Stanley Kubrick, notoriously assholish on set, mentored him as a director. So, undoubtedly, Field knows more than “a bit” about the artistic genius temperament beyond just his own (even if this is only his third feature film to be released over the course of twenty-one years, with 2001’s In the Bedroom marking his debut).

Trying to get “inside the mind” of such a person during roughly the first twenty minutes of Tár is The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik—this element lending an added sense of authenticity to the movie that more than occasionally makes it come across as a biopic-meets-documentary. So it is that Lydia proceeds to talk about, among other things, conducting and recording Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic, this being the other city where she splits her time. Creating the perfect scenario for her to enact any “misdeeds” as her wife/concertmaster, Sharon Goodnow (Nina Hoss), and adopted daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic), live in Berlin full-time.

Indeed, during her talk for The New Yorker Festival, Lydia is quick to foreshadow her own demise when she refers to what Mahler did “after the professional bottom dropped out.” But, at this moment in time, her own professional nadir feels inconceivable. Revered and sought after, her next order of business while in New York involves guest lecturing at a Juilliard class and scheduling appearances for an upcoming book release. Before she makes it to Juilliard, she indulges in receiving a little flattery from one of the many admiring female acolytes that appear to constantly surround her, this girl introducing herself as Whitney Reese (Sydney Lemmon). And as Whitney sucks her clit, so to speak, Lydia’s annoyed assistant and mentee, Francesca Lentini (Noémie Merlant), glances over in disgust. She seems rather accustomed to this sort of thing, yet can’t help but continue to be repelled by such displays of obsequiousness.

As Whitney then compliments her on a performance she conducted at the Met for Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Lydia replies, “It’s the eleven pistol shots—it’s a prime number—that strike you as both victim and perpetrator.” This line, too, providing a double meaning for what is to be Lydia’s own fate. Though, of course, the majority watching it all unfold in real time will see her as a perpetrator, including those outside the narrative: the viewers of the film. To be sure, Field’s point seems to be that one’s own predictable judgment of Lydia as an abuser and predator (despite mostly vague information to support it) is a reflection of how “lynch mob”-oriented they themselves are.

To tie into this cultural “trend” (more “way of life” at this juncture), Helena Bonham Carter gave a recent interview for The Sunday Times that addresses such disgraced famous people as Johnny Depp and J. K. Rowling being prime examples of unjustly maligned figures in the arts. More controversially still, Bonham Carter stated, when asked if the pendulum was swinging back on the #MeToo movement, “My view is that [Heard] got on that pendulum. That’s the problem with these things—that people will jump on the bandwagon because it’s the trend and to be the poster girl for it.” Ostensibly like Lydia’s accuser, Krista Taylor. Bonham Carter went on to comment about how out of hand cancel culture has gotten by adding, “Do you ban a genius for their sexual practices? There would be millions of people who if you looked closely enough at their personal life you would disqualify them. You can’t ban people. I hate cancel culture. It has become quite hysterical and there’s a kind of witch hunt and a lack of understanding.”

These are the fundamental questions and themes being explored in Field’s two-hour-plus opus (no symphonic pun intended). Yet there are, unquestionably, many viewers who would take what is presented at face value—as “hard proof” of Lydia’s guilt. For yes, there is some obvious impropriety on her part, but we never see anything with our own eyes that fully crosses the line. Furthermore, to defend someone once they’re accused is a form of attracting one’s own career suicide. As Bonham Carter might have done by remarking of the transphobia Rowling is accused of, “It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse. Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you have to respect where people come from and their pain. You don’t all have to agree on everything—that would be insane and boring. She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s just saying something out of her own experience.”

One that, apparently, isn’t limited to a straight white woman, as another more critically-celebrated author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has spoken her own views on such matters. Back in 2021, Ngozi Adichie encountered something of a similar scenario to Lydia’s in that a former student and fellow Nigerian writer, Akwaeke Emezi, sounded the alarm bell on a reason to cancel her: for transphobia. Using much the same logic as Rowling, who Ngozi Adichie specifically named with a defensive tone, she said of trans women, “My feeling is that trans women are trans women. I think if you’ve lived in the world as a man, with the privileges the world accords to men, and then change gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are.”

The feud escalated when Ngozi Adichie then published an essay called “It Is Obscene,” detailing her past issues with both Emezi and another student (a troika permutation that mirrors what’s happening in Tár with Lydia, Francesca and Krista). Much the same way Lydia lashes out at these millennial and Gen Z fuckos, Ngozi Adichie wrote in her essay, “We have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow. I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own.”

In that aforementioned scene of Lydia talking to Whitney, it is also in this instance that we get our first glimpse of what a “toucher” Lydia is, putting her hands on Whitney’s arms as she says her goodbye (at Francesca’s urging). One then gets the continued sense that she is not hemmed in by the limitations and unspoken rules of living in a cancel culture climate while teaching the class at Juilliard. Where she “dares” to get into it with a student named Max (Zethphan Smith-Gneist) about his aversion to Bach based on identity politics. Max explains his “allergy” (as Lydia calls it) as follows: “As a BIPOC pangender person, I would say Bach’s misogynistic life makes it kind of impossible for me to take his music seriously.” In disbelief, Lydia, replies, “That’s your choice. I mean, after all, ‘a soul selects her own society.’ But remember, the flipside of that closes the valves of one’s attention.” This entire exchange very much akin to the beef between Ngozi Adichie and Emezi that sparked “It Is Obscene.” But before Lydia is willing to give up entirely on this generation, she urges Max to sit with her at the piano and play some Bach.

Alas, a mind that was born into the matrix like that simply can’t be convinced of separating the artist from the work. When he tells her that he still can’t be convinced, she pulls one of her grabbing maneuvers on him (proving, yet again, that she really is one of those “touchy-feely” people) and derides, “Don’t be so eager to be offended. The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.”

The entire time, Francesca has been sitting in the back of the room, and, as we later assume, filming Lydia to edit her worst soundbites in such a manner as to lead to a crescendo calling for her “cancellation” on the wave of Krista’s suicide. For, in the background of Lydia’s chaotic schedule, Krista has been sending “desperate” emails to Francesca, which she reports on to Lydia, who continues to instruct her to ignore them, insisting that “hope dies last” for people like her. Until it does die altogether, ergo suicide. But not before sending her a pointed gift in the form of Vita Sackville-West’s Challenge. One of the few, shall we say, free-spirited lesbians of the early twentieth century (with Virginia Woolf being her most famous “companion”), Sackville-West began the work with an ex-lover and fellow writer named Violet Keppel. It’s an overt dig at Lydia about how Krista feels they began a work together that she nipped in the bud before it could flourish. From Lydia’s point of view, though, it all seems to be a case of erotomania as she advises every orchestra conductor against hiring her.

To emphasize his point about Lydia’s ignoring of cancel culture, Field even includes a voiceover of Alec “I Shot Someone” Baldwin interviewing her as an unseen person edits Lydia’s Wikipedia page. While, sure, it could be Max in a fit of rage after the Juilliard class, the more likely culprit is Krista, whose figure we then see lurking outside of Lydia’s bourgeois apartment.

This brings us back to Francesca chatting live (as she has been since the beginning) with someone else on her phone. Sometimes, we think it’s Krista, sometimes a new cellist in the Berlin Philharmonic named Olga Metkina (Sophie Kauer). In one such moment, Francesca sends a picture of Lydia’s piano room and texts, “See what I see.” The person on the other side messages back, “Plácido Domingo’s room.” “She thinks she is being ironic.” The plot to take Lydia down, on Francesca’s part, is contingent, ultimately, on whether or not Lydia will switch out her assistant conductor, Sebastian Brix (Allan Corduner), for Francesca, who has clearly only been so willing to act as Lydia’s bitch for this very incentive.

As for details about Krista, the most important one comes out during a lunch that Lydia has with Eliot Kaplan (Mark Strong), an amateur conductor and, more consequentially, the investment banker responsible for managing her fellowship program, Accordion. After informing him that she wants to open it up beyond being a resource for female conductors only, she explains, “It feels quaint to keep things single-gender,” adding, “And honestly, we’ve had no real trouble successfully placing any of them.” Eliot reminds, “Except one.” This being the first allusion to the unhinged Krista, this invisible antagonist in Lydia’s life throughout the film. She tells Eliot, “Oh, well. She had issues.” “So I’ve heard. The topic comes up in every Citibank meeting with her father.” Thus, we’re made aware that Krista’s sense of privilege and entitlement might have a lot to do with how she handles Lydia’s rebuffing of her as both a performer and a lover.

As Lydia’s fall from grace becomes an avalanche overpowering any former recognition of her talent and brilliance, we’re reminded of what she said to Max earlier in the movie: “If Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality and so on, then so can yours.” Which means that those who were eager to tar and feather her might one day receive their own unexpected comeuppance.

Field’s decision to drop in clues that could support both perspectives on Lydia’s guilt or innocence alludes more to the former when we learn her real name is Linda Tarr. Granted, many famous people adopt a stage name, but it appears to be a way to suggest to audiences that Lydia has long been applying self-delusion daily. Perhaps not wanting to ever see or consider that her pattern of grooming younger women has been untoward. At the same time, it’s Whitney who asks for Lydia’s number, Francesca who drops none-too-subtle hints about wanting to stay over instead of meeting up with friends, Krista who becomes obsessive to the point of stalking.

When someone with power and talent rejects a younger admirer in the same field, it can be a cause of extreme fear in the climate of now. Take, for instance, Henry Cavill setting “strict boundaries” for his friendship with Enola Holmes’ leading lady, Millie Bobby Brown (also starring alongside the previously discussed Bonham Carter). Knowing full well of what it could cost his career to be deemed in any way “inappropriate” with someone so much younger. Because no matter how beloved a star might be one day, there’s nothing to protect them from being reviled the next. And, speaking of protecting, that’s exactly what Lydia does for Petra when she returns to Berlin and approaches a school bully named Johanna (Alma Löhr). It’s here that Lydia also leans into making a threat that pertains to a she said, she said phenomenon by warning, “If you tell any grown-up what I just said, they won’t believe you, because I’m a grown-up.” Perhaps she felt the same about someone like Krista, seeing her as nothing more than a “little girl” to be toyed with for her own machinations. Maybe she does get off on her power, but that’s not really a secret characteristic of people who end up in such positions.

The real issue people have, in the end, arrives when someone is “too good,” has “too much” success. For it’s coded in the DNA of human nature to want to knock an idol off a pedestal. Destroy, destroy, destroy. And, in the present, it’s all in service of ensuring that mediocrity continues to reign supreme over genuine talent. For the only talent that matters now is the “gift” of being able to politick “correctly.”