BEFORE: I've fallen a bit behind, because Tuesday I had to work a long day, almost 14 hours at the theater, but I'm not even supposed to talk about the screening. It's all very hush-hush. Look, I don't care as long as I get the hours, the whole month of January is kind of dead over there because the spring semester hasn't started yet, so I'll take whatever shifts they give me. You'd think there would be a ton of guild screenings, because Oscar nominations haven't been announced yet, so there SHOULD be a push to get as many Academy members as possible to see every film that wants attention, but I think by now every film is posted in the Academy "screening room", which is virtual, so it's probably much easier for people to just sign in and stream every eligible movie. I've done that in previous years to catch a stray documentary or two that I really wanted to see, but I don't do much of that any more, really I don't have to when most films are streaming somewhere.
Today's film is kind of a holdover from LAST year's Oscars, it got 6 nominations, including Best Picture, also Cate Blanchett and director Todd Field were nominated, but it didn't win any Oscars. Still, 6 nominations is not nothing, so there's probably reason enough to watch this, even though I'd rather be watching "Maestro", one of THIS year's likely Oscar nominees.
Cate Blanchett carries over from "The School for Good and Evil".
THE PLOT: Set in the international world of Western classical music, the film centers on Lydia Tár, considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors and the very first female director of a major German orchestra.
AFTER: Man, what a strange year it's been for linking movies. I'm not saying it's been difficult, just a bit challenging - if I'd set out to link a Norwegian romantic drama with a Holocaust drama set in the UK and Poland, with a mob comedy set in Italy, and then a music-based drama set in Germany, I would have said that was impossible. And then to go through a Disney film, a stop-motion animated movie, a documentary about sheltered NYC kids and the Motley Crue biopic? That's not normal, right? You'd think this couldn't be done, but I've done exactly that. You can just feel that it's going to be a very weird year, right? And I've still got "The Whale", "The Machine", "Babylon" and "Strays" coming up before the end of the month, along with a few more surprises.
Maybe the linking is telling me something, though, by making me watch this one before I get to "Maestro". What I know about that one is that Leonard Bernstein was a complicated man, he was married and had a daughter but well, you know. I won't use the phrase that I heard Bradley Cooper say after a screening because I'd have to censor it, but yeah, he kind of laid it on the line. How did someone maintain a very public image, have something akin to a normal marriage, and then also have a number of younger (I assume) male lovers? He made that work somehow, and now we all want to know how. "Why" would be another question, but I'll settle for an examination of "How", and then the larger question then becomes whether we have to adjust our personal definition of "normal" to explain the behaviors of certain people, or perhaps there is no "normal" at all, and then we have to reconcile that.
Millions of people manage to make monogamy work, at least for periods of time, and generally our society considers that the gold standard, but is it? Everything has an expiration date, every relationship that seems to stand the test of time still ends at some point, and we just don't know for any given person if they did remain faithful, or if they were just good at covering up their affairs or dalliances. Then far on the other end, you've got bands like Motley Crue, who didn't even TRY to be faithful to their wives or girlfriends, because, you know, it's life on the road, there are groupies all around, so they fall into a routine where they cheat all the time, just do whatever they want whenever they want, and deal with the consequences later, if at all. Sure, that doesn't sound very healthy, but still, some people live that way just because they're famous, and they feel like the rules don't apply to them.
Then you throw the whole LGBTQ thing into the mix, and things tend to become even more confusing. There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, where prevailing wisdom said that gay people just weren't capable of monogamy, or forming lasting relationships akin to marriage, and so as a result most U.S. states didn't recognize gay marriage, some didn't even consider domestic partnerships as legal. It's only been TEN YEARS since gay marriage has been legal on the federal level, though obviously states like Massachusetts and California were far ahead on that curve. But just a decade ago, U.S. citizens could be married to each other and then travel to a state that didn't recognize the legality of their union. That's still kind of mind-boggling, right? So now you have to wonder if conservatives will keep trying to undo that, like they did with the abortion laws, which would be a similar re-interpretation of the laws and the Constitution, but you can't say it can't be done.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, we find the character of Lydia Tár, this fictional orchestra conductor who was allegedly Bernstein's protege, and just keeping her position and reputation intact is bound to be a challenge in these troubling times. She's in a position of power because she has some kind of say in which orchestra hires which conductor, she's always traveling on the classical music circuit, so she's always living out of a suitcase, or doing a year's residency in Cleveland or Paris or Moscow, so there's that "life on the road" thing, combined with the feeling that for the top stars in any field, maybe the rules don't apply. She's got a wife in Germany, and they raise a daughter together, but how is that even possible when Lydia lives in other cities and is always traveling? So even though we don't SEE it for the majority of the film, we can kind of read between the lines and figure out that maybe this person just does what she wants with whoever she wants whenever she wants, so maybe she's bisexual or asexual or pansexual or just doesn't care for labels at all. Or maybe she's so busy she doesn't even have time.
But when a former member of her female-forward conducting training program commits suicide, there are hints that maybe there was something between that woman and Lydia, but the movie's going to take about two hours to just hint at this, and settle in, because it's going to be a while before we get anything more than that. In the meantime, she's going to spend time working with the Berlin orchestra, rehearsing for a live recording of the ninth of Mahler's nine symphonies, they've already recorded EIGHT and there's just one to go, provided nothing goes wrong. (Yes, it's the NINTH in a series, but it's Mahler's FIFTH symphony, because they saved the hardest one for last, or something.)
And so Ms. Tår has a lot of complex relationships with a variety of women, it seems. There's her wife in Berlin, who is also the first chair violin and concertmaster, so that's got to be complicated and awkward, so say the least. Then there's Francesca, her companion and assistant/manager/fixer, aka the "work wife", and we're not really sure what's going on between them, if anything, maybe nothing, except that Lydia seems to be stringing her along, promising her a conductor job down the road somewhere, yet always determining that she's "not ready". Ok, so when will she BE ready? Maybe never, if her services as work wife are still needed. And then a new young cellist joins the orchestra to help perform Mahler's Fifth, and suddenly Lydia wants to do a cello-forward piece (Elgar's Cello Concerto) as the b-side on the album. Clearly Lydia has her eye on the young female cellist, and given a chance it seems like this is someone she could have an affair with, if she could find the time and also get away with it.
But there isn't enough time, because the news breaks about that woman from the conducting program who committed suicide, because she'd been strung along herself for years and was never offered a proper conducting job, and essentially got blacklisted. But she also made accusations about how Lydia used her power for sexual favors, maintained control over inferiors and manipulated people to get whatever she wanted in return, and it's a bit unclear if all this was true, or the accusation was made in retaliation for the blacklisting, or vice versa. It's a version of the #metoo movement but with lesbians, and I don't think we had this in the real world because it was all about taking down the patriarchy and getting guys like Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose out of television. So what does all this suggest, that this sort of thing takes place in the world, but we haven't seen fit to deal with it yet? Do we know of any women who used their positions of power this way? I mean, if we're going to work toward a society where men and women are equal, that has to be a double-edged sword, and what's wrong for powerful men has to be wrong for powerful women, too, that's only fair. Or is it?
When gay marriage became the law of the land, I joked that I was fine with it, as long as there was also gay divorce. Same idea, you have to take the bad with the good, you can't have all the benefits of marriage without also dealing with the potential consequences. And that is what happened, but I'd like to see some stats on whether divorce is more prevalent among gays or straights, just for my own edification, it wouldn't really mean anything. But I think we're rapidly approaching a world in which that doesn't even matter, that up-and-coming generation looks like they're going to rewrite all of the old gender rules anyway.
So, I don't really know exactly what to DO with this one, maybe because it's so damn enigmatic about what happened before and therefore we can't ever really know what's happening in the NOW, let alone what comes later, but that's not really my fault, maybe throw me a bone and let a few facts creep into your storyline, that's all I'm saying. But congratulations are in order, umm, I guess, for women and LGBTQ people because if you can make it to the top in your field, you can also be removed from power, and that's, umm, progress? I think? Some examples would be Hillary Clinton, George Santos, I don't know, Kevin Spacey? You achieved, you made it, and then you all got cancelled - but let's not overlook the part where you MADE IT, at least for a time. Am I reading this right? I'm not sure. The closest real-world analog to Lydia is probably James Levine, former music director of the NY Metropolitan Opera, who was terminated from his position in 2018 because of sexual abuse allegations from several young male musicians, but he died in 2021.
Future generation, there's a message for you here, too - umm, I think. Don't get so caught up in your BIPOC pangender studies that you dismiss famous composers from the past, like, say, J.S. Bach, just because he was a white hetero cisgender male who had about 87 kids. It was a different time, OK? The future may belong to all races, all genders, all orientations and identities, but there was a past, too and the past is right now a lot longer than our future feels like it's going to be. You can hate the patriarchy, but we're all here because of it. You can hate the artist and still love the art, or something like that. I'll admit a lot of the classical stuff was over my head, I only learned enough about composers from my mother to be able to answer most of the questions they ask on "Jeopardy!"
Speaking of questions, I still have a few. What is it about very successful people that makes them think they're above the rules? Or is that just human nature, to want what you have and then just a bit more? Do they act this way because of their position and power, or are they all just looking for the next thing, and taking advantage of the opportunities that come their way because of their fame? Are the most successful people more prone to addiction and abuse of power, or do we just learn more about their misdeeds because they're in the spotlight? Also, ain't there no decency left? Just wondering. The film's ending was also very enigmatic, but I think after reading the "Trivia" section on the film's IMDB page that I understand it. Mostly.
There's a great Easter Egg for Lucasfilm fans, in a few scenes Lydia hangs out with her old friend, Andris, who's played by Julian Glover. So for a while there are TWO actors who played villains in different Indiana Jones films ("Last Crusade" and "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull") sharing the screen, and they're playing long-time friends! How cool...
Also starring Noémie Merlant, Adam Gopnik, Sylvia Flote, Sydney Lemmon (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Mark Strong (last seen in "Murder Mystery 2"), Zethphan Smith-Gneist, Nina Hoss (last seen in "The Contractor"), Mila Bogojevic, Julian Glover (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Allan Corduner (last seen in "Mr. Nobody"), Sophie Kauer, Lee R. Sellars, Nicolas Hopchet, Kitty Watson, Jessica Hansen, Alma Löhr, Dorothea Plans Casal, Fabian Dirr, Jan Wolf, Peter Hering, Artjom Gilz (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Han Lai, Tilla Kratochwil, Marie-Lou Sellem (last seen in "Charlie's Angels" (2019)), Marie-Anne Fliegel (last seen in "The Reader"), Lydia Schamschula, Alexandra Montag, Rose Knox-Peebles, Jasmine Leung, Sam Douglas (last seen in "Colombiana"), Christoph Tomanek, Vincent Riotta (last seen in "The Two Popes"), Vivian Full (last seen in "The Bubble"), Ed White (last seen in "Mamma Mia!"), Lucie Pohl, Pattarawadee Thiwwatpakorn, Parami Mingmitpatanakun, and the voice of Alec Baldwin (last seen in "My Best Friend's Girl") and archive footage of Leonard Bernstein.
RATING: 6 out of 10 screams in the forest (WTF?)
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