Anyone else see this?
I ask because there's zero chance anybody I know irl would have seen this?
Any good takes?
I'm still trying to figure out my take. Bad part is it was too...boring...to watch twice. Good but...slow.
Anyway this entire world of cultured urban elite professional is so entirely alien that it was kind of awkward to watch. I don't even own a suit, I will never see a prestigious orchestra anywhere but YouTube. Even if I like classical music, which I do, these trappings make it clear it's not FOR ME.
the way these NPR rich libs are so just elite about something as raw as music. The scene where she had to help the disabled woman back in her chair and immediately went home to wash herself. They might work in passion for a profession but these people are sooo sterile.
It's attitude on cancel culture is something I'm still trying to work out. Lydia lecturing the zoomer student looked like something theys post on redscarepod. Then they slowly revealed that she was a groomer. I liked that. You wouldn't automatically put up your defense mechanisms, they convinced you she was a villain
I’ve heard compelling arguments that the movie is told from Lydia’s unreliable perspective, so the zoomer student is a caricature of people asking for more inclusion in the classical canon, literally just Ben Shapiro owning 18 year olds. People in the theater clapped after that scene, which was a good reminder that a lot of people are shitheads.
I also kind of love that all the concern about people thinking Lydia Tar is a real person reveals how irrelevant the classical music world is to most people.
there's a difference between wanting inclusion outside the western canon (cool, good) and saying out of hand that you won't deign to listen to bach qua-his being a cis-white man (incredibly lame, bad).
Bach wasn't even that bad of a person either. Like, he was just a German (which sure, unforgivable, but at least he wasn't French) Protestant who had a lot of kids. Maybe he was racist or something but we don't actually know a lot about him, he didn't really leave much writing or letters or anything. I totally get trying to exclude somebody like Wagner from the canon for obvious reasons, even if I ultimately disagree, but Bach is just such a weird one to choose.
Well yeah. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone actually make that argument, especially a Juilliard student lol. It’s the kind of straw man that very concerned people feel the need to argue against though. And I think it’s a valid reading of the film that Lydia Tar has main character syndrome and we only see her perception of the world and she thinks that that’s what the student is saying.
told from Lydia’s unreliable perspective, so the zoomer student is a caricature of people asking for more inclusion in the classical canon, literally just Ben Shapiro owning 18 year olds
Although the scene does seem like her fantasy of Owning the Libs, I don't think that means it's told from her unreliable perspective, as the rest of the film does show her being shitty. It's already easy for a powerful adult to "control the narrative" in real life vs. unprepared eighteen-year-olds, which is exactly what Shapiro and his ilk (Crowder, etc) specialize in
yep. and notice that the original scene is presented uncut, while the cancellation causing video is edited in the least charitable/most libelous way possible.
my memory of the movie is hazy since it’s been a few months but I don’t remember her being portrayed as shitty outright until the circumstances became absolutely untenable. I also went into the movie knowing nothing at all and was kind of figuring it out along the way lol. But I can’t make sense of how the climactic scenes are filmed other than the viewer is only seeing Lydia Tar’s reality.
I also kind of love that all the concern about people thinking Lydia Tar is a real person reveals how irrelevant the classical music world is to most people
wait she isn't?
Lydia Tar is real, they're confusing Tar and Mahler. Gustav Mahler is a psychotic hallucination of Lydia Tar.
I thought Tar was brilliant as well, reminded me of a Haneke film where he makes these portraits of miserable petty bourgeois people and then reveals how depraved and disgusting they are. If you liked this kind of film The Piano Teacher, also about this same kind of stuffy and insular world of haute classical musicians, is fantastic. I also thought it was funny how Lydia Tar loves Mahler and dismisses a lot of the more modern classical pieces I love; her comments about serialism made me want to fight her. Mahler is such a bore to me, and in the classical music world of today if somebody talked like Lydia Tar I'd think she's a loser because her taste is just really boring.
I will say, as a member of that "cultured urban elite professional" world you should absolutely just go see a prestigious orchestra if there's one near you. It's not at all like that as an audience member. Tickets are cheap (like $20 if you're under 60, these orchestras desperately try to get younger audience members), I wear normal clothes (jeans and a t-shirt), nobody gives a shit about culture, most of the audience members "accidentally" clap in between movements and it's not a big deal, people are just there to see some of the best musicians on the planet play some soul wrenching music.
piano teacher is a clear comp, but field has infinitely more sympathy for blanchett than haneke has for huppert. i don't really feel like the directors are coming from the same places at all.
I think I agree in that it felt like Field was trying to make me have sympathy for Tar on some level, but in the context of how disgusting and pathetic she is it didn't land for me in the slightest and I just viewed her like Haneke views his characters anyway. I think you can read it as a Haneke-like film because, despite the director's best efforst, it still comes across that way.
well, then, if you make Tar, it will read similar to haneke.
but haneke's interest is a scathing critique about the bourgeoise (i'd agree with you on that), all the way through. and though field notices and presents the (evil)constitutive power of the elite/hierarchy (it creates Tar/destroys Lydia, and those around her), he's more compassionate, more interested in opening a space for discussion/thinking (rather than polemic), and, on a substantive level, finds something valuable in high culture. (obviously the ending is a big goof on lydia: she's reduced conducting video game scores (and she can't even dictate the tempo) -- she's been flattened and humiliated. and yet, she is someone with great integrity (in at least a narrow way) and great passion for music-- she focuses on that score as if it were mahler. and she's presented as the alternative to our current cultural horizon: dorks cosplaying monster hunter.)
you certainly can have your feeling on the characters, but i couldn't imagine watching lydia in her childhood room, watching the bernstein tapes, realizing that her purported tutelage from bernstein, which she previously had just droned on and on about, is just those public television productions, realizing that she's a fraud as much as any fucking annoying zoomer, that everything is self-made narrative/fiction, that she had to alienate herself from her childhood memories wherein she fell in love with music, i couldn't imagine watching that not feeling sympathy for her.
Yeah see that whole scene did not land for me even though I totally get what you're saying. Just didn't work, just made me think she was more sad since she even changed her name just to create this persona that has now fallen apart. This is a personal flaw I think but I was basically revealing in Lydia's downfall for the last third of the film. Good analysis though, I'm just much more cynical so I find Fields attempts ultimately unconvincing.
I’m just much more cynical
haneke might suit you then lol (also dig him, Cache esp.)
ok well that was actually a vacation idea I was having.
My family, we always went to like myrtle beach for vacation but what I want to do is go to a real city and sample the arts.
I wouldn't fit in though.
It's two fold. First there's the part with the suits. I'd feel completely out of place at a classical concert. (the movie also made me feel this way. Half the references Lydia made went over my head. Classical music itself is like this, pieces have allusions to other pieces)
Then there's the part where I go back home to my job at the hillbilly shop and people say "so what'd you do on your vacation", oh yeah I went to see Mahler at the Met. I can't share it with anybody.
Art is communicative and person-to-person. It's about sharing. Lydia's world is a highly highly gatekept garden of exclusions. She decides to impose auditions on a solo that didn't need auditions. Is she an artist or is she a gatekeeper?
Lydia is a gatekeeper for sure, but I promise you you wouldn't feel out of place at like the NY Philharmonic. It's just normally dressed people. If you wear a suit to a concert it's kind of weird unless it's like opening night to an opera at the Met. The actual world of classical music wants more people to listen, it's actively trying to be accessible and easy for you to go to a concert and have a nice time. Nobody will think you're out of place, everybody will be happy you're there.
I really really enjoyed it. I agree that it felt too boring on the first watch. I think the length and the slow-burn pacing of the first two acts made it feel a bit listless, but I think in retrospect with the ending I re-evaluate that opinion.
What I really enjoyed was the NPR-ness you describe. I played trumpet for ~8 years (mostly jazz) and enjoy some classical music, so I spent the first half of the film feeling like an imposter - like there was some validity to their elitism, but I didn't have the experience or knowledge to really understand it. I maintained that opinion through the end of the film, thinking it was trying to make a statement about cancel culture; that it does sometimes deprive the public of genius. like maybe the people we admire from history with f'ed up personal lives wouldn't be remembered today because of cancel culture.
but the longer i sat with it, i thought the opposite. tar's importance/genius was just NPR-lib navel-gazing. on real examination, it is as you say, they do convince you she was a villain. what's more, she was so self-assured that she never could admit it to herself and felt victimized throughout. I think my favorite scene was her being disgusted at the brothel at the end. just a sort of perfect summary of the way liberalism is disgusted at overt exploitation but content with it being abstracted. she was content using her position and power to exploit the women working for/trying out for her, but disgusted at the notion of purchasing sex.
Honestly, i am kind of torn with the best picture going to EEAAO. I thought it was deserving, for sure, but i was really impressed with Tar and i thought Triangle of Sadness was a hoot. Still have to see banshees, so
okay but there was no way Triangle was going to clinch it
spoiler
10 minutes of piss and shit & sick, plus utterly unqualified rage at the bourgeois
frankly im amazed it was nommed
i was honestly cackling like a hyena during that scene, its a shame it never stood a chance
same but i was in a very upscale theatre so i think my party were the only ones losing it
The second half was like "yeah but the proletariat would behave the same way if they had the power". Not saying we won't, just the movie didn't acknowledge that it would actually be cool and good
the movie didn’t acknowledge that it would actually be cool and good
eh they thoroughly establish the bourgeois (and male) characters as utter shits so the turnabout seems fair. what it really is about is material conditions and hierarchy---how hierarchies can develop from people simply having a needed/desired skill in strenuous conditions;see every military dictatorship established by a victorious general.
and also that people that originate from hierarchical society and lacking revolutionary imagination will recreate a class society, just with them at the top, given the opportunity
I liked it. The pacing reminded me of some other good films such as Blow-Up, The Conversation, and I'm Thinking of Ending Things in that the first two acts play out slowly with the thread of paranoia throughout, and then becomes increasingly "fast" and disjointed in the third act in essentially a nightmare (in this case, of her own making).
Just from hearing about the movie beforehand, I was worried it was going to be a Very Special Episode about cancel culture, but it's of course not really that because she definitely did that shit, and most of the drama plays out in her relationships to other characters moreso than on a public stage, for example Lydia's wife seeing her flirt with the younger Russian violinist.
Also, the ending reveal was really funny
Elitism as a theme is interesting and I don't think I'm smart enough to really expand on it, maybe I'll pick more up on the second watch. Obviously, as you said, this movie takes place in a world where 99% of us wouldn't fit in. It shows later in the film how Lydia crafted her name and image as part of her social climbing, and she does some Machiavellian scheming to stay on top.
Something I actually would add about class is that some characters such as Francesca, Olga, (and Krista) exist in these elite circles but show no evidence of being rich or well-connected, so they are at the mercy of the actually wealthy and powerful people such as Tár to advance their careers, which does say something about class and power.
think the film lends itself to a more conservative reading than settler-heads could entertain. but / because of this, it's very good.
I realized that Monster Hunter is the most undignified video game series. The ending wouldn't have worked with Elden Ring or Final Fantasy or even an American shooter like COD, because all of those demand some kind of respect. Meanwhile Monster Hunter is a fundamentally goofy game with pretensions at grandioseity, which just makes it even more silly.
Tar 2: Lydia Tar is now a Monster Hunter streamer :frothingfash: about cancel culture and WOKE MEDIA.
From what I know it’s American Psycho for classical music, is that correct?
Kind of, but the key is Lydia Tar is also a girlboss.
I loved the movie. could say (so much) more but I would simply offer that it's a black comedy/satire and a character study, not really a Serious Prestige Movie About Cancel Culture(tm), and that it has a great ending
Will's right that the entire "cancel culture" scene feels like an argument you have in the shower, and it's probably intended to communicate how the character sees herself more than what happened.
Others have talked about how it's a good satire of the self delusion of rich libs.
I will say that you can in fact get cheap tickets to "Elite" classical music, especially in Europe but in most Anglo cities too.
Most places have cheap rush tickets, and La Scala's gods tickets that you pick up an hour or so before are famously 20 euro.
I'm gonna try to rewatch it with the unreliable narrator interpretation in mind. Ultimately I think it was a solid performance from blanchett but my biggest take is that I am completely fucking over movies about poor sad rich white people.
so like when your burn things theres a residue that can amalgamate on surfaces :very-smart:
Spoilers in the fucking post please you Yankee doodle troglodyte. I wanted to enjoy my slop and now it's cold.
Not really a movie where spoilers matter except maybe a couple things not mentioned in the post
