TÁR 2022 Movie Review

🎼 A meticulous exploration of power, art, and the human psyche — the downfall of a charismatic conductor

🎥 Movie Overview

🎬 Title: TÁR (2022)
🌍 Country: 🇺🇸 United States
🎞️ Genre: Psychological Drama / Music / Social Commentary
🗓️ Production: Scott Rudin Productions
📢 Director: Todd Field
📺 Platform: Theatrical release and major streaming services

👩‍💼 Cast: Cate Blanchett – Lydia Tár
Noémie Merlant – Francesca Lentini
Nina Hoss – Sharon Goodnow
Sophie Kauer – Olga Metkina

🧩 In-Depth Story Analysis (Spoilers)

🎵 A symphony of power, genius, and downfall

TÁR portrays the tumultuous fall of Lydia Tár, a world-renowned classical music conductor and the first female chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. More than just a rise-and-fall narrative, the film dissects the nature of power, artistic genius versus morality, and the cultural phenomenon of cancel culture with sharp, intellectual precision.

🎼 Lydia Tár: The narcissist behind perfection

The film unfolds entirely through the perspective of Lydia Tár, immersing viewers in her meticulously controlled world.

• The paradox of gender and power: As a lesbian woman who has triumphed in a male-dominated classical world, Tár seems like a symbol of progressive identity politics. Yet ironically, she wields her authority in the most “male-coded” and destructive ways — belittling students, humiliating assistants, manipulating protégés, and using her influence for personal gratification. Her behavior epitomizes abuse of power in its purest form.

• Control and fragility: On the podium, Tár commands time and sound with surgical precision, but in her personal life, even small noises — a doorbell, a metronome, a click — unravel her composure. These auditory disturbances reveal how deeply unstable her seemingly perfect life truly is. Her obsession with control becomes her downfall, as the external “noise” of scandal mirrors her collapsing inner order.

• The myth of genius: The film never denies Tár’s artistic brilliance, but it questions whether genius can absolve personal corruption. She insists that art must be separate from the artist’s moral failures, yet her fall demonstrates how artistic prestige, when weaponized for dominance, inevitably corrodes itself.

✨ Contemporary discourse: Cancel culture and identity politics

TÁR incisively examines modern society’s most divisive themes — cancel culture and identity politics — with intellectual restraint rather than moral judgment.

• The Juilliard lecture: In an early scene, Tár challenges a transgender student who refuses to listen to Bach because he was a “misogynist.” The exchange reenacts the timeless debate — can we separate the art from the artist? — within today’s framework of identity-driven discourse, setting the tone for the film’s ideological tension.

• The digital acceleration of collapse: Tár’s downfall unfolds through rumors, social media, and digital manipulation — a critique of how technology amplifies moral hysteria. Rather than offering a moral verdict, the film maintains a cold, observational distance, portraying the chaos of public condemnation as both inevitable and dehumanizing.

• The absence of victims and ambiguity of guilt: The film never explicitly shows any sexual misconduct. Instead, we piece together fragments — emails, texts, rumors, and Tár’s paranoid reactions. This deliberate ambiguity emphasizes the uncertainty of scandal and encourages viewers to see Tár not simply as a villain, but as a product of the same power structures she once mastered.

🎶 The strange rhythm of the finale: Art after the fall

The film’s haunting final act — Tár’s return to her hometown and her surreal rebirth as a conductor — leaves a lasting echo.

• Loss of authority and isolation: After losing everything, Tár revisits her roots, watching old videos of Leonard Bernstein, her mentor and idol. The scene reminds us that her entire career was built upon the legacy of Western artistic tradition, now fractured and distant.

• The bizarre ending: Tár returns to conducting — not in Berlin, but in an Asian gaming convention, leading an orchestra for a Monster Hunter video game concert. Surrounded by cosplayers, she performs with professional precision, but the image is deeply ironic: the purest form of art reduced to commercial spectacle. It’s both tragic and darkly comic — a portrait of artistic exile in the modern age.

🪶 TÁR conceals a volcanic moral drama beneath its glacial perfection — a film about power, abuse, cancel culture, and the uneasy marriage between art and ethics. Cate Blanchett’s towering performance transforms Lydia Tár into a figure who cannot be dismissed as either hero or villain, forcing audiences to confront how power creates monsters, and how those monsters confront their own ruin. This is not merely a music film — it is a cold, brilliant study of modern power dynamics.

🎯 Personal Rating & Intimacy Level

💕 Intimacy Level: ♥♥
⭐ Rating: ★★★★