“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

Tár as complex social realism

This holiday (yes, my kids were on holiday, again, 10 day half-term) we went to visit Granny and Pappou in Cape Town. My mother has endless capacity for educational games and outings and my father has endless capacity for preparing meals and snacks, so it worked out well for all involved.

One evening we rented Tár. My mom is a great film watcher and it was on her list, and had been lauded from all quarters which always makes for an appealing film (in the same way that the extreme Left and Right hating on JK Rowling is interesting. When the extremes of society ostensibly engage with an object of culture in similar ways, you know the author, or artist, or film, is onto something. Because it unsettles everyone and points out what an epistemological, if not ontological, mess we are in across the board). 

Two paragraphs and two asides. Wow. 

Anyway, we watched Tár over two nights, because the average bedtime between the four of us is 9pm. We came away feeling dissatisfied, but also (and now I speak for myself) intrigued, the movie played on my mind for days (in the same way the Witch Trials of JK Rowling did - I should do a post on this, but I am not sure what to say about it other than it left my mind fizzing with questions, and the foam has not yet settled). 

Three paragraphs, three asides. Maybe I should write a book called “Asides”. 

My favourite quote, which sits on the wall in my passage at home, writ large on a green poster gifted to me by a friend from her travels in Rome, is from Antonio Gramsci. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” This hung in my mind after watching Tár.

Is Tár a critique of cancel culture, or does it hate on it? Is it an art film about psychological disintegration or an astute form of social realism told through one person’s subjectivity?

I think probably all of the above, which makes it a frustrating film, because it is not satisfying on any score (har har, score, music, geddit?). If unity and conclusion are what you expect from a film (not everyone does, not all art is coherent, it is often there to provoke us.) But if you view the film as a form of social realism (which I am), then it becomes more satisfying because it tells us about our world through intense focus on one person, and it demands questions of us, the viewer - and what does such a reading tell us?

It tells us that the world and humans are complex. Seems obvious, but is this not what is compelling about all good art? Why we read books that draw us back again and again to the nuances of what it means to be human? How it can go so many different ways, and isn’t that puzzling, and endlessly fascinating? 

In a portrayal that is committed to social realism, as in, depicting the world as it is, or as it appears to be, without looking for broader coherence or ontological unity, it shows how narrative unity does not exist in experience, it is imposed. We are the ones that tie those fraying threads together. This film doesn’t do this for us, and so it is frustrating, unsettling, but it is ‘real’ in the sense that life does not offer us clear reasons or conclusions, we must hunt for them. That my mind drifts over the contours of the film, asking why this or that happened or didn’t, was revealed or wasn’t, I think that alone is an argument for it being a compelling piece of art.

It also shows (through omission) the power of narrative to form our opinions. Without narrative imposition, it is very hard to know what to think about anything. And isn’t that just something worth thinking about for a while? 

So those are my two cents. I would love to hear from those of you who have watched it. What did you think? 

Here are some reviews, 3 different takes, for further reading, if you care for it. 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/26/tar-movie-cate-blanchett-digital-cancel-culture

https://slate.com/culture/2022/12/tar-cate-blanchett-movie-ending-explained-analyzed.html

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/tar-reviewed-regressive-ideas-to-match-regressive-aesthetics