| Tár | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Todd Field |
| Written by | Todd Field |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Florian Hoffmeister |
| Edited by | Monika Willi |
| Music by | |
Production companies |
|
| Distributed by |
|
Release dates |
|
Running time | 158 minutes |
| Countries |
|
| Language | English |
| Box office | $29.3 million[1][2] |
Tár is a 2022psychological drama film written and directed byTodd Field.Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár, a world-renowned conductor, whose life unravels after she is accused of misconduct. The supporting cast includesNina Hoss,Noémie Merlant,Sophie Kauer,Julian Glover,Allan Corduner, andMark Strong.
Tár premiered at the79th Venice International Film Festival in September 2022, where Blanchett won theVolpi Cup for Best Actress. Following a three-weeklimited theatrical release, it received awide release on October 28, 2022, throughFocus Features.Tár received critical acclaim, especially for Blanchett's performance and Field's screenplay and direction. At the95th Academy Awards,Tár was nominated for 6 awards, includingBest Picture. Blanchett won theBAFTA,Golden Globe, andCritics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress, and was nominated for theAcademy Award andScreen Actors Guild Award the same category.Tár is widely regarded as one of thegreatest films of the 21st century in numerous retrospective lists published since 2023, including theNew York Times,New York,IndieWire, andRolling Stone.
Lydia Tár,chief conductor of a Berlin orchestra, heavily relies on Francesca, her personal assistant and confidante. While being interviewed byAdam Gopnik atThe New Yorker Festival, Lydia promotes her upcoming live recording ofMahler's Fifth Symphony and memoirTár on Tár. She meets with Eliot Kaplan, an investment banker and amateur conductor who co-founded the Accordion Foundation with Lydia to support aspiring female conductors. They discuss technique, replacing Lydia's assistant conductor Sebastian with Francesca, and filling a vacant cello position in Berlin.
As a guest lecturer, Lydia holds a masterclass atJuilliard. When a student expresses reluctance to studyBach due to his social views, she encourages him to focus on composers' music rather than their personal lives. The student leaves in frustration. That night, Lydia anonymously receives a first edition ofVita Sackville-West's novelChallenge with the title page embellished with a hand-drawnkené pattern, a personal reminder of her trip to Peru. She tears up the page and throws it away.
Lydia flies back to Berlin, where she lives with her wife Sharon, theconcertmaster of the orchestra, and their adopted daughter Petra. Before ablind audition for the cello position, Lydia spots a young Russian candidate, Olga Metkina, in the bathroom. Lydia changes her scorecard to ensure Olga a spot in the orchestra and proposes to the orchestra thatElgar's Cello Concerto be the companion piece to the Mahler symphony, virtually guaranteeing Olga the soloist position. Lydia's attraction to Olga strains her relationships with Francesca and Sharon.
Krista Taylor, a promising young musician whom Lydia once mentored, has beenblacklisted after a dispute with Lydia. After sending disturbing emails to Francesca, Krista ends her own life. Lydia instructs Francesca to delete the emails and hire a lawyer after learning of Krista's parents' plan to sue her. Lydia informs Sebastian of his imminent replacement. Incensed, he calls her out on her inappropriate favoritism, leading Lydia to decide against promoting Francesca.
Lydia is haunted by an increasingsensitivity to sound, surreal nightmares, daytime hallucinations, chronic pain, and enigmatic patterned scribbles resembling those Krista once made. While trying to complete a composition dedicated to Petra, she is disturbed by the sound of a medical device next door, where her neighbor is caring for her dying mother. One day, Lydia falls and hurts herself while attempting to follow Olga home, but tells Sharon she was injured in a mugging.
A manipulatively edited video of Lydia's Juilliard class goes viral, and an article accusing her of sexual predation appears in theNew York Post. Lydia's Wikipedia page is also edited by an unseen person, to include the controversial new information about her. Lydia tries to contact Francesca, who resigned after being denied the promotion. She breaks into Francesca's home and finds a draft ofTár on Tár, which Francesca has renamedRat on Rat. Lydia, accompanied by Olga, returns to New York City to attend a deposition for Krista's parents' lawsuit and to promote her book. The two are met by protestors, and Lydia is confronted with incriminating emails between her and Krista that Francesca provided.
In Berlin, Lydia is removed as conductor due to the controversy. Furious over the allegations and Lydia's lack of transparency, Sharon bars her from seeing their daughter. An increasingly depressed and deranged Lydia retreats to her old studio, sneaks into the live recording she was supposed to conduct, and runs onto the stage to assault Eliot, who replaced her as conductor. Advised to remain out of the public eye by her management, she returns to her modest childhood home onStaten Island, where she finds certificates of achievement bearing her birth name, Linda Tarr. She cries watching an oldVHS ofYoung People's Concerts in whichLeonard Bernstein discusses the meaning of music. Her brother Tony arrives and admonishes her for forgetting her roots.
Lydia moves to thePhilippines and resumes her career as a conductor. During a business trip, she asks the concierge of her hotel for a massage; misunderstanding her request, they send her to abrothel, where Lydia selects a young woman resembling Olga to be her masseuse, then runs outside to vomit upon realizing where she is. Later, she conducts a live performance of the score for the video game seriesMonster Hunter in front of an audience ofcosplayers.
It was announced in April 2021 that Blanchett would star in and executive-produce the film, which would be written and directed byTodd Field, with production set to begin in September 2021.[9][10] In a statement accompanying the teaser trailer in August 2022, Field said that he wrote the script for Blanchett, and that he would not have made the film if she had declined it.[11] In September 2021,Nina Hoss andNoémie Merlant joined the cast, andHildur Guðnadóttir became the film's composer.[12]
In an interview withThe Guardian in October,Mark Strong revealed that he had finished filming scenes for the film.[13] In November, it was reported that filming was taking place inBerlin, withSophie Kauer,Julian Glover,Allan Corduner and Sylvia Flote joining the cast.[14] (Kauer is a British-German classical cellist who studied at theRoyal Academy of Music.)[15] Alldiegetic music was recorded live on-set, including Blanchett's piano playing, Kauer's cello, and theDresden Philharmonic's performances.[16][17]
ConductorJohn Mauceri served as consultant on Field's script, helping inform the tenor and accuracy of Lydia Tár's comments on classical music and musicians.[18]
Hildur Guðnadóttir composed the original score,[19] although other music was also included, including classical music byGustav Mahler andEdward Elgar. Over 30 tracks are featured in the film.[20][21]
Aconcept album featuring 20 tracks,[22] titledTÁR (Music From And Inspired By The Motion Picture)[23][24] was released on October 21, 2022. It includes Guðnadóttir's score with theLondon Contemporary Orchestra, and a rehearsal of Mahler'sFifth Symphony with Blanchett conducting the Dresden Philharmonic,[25] as well as new music by Guðnadóttir.[22]
For the week ending November 5, 2022, theTár concept album toppedBillboard magazine'sTraditional Classical Albums at number one.[26]
In December 2022, Guðnadóttir's score was ruled ineligible for Oscar consideration, as there was not enough original, audible music, and also because it did not fulfill the rule that "a score shall not be eligible if it has been diluted by the use of pre-existing music".[27]
Tár had its world premiere at the79th Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2022,[28] and had its first North American screening at the49th Telluride Film Festival on September 3, 2022.[29] It had a limited theatrical release on October 7, 2022, then expanded to wide release on October 28.[30][14]
The film was released forVOD on November 15, 2022, followed by aBlu-ray,DVD, and4K UHD release on December 20.[31] By March 9, 2023, according toSamba TV, the film had been streamed onPeacock in 458,000 households in the US since the Oscar nomination announcement on January 24. JustWatch also reported it to be, by February 21, the third most-streamed Best Picture nominee in Canada. In the UK,BBC 2 broadcast Tár nationwide on the 14 September 2025, with a reduced running time of 150 minutes.[32][33][34]
Tár grossed $6.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $22.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $29.2 million.[2][1]
In the United States and Canada, it made $158,620 from four theaters in its opening weekend. The $39,655 per-screen average was the second highest of 2022 for a limited release. In its second weekend the film made $330,030 from 36 theaters. In its third weekend it made $500,035 from 141 theaters, and there was speculation in the trades thatTár was an example that there was still a place for "adult-minded fare".[35][36][37] However, onceTár expanded to 1,087 theaters in its fourth weekend, leaving the limited specialty house run for the multiplex, it made only $1.02 million, finishing 10th. Audiences surveyed byPostTrak over the weekend gave the film a 72% positive score, with 42% saying they would definitely recommend it.[38] In its second week of wide release, it made $729,605 (marking a drop of 30%).[39]
Some commentators attributed the poor US domestic box office performance to the film's subject matter alienating a general audience.[40] Others noted a larger trend in US art houses, 40% of which had permanently shuttered during theCOVID-19 pandemic, struggling to regain their core 40–70 year-old audience, an audience more prone to health concerns and still hesitant to return to the cinema.[41][42]The New York Times reported thatTár "cost at least $35 million including marketing," and that it and similarhighbrow films from established filmmakers such asPaul Thomas Anderson'sLicorice Pizza,Guillermo del Toro'sNightmare Alley, andSteven Spielberg'sThe Fabelmans had "failed to find an audience big enough to justify their costs".[43] 78% of the film's box office takings were overseas.[44]
OnRotten Tomatoes, 91% of 361 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads, "Led by the soaring melody of Cate Blanchett's note-perfect performance,Tár riffs brilliantly on the discordant side of fame-fueled power."[45]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 93 out of 100, based on 60 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[46]
Owen Gleiberman in his Venice Film FestivalDaily Variety review wrote:
Let me say right up front: It's the work of a master filmmaker ... Field's script is dazzling in its conversational flow, its insider dexterity, its perception of how power in the world actually works ...Tár is not a judgement so much as a statement you can make your own judgment about. The statement is: We're in a new world.[47]
A. O. Scott ofThe New York Times writing from theTelluride Film Festival and later from theNew York Film Festival stated:
I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie quite likeTár. Field balances Apollonian restraint with Dionysian frenzy.Tár is meticulously controlled and also scarily wild. Field finds a new way of posing the perennial question about separating the artist from the art, a question that he suggests can only be answered by another question: are you crazy? We don't care about Tár because she's an artist. We care about her because she's art.[48][49]
Justin Chang for theLos Angeles Times regarded the film as:
"Both a superb character study and a highly persuasive piece of world building", stating that the director's "storytelling draws no artificial distinction between the big and the small, the important and the mundane; everything we see and hear matters.[50]Tár is irreducible, and it is great."[51]
Alissa Wilkinson, writing forVox, observed:
"Not to be hyperbolic, but it might be perfect. Todd Field has tuned his themes so brilliantly. You can’t just half-watchTár, it demands your full attention. That’s the mark of good art, but it’s a discipline so many contemporary films aren’t willing to demand from audiences. And if you’re honest with yourself, you don’t just watchTár; it watches you, too.”[52]
Reviewing the film forThe Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney wrote:
Tár marks yet another career peak for Blanchett—many are likely to argue her greatest—and a fervent reason to hope it's not sixteen more years before Field gives us another feature. It's a work of genius.[53]
Anthony Lane ofThe New Yorker stated:
To what extent she is a proven predator; how much she deserves to be preyed upon, in turn, by the gluttons of public indignation; and why, despite everything, she should enjoy our lingering sympathy in a way that a middle-aged man in her position would not: such issues will, no doubt, be aired and contested in due course. Field is wise enough to reserve judgment. It would be dead wrong, though, to considerTár as a kind of op-ed made flesh.[54]
Lane's colleagueRichard Brody disagreed and argued in his capsule review thatTár was:“a regressive film that takes bitter aim at so-calledcancel culture and lampoons so-calledidentity politics." Brody laments Field's "absence of style" in filming the music and he accuses the film of "conservative button-pushing" with a narrow aesthetic, failing to achieve dramatic unity.[55]
Martin Scorsese presenting Field with the2022 New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Film of the Year, said,
For so long now, so many of us see films that pretty much let us know where they're going ... I mean, they take us by the hand and, even if it's disturbing at times, sort of comfort us along the way that it will be all okay by the end. Now this is insidious, as one can get lulled into this and ultimately get used to it, leading those of us who've experienced cinema in the past – as much more than that – to become despairing of the future of the art form, especially for younger generations. But that's on dark days. The clouds lifted when I experienced Todd's film,Tár. What you've done, Todd – is that the very fabric of the movie you created doesn't allow this. All the aspects of cinema and the film that you've used, attest to this ... conveyed through a masterful mise-en-scène, as controlled, precise, dangerous, precipitous angles and edges geometrically kind of chiseled into wonderful frame compositions. The limits of the frame itself, and the provocation of measured long takes all reflecting the brutal architecture of her soul – Tár's soul.[56]
Paul Thomas Anderson presenting Field with the Director Medallion at the 75th annual DGA Awards said,
Every detail matters in this film. Nothing is not deliberate or full of intention. It's directed with such perfectly controlled mayhem and glee by Todd, it's really hard not to drool as another director. He made a film which for some years was considered a very dirty word, he made anart film. But it's art that's not fussy or pretentious. Just razor-sharp, pitch black, and hilarious. A very focused mirror held up to some of the worst of our human behaviors. It's also a blast.[57]
In an interview withThe Sunday Times, conductorMarin Alsop shared her dislike of the film, calling it "anti-woman", saying "I was offended: I was offended as a woman, I was offended as a conductor, I was offended as a lesbian. To have an opportunity to portray a woman in that role and to make her an abuser – for me that was heartbreaking."[58] In response, Blanchett toldBBC Radio 4, the film was a "meditation on power, and power is genderless", and that while her character shares similarities with Alsop, it is a complete work of fiction.[59]
Writing inThe Guardian, conductorAlice Farnham thanked Blanchett, Field, and the film for "taking up the baton for female conductors", and for normalising their image.[60] Critic Emily Bootle also defended the film in thei newspaper writing: "This is a film about power [but] sometimes we have to tolerate grey areas."[61] Film criticsMark Kermode andSimon Mayo also disagreed with the interpretation thatTár is "anti-woman."[62]
Writing forTime,Stephanie Zacharek went further: "Tár doesn't offer anything as comfortable as redemption, and it asks us to fall in love, at least a little, with a tyrant. ... Lydia Tár ... knows that the power of a question is greater than that of a slogan."[63]
Music professorIan Pace discussed the issue inThe Conversation: "It would be rash to assume that such a figure could never act in a predatory and exploitative manner. This is not just an issue of identity, but power and the opportunities it provides for the reckless."[64] Conductor Don Baton (a pen name) inCity Journal agreed.[65]
Film criticJohn McDonald for theAustralian Financial Review wrote: "Had it been a male conductor, the story would have been a cliché. Had it been a celebration of female power, it would have been no less superficial ... Field has taken the 'Maestro myth' that portrays the conductor as a kind of hypermale and shown that the same issues may apply to a woman."[66][67] Several other conductors and musicians wrote in defense of the film.[68]
Yo Yo Ma toldindiewire "Todd has created such a striking film. Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár demands that we wrestle with two of art’s most difficult questions: what gives art its power and what role does power play in art?"[69]
Jonathan Franzen praised the film inDaily Variety saying, "Todd's grammar of screenwriting is closer to a novel's than to a play's. What makesTár a great work of art is that there's not a single generic moment to be found in it."[70]
In her critique forThe New York Review of Books titled "The Instrumentalist", prize-winning novelist and professorZadie Smith commended Cate Blanchett's performance,[71] and the classroom scene at theJuilliard School was described byA. O. Scott as "a mini-course in the dos and don'ts of contemporary pedagogy."[72][73]
CriticAmanda Hess wrote inThe New York Times, "The online cancellation of an artistic giant can be a tedious subject, but inTár, it acquires sneaky complications ...Tár offers up a work into which we can sublimate our ownSchadenfreude and sympathy for abusers. Thanks to Blanchett's luminous performance and Field's puzzle-box storytelling, we are freed to obsess."[74]
Film critic Howie Movshovitz,[75] critic and essayist Philippa Snow (ArtReview),[76] Murielle Joudet (Le Monde)[77] and Guillaume Orignac (Cahiers du Cinéma) draw attention to the film's creative open-endedness, allowing audiences to draw their own conclusions about its significance and meaning.[78]
The New York Times columnistMichelle Goldberg argued thatTár is "a film aboutcancel culture, making it the rare piece of art that looks squarely at this social phenomenon that has roiled so many of America's meaning-making institutions ...Tár demonstrates that all this flux and uncertainty is very fertile territory for art. Hopefully its success – many are predicting it will win a Best Picture Oscar – will encourage others to take on similarly thorny and unsettled issues. Hysteria about cancel culture can encourage artistic timidity by overstating the cost of probing taboos. In truth, there's a hunger out there for work that takes the strangeness of this time and turns it into something that transcends polemic."[79] Similarly, Ara Osterweil inArt Forum wrote, "Todd Field's brilliant character study (...) suggest(s) that the ritual excommunications of cancel culture may be as exaggerated as the generic fantasies enacted by Tár’s gamer audience."[80]
Austrian musicologist and anthropologist Bernd Brabec alleged that part of Lydia Tár's biography read aloud byAdam Gopnik mines hisCV.[81][82] In response, Brabec wrote an open letter[83] to director Todd Field. In the letter, Brabec takes offence at the film mirroring particulars of his academic background and criticizes what he characterized as unfortunately minimal and shallow treatment of theShipibo-Konibo people in the plot of the film. However, Amanda M. Smith, associate professor of Latin American and Culture at theUniversity of California wrote inReVista, theHarvard Review of Latin America, "Shipibo-Konibo cosmovision is not merely decorative in the film. It organizes the narrative's internal conflicts and revealsTár as a tale of shamanic justice in a world where theGlobal North continues to take from the Global South."[84]
Writing inArt Forum, Ara Osterweil took issue with her colleagueAmy Taubin’s critique of the film as being “carelessly racist” in depicting Tár’s fall from grace in the "filthy streets and decaying buildings of an unnamed Southeast Asian country.”[85] Osterweill states “Amy Taubin has denounced the film’s Orientalist reduction of Asia to the equivalent of nowhere. Yet I would like to defend Tár’s problematic ending as self-consciously racist and deliberately ridiculous. Radically departing from the style of the rest of the film. By racially highlighting the power inequities that underlie the composer’s erotic economy, the film shows that Tár’s supposedly rarefied communion with other geniuses is as predictable as the behavior of the politically correct, moderately talented “robots” she despises. It is a powerful moment of recognition for viewers—and of self-recognition for the character. Only by camping his film’s style to the point of parody can Field suggest that the ritual excommunications of cancel culture may be as exaggerated as the generic fantasies enacted by Tár’s gamer audience. While this unnamed Asian country is indeed stereotyped as exotic, the Western-centric composer confirms her valuation of music above all by seizing her new podium with a seriousness befitting the most esteemed Occidental stage.”[86]
Because the film was released in the United Kingdom in January 2023,Tár was included inSight and Sound's Best Films of 2023,[87] and sat atop the polls ofNew Statesman[88] andTime Out, with Phil de Semlyen ofTime Out writing "Blanchett's Oscar-nominated performance has rightly earned the lion's share of plaudits, but the superb acting is buoyed by Field's subtly off-kilter visual style, lending the 'ripped from the headlines' narrative a hint ofKubrickian uncanniness."[89]The Guardian also choseTár as best film of the year, with critic Wendy Ide writing, “Todd Field's creation of the magnificent, monstrous fictional conductor Lydia Tár, inhabited down to the last shred of cruelty and ambition by the remarkable Cate Blanchett, is exceptional: a savage, slippery account of rampant narcissism brought down to earth.”[90] In April 2024 the historianSimon Heffer, expressing his opinion inThe Sunday Telegraph, wroteTár is "the finest American film of the century."[91]
Lydia Tár was featured in theFamily Guy Halloween special episode "A Little Fright Music", which aired on October 6, 2025.[92]
The March 2023 issue ofNew York magazine listedTár alongsideCitizen Kane,Sunset Boulevard,Dr. Strangelove,Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,The Conversation,Nashville,Taxi Driver,The Elephant Man,Pulp Fiction,There Will Be Blood,Roma, andIn the Bedroom, also directed by Field, as "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars".[93]
The March 2024 issue ofIndieWire listedTár, andIn the Bedroom, also directed by Field, as "Best Picture Nominees that Deserved to win the Oscar", stating, "Todd Field's portrait of the talent and ego of a world-renowned conductor is some of the most riveting and ambitious filmmaking in recent memory.Tár feels like a movie people will be talking about and debating long after the ceremony where it lost fades from memory."[94] The June 2025 issue ranked the film at number 4 on its list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 2020s (So Far)."[95]
In June 2025, filmmakerMatthew Weiner named it one of his favorite films of the 21st century.[96] That same month, it ranked at number 67 onThe New York Times' list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century" and number 68 on the "Readers' Choice" edition of the list.[97][98]
In July 2025, it ranked number 43 onRolling Stone's list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century."[99]
Among other accolades,Tár received sixAcademy Award nominations, includingBest Picture,Best Director,Best Actress for Blanchett,Best Original Screenplay,Best Cinematography, andBest Film Editing.[100]
