Tár

Orchestra conductor Lydia Tár is an asshole. Sure she’s talented and yes, she’s smart. But she’s shitty to everyone around her but her 8-year-old daughter, and even then it’s touch-and-go. There are long, long scenes of her being awful to her music students and abusing her power by favoring young, potential hook-ups. She’s shitty to her co-workers and her neighbors. She’s both obsessed with and derides youth and new points of view. Her bout of writer’s block is well-deserved and eventually she melts down all together. Blanchett is always good, but this is not much different from her typical Blue Jasmine-esque uptight basket-cases. The point of the movie seems to be: even if you spend two and a half hours burning all your bridges, you still get to do what you love as long as you move far, far away. I didn’t really get this, and I’m not really impressed.