TÁR (2022, Todd Field) (Patreon)

79/100

Second viewing, up from 68. One of my numerous weird self-imposed rules is that I never change a rating without rewatching the film in question, no matter how certain I feel that my opinion has since shifted. It's a good rule, to be clear: Sometimes the difference turns out to be less dramatic than I imagined (The Holy Girl jumped from 62 to 69 on second viewing, but I was ready to give it 80+ before actually sitting down), and often—as happens every single time with The Big Lebowski—taking another look merely solidifies what I'd originally thought. Movies definitely expand and contract in memory, but I always want to make certain that I'm not misremembering, inventing virtues and/or ignoring flaws. 

All of that's Ed, I'd very very very strongly suspected, since maybe a day or two after initially seeing it last October, that TÁR would eventually climb significantly higher in my estimation (and on my '22 list). Even said as much at the end of my previous review: "I may persuade myself, on second viewing, to accept Blanchett's arrestingly indomitable presence as a necessary distancing effect." That's basically what happened. This time, during scenes involving Tár's always-implicit abuses of power (and it's important to note that these by no means dominate), I conducted a thought experiment, endeavoring to picture how they'd play were the conductor in question male; by the film's midpoint, I was no longer bothering, as it was already abundantly clear that a movie about Lenox Tár (Michael Sheen) would seem a bluntly didactic instrument by comparison. What's more, declining to show any hard evidence of Tár's sexual transactions could potentially come across as vaguely exculpatory, were Tár a man, whereas creating a figure who has no obvious real-world analogue (in any profession; yes, I know there are scattered examples, but they're not even fractionally as well known as Weinstein, Spacey, Cosby, Lauer, even James Levine) makes it easier to appreciate Field's particular stroke of genius here, viz. not only focusing on raw power but demonstrating, via structural equivalence and tonal uniformity, how easy it can be to confuse the self-serving exercise of that power with the creative impulse itself. Last autumn saw a rapid mental shift from "Very impressive; not sure I love that it's about a woman, though" to "Hmm, maybe this story could only work with a female protagonist," and the concomitant upgrade just had to spend a few months awaiting official confirmation. 

My other reservations remain, however. This film did not need and in my opinion does not gain much of anything from various Mystery Elements: unidentified live-streaming cell phone shots, clicking metronome in the cupboard late at night, some woman screaming in the park, that recurring maze-like drawing, etc. I understand that they're all symbolic, à la Tár's burning-bed-in-the-swamp nightmare, but it's the sort of overdetermined art-movie affectation that bugged me in Little Children (and to a lesser degree In the Bedroom as well). Kept to a minimum here, thankfully, so third time's the charm.