“I think about Lydia as being the right person at the wrong time,” the actor says.
“In a way, the film is all about time.”
Conductors shape time literally, with their hands or a baton.
‘TÁR’.Focus Features
It’s what makes the film especially provocative.
That’s not to say Lydia doesn’t have it coming.
But he also admits it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Focus Features
The movie isn’t the kind that often comes from Hollywood, or anywhere, really.
(It was financed by Focus Features.)
“And she said nothing.
Cate Blanchett in ‘Tár’.Focus Features
But she had no idea that I was writing for her, nor did anyone else.”
Blanchett calls the role a feast.
“And then, Todd’s ideas for casting were just I was absolutely thrilled by them.”
She took piano lessons.
She trained in the choreography of conducting.
She learned to do all these things together in long, extended takes.
It’s fairly extraordinary."
Lydia herself is performing, sometimes desperately, through a veneer of confidence.
“She believes in the power of being the exception,” Blanchett says of Lydia.
“And she wants the chance to fly.
And so there’s a willful destructiveness as much as there is a very strong creative urge in her.
For me, that’s where the film really lives.”
Field can’t judge his creation, even at her worst moments.
He’s made something that’s still changing in his own eyes, after years of dreaming it.
“The only bad thing is if somebody shrugs and they’re indifferent,” he says.
“I see her differently every single time I watch the film.
So does my editor.
We’ve had long conversations about how we feel about her at different points.
So I hope that’s all there.
Cinema, like music, thrives on subjective associations.
And it’s really like, What are you bringing into a theater with you that day?”
All of them are men.
Field is adamant about pushing his story into a less reactionary zone, beyond MeToo.
But unfortunately, it has not been a terribly nuanced conversation."
“And what are the costs?”
TARis in theaters now.
