When the film Tár premiered in the fall of 2022, it immediately generated both praise and controversy. Critics and viewers were impressed by actress Cate Blanchett’s tour-de-force portrayal of the fictious orchestral conductor Lydia Tár. Just as many, however, found the film’s depiction of the classical music world as a profession rife with sexual misconduct and predatory behavior disturbing. The film’s critique of both the #MeToo movement and the failures and excesses of contemporary cancel culture as well as its inaccurate depiction of gender parity on the podium also generated heated and angry responses. Real women conductors including Marin Alsop spoke out against the film on multiple grounds. “I was offended as a woman, as a lesbian and as a conductor,” Alsop declared.
While the film addresses the use and abuse of wealth, privilege, and power in the classical music world, its music and soundtrack choices also point to a uniquely cinematic critique of the long-standing and problematic concept of the film auteur. In Tár, the director Todd Field wielded unprecedented control over the music, selecting and shaping what musical works Tár performs and discusses in the film and what music and dialogue the audiences hear on the film’s official soundtrack. Field used the music of Gustav Mahler in particularly striking ways, to convey the title character’s abilities and ambitions but also to generate intertextual meaning, to establish an unusual hyper-allusive and hyper-self-conscious discursive register. Field appropriates Mahler’s Fifth Symphony not just visually and musically but cinematically to scrutinize the boundaries of the art film and redefine the musical parameters of the contemporary auteur.