---

We meet the icon before the person. Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), the title character of Todd Field’s first new movie in 16 years, is seated across from the writer Adam Gopnik (playing himself) for a live conversation at this year’s The New Yorker Festival. Before the conductor can utter a word, Gopnik runs through a list of accomplishments so vast and impressive — the eye-popping highlight of the bunch is that the Leonard Bernstein-mentored Tár is a rare EGOT winner — that when he hails his subject as one of the “most important musical figures of our era,” it sounds less like gracious hyperbole than a simple statement of fact. This is a lot for an actor to convincingly live up to. But when you have someone like Blanchett, whose own achievements put her in a similarly imposing league as the woman she’s playing, it’s not so hard to be deluded into thinking she’s the real deal. The ensuing conversation with Gopnik, which shows off Tár’s dazzling intellectual and oratorical gifts, only enhances this mirage of creative genius.

To say Tár, who has a book coming out and is about to embark on one of her most audacious musical projects yet, is at the top of the mountain feels like an understatement. It’s like she sprouted wings once she got to the summit and kept soaring higher. But in Tár, those wings will be clipped, and the hand holding the scissors will have been her own. Field doesn’t come right out and say as much, though. Tár is a tragedy that sneaks up on you. Field first moves within the contours of Tár’s life, with the scenes succeeding the New Yorker interview exploring the different angles of her public persona — a friendly encounter with a moon-eyed fan at a coffee shop; at Juilliard, lecturing; at a business meeting — and where she ostensibly is being most genuine, which is when this self-described “U-Haul lesbian” is at home with her wife, Sharon (a fantastic Nina Hoss), who also happens to be the Philharmonic’s first violinist, and their adopted daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic) in Berlin. 

Read the full column at 425.