Cate Blanchett Delivers A Monumental Performance In Todd Field’s “TAR”

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR TÁR AHEAD!

Whoever accepts the Academy Award for Best Actress this year, be it Michelle Yeoh or Cate Blanchett, will ascend to the stage knowing that while it could just as easily have been the other making that same victory-march, they themselves deserved it no less. If, in a staggeringly unfortunate turn of events, it’s Andrea Riseborough, Michelle Williams, or Ana de Armas whose name is instead read aloud from that life-changing envelope, well, they ought to be wondering how they even made it to the ceremony when one of them only started her controversial Oscar campaign in the last few weeks before the nominations were announced, one is essentially committing category fraud when she could have easily beat the competition for Best Supporting Actress, and one is nominated for an unspeakably exploitative Marilyn Monroe biopic that should never have been made in the first place. But it won’t be one of them. It will be, it should be, and it must be either Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All At Once or Blanchett for TÁR.

Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar in the film TAR, sitting at her piano and writing notes on a musical score.
Lydia Tar | theplaylist.net

Blanchett’s nomination for TÁR is her fifth in this category, her eighth in total, and her first since 2015’s Carol. And not since she seeped into the cozy fur stoles of Carol‘s enigmatic titular character has Blanchett immersed herself in a role so wholly with only the slightest physical transformation to facilitate her; yet she deliberately holds her cards close to her chest, remaining so curiously plain, unintimidating, and approachable throughout the film’s opening sequence (which takes the shape of a long, deceptively monotonous sit-down interview with The New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik) that the audience is made to feel embarrassed, even childish, for being at all apprehensive of her quaint sophistication or for detecting a hint of an edge in her voice when the conversation strays in a direction she doesn’t like. She looks like Blanchett, dresses like Blanchett, and perhaps most crucially of all, talks like her, with an eloquence that would probably come across as pretentious if her delivery wasn’t so merry that the listener is left feeling smarter for hearing her speak and eager to hear her again.

It’s only as you inch closer, close enough to discover that her eyes are eerily devoid of any merriness, that it will finally dawn on you, much too late, why Blanchett was cast and why director Todd Field wouldn’t have made the film without her. The very qualities that endear her to her fans, her approachability and mesmerizing manner of speech included, are qualities that continue to be abused by celebrities (and by virtually anyone on or adjacent to the uppermost levels of the hierarchy in their respective industry), and Blanchett demonstrates for us in the first few minutes of TÁR by creating an atmosphere that feels safe, luring an entire audience in within arm’s length of the fictional-yet-familiar monster inhabiting her skin, and waiting until the cameras are no longer recording to drop the act and dig her claws into her prey. From that moment on, Blanchett is gone, subsumed into the character of Lydia Tár.

Tár, a world-renowned conductor and composer preparing to close out a long career throughout which she has accumulated an almost hyperbolic number of prestigious accolades and awards, including the coveted combination of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award collectively dubbed the EGOT, is a character who stands stubbornly with one foot on either side of the boundary between blunt Caricature of a subject, and nuanced Commentary on that selfsame subject – the subject in this case being every celebrity who’s been hearing a lot of stuff about “cancel culture” in the news recently and knows they would hate it if it happened to them, but isn’t online enough to know that it’s a complete and utter fabrication of the far-right: an imaginary war being waged against the authors of badly-written children’s books and offensively unfunny comedians, by some hypothetical mob of angry young people indoctrinated by the left. Lydia Tár probably isn’t the type of person to publicly align herself with the far-right voluntarily (she strikes me as a moderate liberal), but the exaggerated threat of “cancel culture” is too great for her to stand idly by, and in acting frantically to defend herself against an invisible foe she accidentally exposes her own “cancelable” offense – her history of coercing her students into trading sex for job opportunities and blacklisting them when they broke up with her, driving at least one woman named Krista Taylor to suicide.

It should come as no shock to anyone that this was the true purpose of “cancel culture” all along – to make vocal right-wing allies out of those in the arts who would otherwise have kept their mouths shut, and to convince the general public that buying their books, their music, their movies, or tickets to their shows, is tantamount to a victory against the online mobs trying to “restrict free speech” and therefore a moral obligation for the consumer. But what the right-wing doesn’t state out loud is that they pick and choose which “victims” of “cancel culture” to throw a lifeline. And Lydia Tár, a married lesbian and a classical musician, is expendable as far as the right-wing is concerned. Which is how she ultimately finds herself conducting an orchestra at a Monster Hunter game convention in the film’s final scene.

Nina Hoss as Sharon Goodnow and Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar in TAR, hugging each other in a room with pink lighting.
Sharon Goodnow and Lydia Tar | news.sky.com

This stunning moment can be variously interpreted as the first of many humiliating low-points in Tár’s career following her fall from grace or the first necessary step in her scrabble back up the social ladder – and then, of course, there’s the distinct possibility that it is Tár herself who has contrived this bizarre, self-flagellating sequence to cap off the fictional narrative she’s been constructing in her head throughout the film, one in which she’s the victim of vaguely supernatural powers out to get her. It occurred to me that Tár is so desperate for a taste of “cancel culture” that it’s possible she’s been fantasizing about Krista’s accusations jeopardizing her career all along. In fact, prior to the outrageous third act, who else besides Tár’s personal assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) even knows the details of her inappropriate relationship with the conductor? Francesca, who disappears without a trace – almost like a specter herself – after being passed over for the job of assistant conductor, perhaps causing the increasingly paranoid Tár to retroactively invent reasons to fear her?

As Tár spirals out of control with dizzying speed, whether literally or all in her imagination, she gradually becomes aware that she has fallen out of the carefully-curated biopic she had hoped TÁR would be, and into a grotesquely claustrophobic dark comedy from which there is no escape. Everywhere she turns, she is confronted by demons mundane from one angle, nightmarish from another under Florian Hoffmeister’s lens – the neighbor in the upstairs apartment who won’t stop banging on her door pleading for assistance with her elderly mother; the monstrous black dog that watches her stagger down dimly-lit underground corridors in panicked pursuit of Olga (Sophie Kauer), the mysterious Russian cellist she begins wooing midway through the film; household objects vanishing and turning up in places they don’t belong, like the work of a poltergeist. This string of events culminates in an incident where Tár storms onstage during the live performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 and physically assaults the conductor standing in for her, eliciting gasps. It’s simply too ridiculous to really be happening…right?

There is only one character besides Tár herself who can escape being ushered to the back row or ejected from Lydia Tár’s self-serving autobiography entirely until the final third, and that is Sharon Goodnow (Nina Hoss), Tár’s indispensable wife, whom the composer dejectedly returns home to after Krista abandons her and Olga leaves to party with her own friends, not for any lingering love but for a potent reminder that she controls Sharon (at least in part by deliberately mismanaging her wife’s medications and then feigning concern over her “absent-mindedness”). Her own sense of security, necessary for surviving in an insular world, starts to rely on her wife remaining gaslighted into believing she’d be hopeless on her own, that she needs Tár to keep her safe from herself. But when details of Tár’s infidelity come out, Sharon finally breaks the fraying thread tethering her to the woman she loved once and escapes with the couple’s young daughter.

And in so doing, Sharon deals a fatal blow to Tár’s confidence – not only depriving her of the precious pair of good-luck charms that the conductor would have happily carried around with her from place-to-place until retirement, but forcing her to confront the dark alone for the first time in her life. Like most predatory people, Lydia Tár doesn’t know how to function without someone “weaker” alongside her to reassure her that she’s the strongest person in any room, and she doesn’t enjoy the sensation of being on equal footing with anyone (personally or professionally), yet she also becomes sick to her stomach when she is bluntly offered her choice of sex-workers in a Southeast Asian country toward the end of the film. She runs away, offended at the suggestion that what she’s been doing all her life is anything like that.

Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar in TAR, standing in a concert hall at the conductor's podium.
Lydia Tar | thetimes.co.uk

But ultimately it doesn’t matter, because in that final scene where Tár once again takes the stage to conduct an orchestra for an enraptured audience, Field forces you to sit with the uncomfortable realization that whether or not this is all really happening, even in Tár’s worst nightmares she is still working. It may not be work she relishes, and she’s probably wincing inside as she hears her distinctive sound swallowed up by Monster Hunter‘s electronic score, but she’s still onstage, bathing in the spotlight, and conducting. Even she must surely recognize then and there that “cancel culture” was and will always be a myth as long as the “canceled” still have a platform from which to complain about it.

Film Rating: 8.9/10

“Spencer” First Look Promises Oscar Opportunity For Kristen Stewart

Although both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have worked tirelessly to establish themselves in the indie and arthouse scene post-Twilight, and both have garnered widespread critical recognition for their work there, mainstream audiences haven’t been so kind to either actor. Pattinson, ironically, had to take a major superhero franchise role before people were finally willing to accept that he’s matured as an actor. And while Stewart certainly isn’t struggling to find work, she deserves – and is consistently denied – the same generosity that people showed to Pattinson when he was cast as Batman.

Spencer
Spencer | metro.co.uk

But if any non-franchise role can be considered equivalent to Batman, it would be Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. Decades after her death, she is still just as widely-adored by the public as she was in her lifetime, and any piece of media that deals with her story inevitably becomes the subject of online chatter, heated debate, and intense scrutiny. So when Spencer was announced, and Kristen Stewart was cast in the titular role, that should have been Stewart’s Batman moment. And…it wasn’t. A lot of people dismissed her out of hand because they only know her from Twilight.

Today, a very brief teaser trailer for Spencer was released. It could arguably have done more to showcase Stewart herself, and the work she’s clearly putting into capturing all the facets of Princess Diana, but it got people talking. And for once, they actually had something nice to say about Kristen Stewart. That could just be the Princess Diana love talking, but it seems to me that general audiences – or at least social media – has caught wind of what many Hollywood insiders have recently started reporting: that with Spencer, Kristen Stewart is well on her way towards her very first Academy Award. And just like that, all her haters are suddenly real quiet.

I mean, Spencer looks like classic awards season fare. The dreamy cinematography and faded color palette give it the look of an old family photo-album; a perfect aesthetic to capture for a film that deals with the breakdown of Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ marriage in the early 1990’s, and their eventual separation. It comes from Pablo Lerraín, who previously directed the Oscar-nominated biopic Jackie about Jacqueline Kennedy. I think at the very least, Stewart will be nominated – just as Natalie Portman was for Jackie. But if the Academy feels that she’s waited long enough for the recognition she deserves, this could be the perfect moment for her.

Honestly, Stewart’s waited too long at this point. Although she garnered some buzz for Seberg in 2019, it’s been several years since her last serious awards season campaign with Clouds Of Sils Maria, which did earn her a number of awards nominations (the majority from regional critics associations) and several wins – including the first César Award ever presented to an American actress. Spencer is a strong comeback, especially following a few attempts at more mainstream action movies that, while unsuccessful at the box-office, did get Stewart back into the spotlight – right where she needs to be, heading into awards season. She played the long game, and it might pay off in Oscar gold.

Spencer
Princess Diana | Twitter @thr

Now obviously, we’ll need to see her performance in Spencer before we jump to conclusions – and it’s frustrating that this first teaser is more about setting the mood than it is about highlighting Stewart’s portrayal of Diana. For example, although attendees at CinemaCon who saw a longer trailer are adamant that Stewart’s Princess Diana accent is spot-on, it’s impossible for me to say the same when this teaser only has her speak two words. But I’m a big Kristen Stewart fan, so I’m willing to believe her accent is impeccable and her acting is incredible.

Trailer Rating: 7.9/10

Gods And Monsters Clash In “Eternals” 2nd – And Final – Trailer

There’s been some speculation for a while that, given the unyielding November release date for Eternals, Marvel might be positioning their grand epic of gods and monsters for an awards season run. They got all the way to a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars with Black Panther, and won three awards there in other categories, so we know it’s not impossible. But can Eternals match that film’s success in a field where Marvel has traditionally been excluded, or even improve on it?

Eternals
Eternals | Twitter @cineternals

If Marvel’s ultimate goal here is nominations or wins in any of the “Big Five” Oscar categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress), then they’ve already got a tried-and-true weapon in their arsenal: director Chloé Zhao, who plowed through the last awards season like a juggernaut, picking up a string of Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and Academy Awards for her introspective drama Nomadland. Her signature style and name is all over the second and final trailer for Eternals (somehow we skipped right from teaser to final trailer), which was released today at a time beneficial to the West Coast.

That signature style of Zhao’s relies heavily on her affinity for stark, unforgiving natural environments, and her sensitive use of natural light: so from the moment this trailer opens with Salma Hayek’s Ajak traveling by horse across a barren plain with cloud-speckled skies above her, you know Zhao is going to be bringing all of that to the unconventional source material. And this marriage of Marvel’s earth-shattering spectacle with Zhao’s indie filmmaking techniques and stripped-back sensibilities is perfect for the story of Eternals itself; of otherworldly beings accessing the hidden depths of their own humanity, and becoming one with the people of Earth whom they’ve loved from afar for seven-thousand years.

The Eternals, as it turns out, have one job and one job only on Earth – to eradicate a horde of demonic chimeras known as the Deviants. But it seems they may have been a little too good at that: because in the modern day, post-Endgame, the Deviants have been in hiding for millennia and the Eternals have been forced to wait around until they return. Since they’re not supposed to interfere with human affairs that don’t involve the Deviants, that’s forced some of them into an uncomfortable position where they can only watch from the sidelines as humans tear themselves to pieces. Some have already broken the rules entirely and gone to live among the human race, while others have retreated into themselves.

And then there’s Angelina Jolie’s Thena, who I think might secretly be the most important character in the movie. Her mission, as the greatest warrior among the Eternals, was always to lead the charge against the Deviants; but for her, there’s another layer to her internal conflict. While many of the Eternals fell in love with humans and abandoned their divine purpose, Thena is the only one who fell in love with a Deviant – and not just any Deviant, but their leader, a tentacled eldritch being named Kro. I wasn’t sure if this would be carried over from the comics, but the trailer shows Kro lifting Thena into a tender embrace and caressing her face in a way that is equal parts disturbing and…no, actually, it’s just straight-up disturbing. There’s a lot of tentacles going on.

Eternals
Thena | cnet.com

Her teammates have done a bit better for themselves. The matter-manipulating sorceress Sersi is entangled in a love triangle between her Eternal husband Ikaris, from whom she’s now estranged, and Kit Harington’s Dane Whitman – who finally gets to talk in this trailer! We don’t get to see Phastos’ partner, but we know he’s supposed to be Marvel’s first openly gay character, and that he has a husband in the film. As for Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo, he’s just living his best life as a Bollywood movie-star. Makkari, Marvel’s first deaf superhero and a speedster who travels by leaping, also seems pretty comfy on Earth, but we haven’t seen much of her lifestyle yet.

On the flip-side, we can see that Ajak mostly keeps to herself and avoids interactions with humans, while the brooding telepath Druig has started a cult in the woods where he mind-controls people – definitely a healthy way of channeling boredom into productivity. Sprite, who is permanently trapped in the body of a child, seems to have entered her gleefully nihilistic phase of wanting the world to be destroyed so that she can finally be released from her humanoid vessel. Even space-gods in the MCU need therapy, it turns out.

But Sprite might be close to getting her wish, since it seems that another group of divine beings known as the Celestials are on their way to Earth to review the Eternals’ accomplishments and pass judgment on the planet as a whole. The Celestials are the gods whom the Eternals serve, and in Marvel Comics lore they’re actually pretty important – but this trailer provides our first good look at them since a flashback in Guardians Of The Galaxy. They’re massive geometrical creatures rendered in vibrant jewel-tones, straight out of the pages of a Jack Kirby comic. I also have a hard time believing they can be killed by mere Eternals, so I suspect the resolution to that storyline will involve the Eternals pleading with the Celestials on behalf of the human race rather than fighting them in some big space-battle.

I can even think of a way to achieve that which would be comics-accurate and visually stunning. In the comics, the Eternals have the power to sync up their minds and become one being comprised of pure light, known as the Uni-Mind. The Uni-Mind embodies all of them at once, and as such would be the perfect vessel for an exploration of the interconnectedness of humanity.

Eternals
A Celestial | cinemablend.com

And I’d be here for it, just saying. Based on everything we know about Eternals, it’s the kind of film where it wouldn’t feel jarring to have it end with a dramatized outpouring of raw emotion, as overly earnest as that might seem on paper. If anyone could pull it off, it would be Zhao, whose love for the planet and respect for ordinary people defines so much of her work. And it would certainly give the film that emotional punch it’ll need if it’s gonna be a serious contender during awards season.

Trailer Rating: 8.5/10

“The Bad Batch” Episode 16 – Clear Skies On Kamino

SPOILERS FOR THE BAD BATCH AHEAD!

I feel like I ought to apologize for how inconsistent and unreliable I’ve been when it comes to reviewing The Bad Batch. I’ve enjoyed almost the entire first season – there was a long stretch in the middle where it was slagging a bit, but to be honest the show has been very well-written, blessed with truly stunning animation and great voice-acting, and filled to the brim with the kind of obscure Star Wars lore that I love. And yet I’ve reviewed only a handful of episodes out of sixteen, in no particular order, and with barely any rhyme or reason. I am genuinely sorry about that, and I hope that the recently-announced second season of The Bad Batch will allow me a chance to make it up to my readers properly, with weekly reviews.

The Bad Batch
Crosshair | slashfilm.com

No promises, though. The biggest difficulty about reviewing any Star Wars animated show – be it The Bad Batch, The Clone Wars, or even sometimes Rebels – is when you get into the adventure-of-the-week episodes that are all…fine. Not great, not bad, just fine. And as much as I loved Rhea Perlman’s sassy crime-lord Cid, a lot of the episodes that involved the Bad Batch going on missions for her tended to lean towards being fine.

But as is so often the case with Star Wars animated series’, The Bad Batch gradually started planting seeds for big plot twists and major character choices down the line as it moved into the back-half of its first season. The two-part finale, which started with last week’s episode and concluded today, builds off those little things sprinkled throughout the season to give us something emotionally satisfying, epic, and consequential…and surprisingly dark and intense, as a bonus. Nobody even died in today’s episode, but that didn’t stop me from feeling terrified on behalf of all of my favorite characters.

Before we jump into the action, just a quick refresher on what’s going on since I didn’t actually review last week’s episode (again, sorry about that). The rain-battered ocean planet of Kamino, once home to the galaxy’s great clone armies, has been abandoned by the last of its cloning personnel, its conniving prime-minister has been executed by the Empire, and an Imperial fleet led by the vicious Admiral Rampart (voiced by Noshir Dalal) is currently unleashing hellfire on the planet’s cloning facilities from the stormy skies. Only the members of the Bad Batch are still stuck on the planet’s swiftly-disintegrating surface, scrambling to find a way back to their starship before everything is submerged in the abyss.

That was a great note on which to end last week’s episode and open today’s – wiping such an iconic Star Wars location off the map entirely, and simply because the Empire has no further plans for the clones but still can’t afford to have cloning technology fall into the hands of other buyers, is cruel, callous, and heartbreaking. Thanks to The Clone Wars‘ frequent use of the setting, we’ve grown attached to Kamino over the years, and we can all feel the clones’ pain at seeing the closest thing most of them have ever had to a home thoroughly destroyed. A brilliant touch is having a clone trooper deliver the news of Kamino’s destruction to Rampart, and hearing his voice crack slightly.

Meanwhile, down in the cloning facilities, that overwhelming pain – mingled with the fear of being crushed to death by the encroaching ocean – leads to some raw confessions from the members of the Bad Batch, who have to work alongside their treacherous former teammate, Crosshair (voiced, like most clones, by Dee Bradley Baker), to survive. Crosshair’s claim that he removed his inhibitor chip long ago but still willingly chose to side with the Empire despite the atrocities he’s witnessed them commit (and which he’s now engaged in himself), is horrifying to the Bad Batch, but it helped me finally realize why the Empire would deem human stormtroopers preferable to clones.

The Bad Batch
The Bad Batch | denofgeek.com

Because humans can be brainwashed, and unlike with clones, that brainwashing isn’t achieved via a piece of technology implanted in one’s head. Real brainwashing, the kind of brainwashing that is very much still utilized by fascists and far-right ideologies in the modern day to obtain an aggressive, twisted form of loyalty, can’t be surgically removed like an inhibitor chip, and the effects don’t just wear off on their own. Real brainwashing changes a person from the inside out, and unlearning it requires active participation from that person. That last part is crucial.

And it’s what Omega (voiced by Michelle Ang) realizes, during several powerful encounters and conversations with Crosshair throughout this episode. Omega’s driving motivation throughout the show has been her own fierce and seemingly unconditional loyalty, so it might be strange to some viewers that she doesn’t try to force Crosshair to return to the Bad Batch at the end of the finale, or even force Hunter and the team to go back for him. But that’s what makes Omega’s loyalty so inspiring – because at the end of the day, she realizes that ultimately Crosshair has to take the first step. His issue isn’t an inhibitor chip that they can physically remove from his head; it’s something he needs to work on. She can’t do that for him.

And when Crosshair’s ready, if he still wants to rejoin the Bad Batch, Omega will be waiting for him. I think that’s a pretty awesome message to send. Most importantly, it doesn’t put the onus on Omega to fix Crosshair or save his soul. There was a lot of discourse about this topic in Raya And The Last Dragon, where the solution to a similar problem seemed to be that if you just keep putting your unconditional faith in a person who has repeatedly and unapologetically hurt you, they’ll eventually change. That’s…untrue, and while I enjoyed that movie, I much prefer The Bad Batch‘s approach to this particular topic. That’s why Crosshair and the Bad Batch splitting up will (hopefully) be healthy for both of them in season two.

The strong focus on Omega and Crosshair in this episode does mean that everybody else gets a little sidelined, with the possible exception of the Kaminoan medical service droid AZI-3 (voiced by Ben Diskin). This isn’t the first time AZI-3 has been integral to the story – in The Clone Wars, he and the clone trooper Fives came within a hair’s breadth of foiling the Empire’s plan with the inhibitor chips – but here he proves that he’s downright heroic, sacrificing himself to save Omega from drowning. Crosshair is able to save both Omega and the droid’s body, but it remains to be seen if AZI-3 will get powered up again in season two.

He’s the only character who “dies” in the finale, but as I mentioned, there’s still a lot of suspense. The episode leans heavily into elements and tropes of the survival genre, and at points feels very evocative of the Subnautica video games – which also involve swimming around alien oceans, evading fearsome sea-monsters and exploring subterranean ruins. As someone with a severe fear of the darkest depths of the ocean, I’m (naturally) obsessed with that premise, and seeing it brought to life in today’s episode of The Bad Batch was unexpected, but thrilling. And, yes, a little terrifying. I was glad when they arrived at the surface to discover clear skies on Kamino for the first time ever, but weirdly that and the black smoke still rising from the sea also felt very Subnautica to me.

The Bad Batch
Kamino | thedirect.com

Luckily, Kamino’s wealth of cloning knowledge will live on through the scientist Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo), Omega’s mother figure, whom we see being transported on an Imperial shuttle to a forested planet at the end of the episode. If/when we rejoin her in season two, I wouldn’t be surprised if her top-secret cloning work with the Empire is directly linked to the events of The Mandalorian. Remember that Dr. Pershing, who was messing about with Grogu’s midi-chlorians in The Mandalorian, was himself a Kaminoan scientist – which means he had to have been one of the medical personnel evacuated from the planet along with Nala Se, which means we might see him in animated form next year when The Bad Batch returns for season two. Keep an eye out!

Episode Rating: 8.5/10