When I was in college and my good friend the Bassist nominated me for Outstanding Young Men of America, in which he had been included, I dawdled. I had a strange and confusing relationship with myself and my late education at State. What I really wanted was to pursue my upper division classes at Stanford. What I became painfully aware of was that unlike my prep school institution, State had no school pride or interest in sending their bright and promising anywhere special. That it was the Bassist trying to hook me up and not my school was highly disconcerting. I was incompetent and spoiled - I didn’t understand the meta-hustle at State. There were no superior cliques doing secret searches to tap little brothers. My character didn’t count.
So I dreamed up a place that I imagined existed at Harvard and Stanford and elsewhere in the real world that I called the Noble Arena. But I also hedged my bet with the motto “Civilization is where you put it.”, meaning I couldn’t expect the people around me to be as disciplined in character and purpose as myself. It was a kind of arrogance I felt necessary. Besides, I hated Midnight Star and I loved Wynton Marsalis. In my world, moral clarity and aesthetic sensitivity mattered. I read and tried to understand Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. I painstakingly saved money to restore my 1968 Karmann Ghia. I listened to Andre Watts play Liszt’ Transcendental Etude #10 over and over again. I had listened to the full program of Watts’ concert at Avery Fisher and recorded it on my boom box from radio station KUSC. “Survive it did.” refers to a broken string on the Steinway that Watts had wrung out in the previous number.
Last night, I sat alone in a 200 seat movie theatre in Torrance watching the most extraordinary film I have seen in a decade.
I was absolutely drawn into this world without a moment’s hesitation. Writing like this for film is quite rare, it reminded me of My Dinner With Andre. Nothing like the sexed up Mozart in the Jungle, this took me inside a serious mind for music - not just an exploration of the passions and politics around it. It went straight to a place that is entirely foreign to social media which is thoughtful and nuanced artistic criticism.
TÁR is ultimately a tragedy of the first order. It is not so much a meditation on the vulnerabilities of the greatly accomplished, but beyond that to the vulnerabilities of the art itself. The denouement of the film is deftly handled in a way that strips the audience of the stentorian soundbites of the minor snipers who comprise the committees of destruction. All we see is the unraveling of a great talent and the sense of futility that accompanies a polite moralistic takedown.
The vulnerability of art is at the hands of the optics. How can such optics be managed in the way we do business in the WEIRD world? If you come top and demonstrate your genius, your work pushes you into the hierarchy of necessity. There are only so many hours in the week for the star in demand, any such individual requires a circle of administrative assistance, a circle of trust, of habit. There may be better ways to manage the business at the top of the world, but I find it almost impossible to expect polymathic genius of anyone. The anecdote of Einstein’s times table is perfectly appropriate.
Einstein writes the nine’s times table on the chalkboard the first day of class from 1x9= 9 all the way up to 9x9= 81. Finally he writes 10x9=91 and the class erupts in laughter and ridicule. As they settle down he recounts that no one said a word when he got the first 9 correct, but only his mistake elicited a reaction. “The only person who never makes a mistake is the one who doesn’t try”. Kate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár not only tries but obliterates herself hearing sounds in the night which inspire he to create a masterful interpretation of Mahler’s Fifth. Her dedication to her craft and her navigation of the politics are never in question in the first half of the film. If anything we grow even more confident with her as we start to recognize the enormity of her responsibilities over the most cherished position in the world of Classical music, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. But then she falls into a hole. Slow motion film at 11.
These days I don’t expect much literature from film. There are no significant cultural or philosophical lessons I expect. Like many Angelenos in The Industry, I am satisfied with being impressed with good cinematography, screenwriting and sound. I can even appreciate scripts that are aimed at people in their youth, sorta. Plus I have a thing for spy and war movies. Guy thing. So it’s an extra pleasure to be pleasantly surprised by something that can stand as a story that transcends the mainstream film dramas, even when they are corny like Silver Linings Playbook. As a morality tale, however, it is significantly rare so that I have to stand up on my hind legs and bark about it. This one ranks right up there with Julie Taymor’s Titus which I have called my favorite film on many occasions.
Tangentially, there was a Twitter outburst over the significance of a [heavily edited] excerpt from the film in which the protag gives an intellectual drubbing to a music student who finds himself offended by some tangential splotches on the character of Bach. Her quote “Don’t be so eager to be offended.” is a good web search for the usual suspects making their usual points about the culture wars, and I must confess that this sparkling defense of artistic expression was what drew me to the film. In any case, Blanchett fills out the dimensions of an extraordinary artist in this film, which is a definitive cautionary tale about the vulnerabilities of genius in today’s dark populist decision-by-committee times.
It’s about the integrity of judgement. Thoughtful people don’t discuss optics. Thoughtful people discuss intent.
In the same vein, don’t miss Inside Man on Netflix.