The Big Picture · Review · Discussion · Interview

'TÁR' Is the Movie of 2022. Here’s Why.

October 28, 2022/ 121 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins

Sean and Amanda spend the hour on TÁR: Cate Blanchett's fictional maestro, the genius myth, and whether the film can actually win Best Picture. Then Todd Field joins to talk about Lydia Tár's decade-long gestation, the film's subjectivity, and Kubrick.

16 films across 3 segments.

AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.

TÁRspoilers past the halfway point

TÁR 2022

Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tár, the first woman to lead a major German orchestra, an EGOT winner undone over the course of the film by her own abuses of power. Sean has it locked into his top two of the year already. Both hosts single out the reverse-running opening credits, the Juilliard classroom scene as the film's best-written sequence, and Hildur Guðnadóttir's score. Reservations: the dream sequences in the back half, an out-of-character accordion scene, and an ending Amanda finds a little too neat even as she admits it sticks the landing. Cate Blanchett is the Best Actress front-runner; the hosts doubt the film itself can take Best Picture given how cold and unresolved it is.

Top Gun: Maverick 2022

Sean's other lock for his year-end list, and the opposite kind of movie-going experience: warm and emotionally direct where TÁR is cold and cerebral.

Eyes Wide Shut 1999

Todd Field acted in it, playing Nick Nightingale, and studied Stanley Kubrick on set; the hosts trace a throughline from that experience to TÁR's control and precision.

The Social Network 2010

Amanda's closest comparison on a rewatch: tightly paced, morally gray, about what it costs to succeed.

The Shining 1980

Amanda's other touchstone, for the isolation of a mind coming apart while trying to create something.

Can TÁR actually win?the awards-season case

TÁR 2022

Loaded up for eight-plus nominations and a Blanchett win, but Sean doubts Best Picture: Oscar voters tend to reward films that let them feel good about their own values, and this one implicates the audience instead.

Nomadland 2020

The comparison Sean reaches for: a film that sweeps the awards conversation while almost nobody actually watches it.

The Power of the Dog 2021

The other recent example of an acclaimed, ambiguous film that landed quietly with audiences at home.

Green Book 2018

Cited as the kind of morally tidy Best Picture winner that TÁR is not.

The Shape of Water 2017

Same category of comfortable Best Picture winner.

Moonlight 2016

Same category, though the hosts rate it well above the others named here.

CODA 2021

The prior year's Best Picture winner, brought up as proof of how unpredictable the Academy has gotten lately.

The Fabelmans 2022

Neither host has seen it yet, but it won the TIFF People's Choice Award, and a personal Spielberg film about the power of moviemaking is the presumed front-runner.

Babylon 2022

The wild card nobody has seen yet: "we have no idea what that is."

In conversation

Todd Field on

TÁR 2022

Field describes Lydia Tár as a character who followed him around for roughly a decade before he wrote her, and explains why he made the story's abuser a woman: classical music's abuses of power have historically been perpetrated by men, and making the lead a woman forces the audience to reconsider how it responds to the same behavior. He walks through the film's three points of view (an unseen observer, Lydia herself, and her partner Sharon), his research process with author John Mauceri, and why the reverse-running opening credits foreground the crew before the star.

Todd Field on

White Noise 2022

Field's answer to the show's closing question, the last great thing he's seen: Noah Baumbach's adaptation, praised for how it braids tone without losing control of it.

Also mentioned raised along the way

In passing 2001: A Space Odyssey Phoenix Blue Jasmine Ruby in Paradise

TIFF People's Choice trivia Belfast Jojo Rabbit Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri La La Land Room

Next week Armageddon Time

Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads

Ads Netflix: FIFA World Cup Launch EditionCarvanaNOS EnergyWhole FoodsBoar's Head

Cross-promo 60 Songs That Explain the 90s