...and he melts down because Bach was a straight white male, that scene is amazing. Especially the line "It seems social media is the architect of your soul." And later when the petty little brainwashed bigot tries to frame Tar with a badly edited video is very authentic to typical SJW behavior.
shareAbout time someone showed just how stupid it is to be part of the woke crowd.
shareAdd to that, the privileged snowflake was likely from a super-rich family that got him into Julliard, or benefited from white guilt to let him in, even though, as a classical student, he has outright contempt for Bach. Typical.
shareYou can also tell how, if you aren't a liberal water-carrier in Hollywood, you get vilified by the left:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/tar-reviewed-regressive-ideas-to-match-regressive-aesthetics
This scene had nothing to do with "racism" or whatever rightwing nonsense you want to make it about. Todd Field describes its meaning in Vanity Fair.
"...really the impetus for writing it, I think, was just an age-old question: What would your older self tell your younger self? This version of these two individuals, one is 50 years old, the other one is half that age. And the younger one is very much like Lydia Tár was when she was 25 years old—she was breaking glass ceilings. She was ignoring the canon. She didn’t care about dead white man music...."
Field saying that is as idiotic as a Reggae musician refusing to listen to Bob Marley.
shareYeah. It's a pretty stupid comment, now that I've finally seen the movie and that scene in context. Field is clearly playing to the interviewer. I mean it's Vanity Fair - you'd better say *something* bad about white people. But even if you read Todd's quote without the ridiculous "Dead white man" quote, he's saying young people are often impetuous, deluded, and sanctimonious about quite literally - nothing. And that they limit themselves on what humanity has had to offer before them in favor of their social media presence.
shareIt all makes sense. Lydia Tar is a pompous, pretentious character. That's part of what leads to her downfall.
share"She was ignoring the canon. She didn’t care about dead white man music...."
Was Field complimenting the younger woman here? Or was this simply an objective statement of fact? Heck, isn't it even possible that he was criticising the younger woman, and Tar when she was younger and less open-minded?
I love this scene. It tackles a popular debate believably and articulately. It has no clear-cut heroes or villains. Max stands up unequivocally for his values – he's not available for her put-downs. Likewise, Tar aggressively asserts her values.
That said, I agree with Tar’s POV: a Juilliard student who’s “not into Bach” bc of his uber-woke values is just stupid. And Tar takes down his argument very logically. Still, there’s no question that her comments become condescending, even insulting. But how else would someone like Tar act? She’s a spectacularly accomplished, powerful woman at the pinnacle of a profession where massive egos are tolerated. The fact that she’s arrogant and insensitive comes as no surprise.
No clear cut hero or villain? Max's value was to be bigoted toward Bach for being a white heterosexual male. Bigotry is villain behavior. Tar was simply trying to teach her student.
share“Tar was simply trying to teach her student.” With dismissiveness and insults? That’s a pretty poor teaching style. She is the teacher, the authority - and as such has a responsibility to respect the differing opinions of her students. And to encourage them, not disrespect them.
If you must have a villain, you could just as easily claim that it’s Lydia. But to claim either party is “the villain” is to see the scene simplistically, rather than enjoy 2 artists defending passionately held views.
What insults?
shareSounds interesting.
Films that don't feature clear-cut 'goodies' versus 'baddies' but flawed characters who can be both right and wrong at the same time, are always more compelling than the alternative.
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Not to mention the irony that uber-woke, POC, "pan gender" Max, when shown what a moron he was, resorted to a sexist slur/namecalling and called Lydia a "bitch."
He didn't like Bach because he sired 20 children....is that really the way it is now?? I had to laugh - but then I don't think it was meant to be funny. "You had too many children. I hate your music and your contributions" - 🤦♂️
shareThere are multiple levels about this scene. Yes, there is the rather pathetic student, imprisoned in his PC silo, which rightly is something for a professor to challenge.
But what is often missed is how she DID it. She used it as an opportunity to belittle this person slyly, subtly viciously. He was clearly nervous, his left leg shaking uncontrollably. Did that in any way temper her approach ?
She was there at Julliard as a guest lecturer, riding high on her horse, playing for laughs & adulation, the first for the vulnerable student, the second for herself.
THAT was the real point - her inhumanity, not prevailing ignorance among the privileged cossetted youth of America. This film is a character study, she is not a hero, but a lesson to be studied closely. You cannot dismiss her easily, because she is brilliant. For her flaws, you have to look behind.
This was an exquisitely well-written scene.
^ agree. This isn’t about the opinions of the two characters and who has the better argument. It is a scene about Tar’s predatory personality. The student wasn’t offering his opinions on Bach or challenging her to a debate. He just stated his reason for not appreciating Bach when she kept badgering him to appreciate Bach. He chose to go to the lecture and sit in the front row. His fault. He didn’t choose to be the lecturer’s target for public humiliation. He was nervous, shaking kis knee. Anyone with a shred of kindness and humanity would have let him alone. She did the opposite. She sharpened her teeth and went in for the kill.
Also, she seemed to turn on him the second he said he chose Juilliard because it is “the best music academy in the country.” She went to the Curtis Institute. Why did she ask him that question? Maybe she was rejected by Juilliard or resents its reputation as the top music school. Her pride was off the charts. How many grown-ass, 50 yo women keep their childhood bedroom intact, like a shrine full of trophies and accolades?
Shes not a hero, but she clearly did the right thing in that scene. If you call pointing out other person being wrong as a sly, vicious belittlement, perhaps you send your standards too high.
shareIts not as simple as that. You can see that others differ, giving reasons. They didn't present that scene to hold her up as an example of rectitude. She's an egoist heading, after a long run, for a fall. This incident was part of it that fall.
shareShe is an egoist that ended with a fall. The issue is - the fall was not one of her own creation. She was misrepresented, time and time again. Her assistant lied to her, hid information about the deposition (actually a crime) from her, etc. Her own wife blamed her because of a lie on a social media post. So what the movie actually shows us is that she wasnt a bad person, but rather was represented badly by the internet. And thats enough to ruin her career, regardless of talent.
shareLol. You missed the entire point of the movie. She used everyone, some horribly (esp. the young assistant she used sexually, abandoned, slandered/black-balled) - eventually people turned on her. It's not that complicated. Maybe watch it again, see if there's a thing or two you missed.
shareMaybe you watch it again. The assistant was never used sexually nor abandoned. In fact she was allowed to linger in Tars home longer than expected, did not do her job and literally committed obstruction of justice. Oh no, the assistant was expected to do her job and bring her coffee. Terrible abuse.
shareYou absolutely didn't pick up on the young woman who killed herself I mentioned, after again being used/abused/abandoned/slandered & black-balled. Which all happened before and early on the timeline previous of the film's narrative, other than Tar's trying to cover her tracks on the dirty work
This seems to have escaped you. Maybe, again, give the film another watch. I grant you, some of these things are subtle, her interaction with the woke pansexual was subtle, but not all of it was. Do you think it was a coincidence that, at the end, she had no friend, no one in her corner ?
What happened to the woman who killed herself is entirely your conjecture. We are never told what happened in the movie other than Tar sending some emails warning others about her, which may or may not be true - we dont know.
It was not a coincidence. It was a statement of othering and 'cancel culture' social media brings around.
Nope. She was scrubbing her emails. Why did she do that ? Why was it part of the basis of her firing, if there wasn't some impropriety about it of sufficient magnitude to get her canned ?
Perhaps there is some issue on your side with abusers facing consequences in this persistence, despite the evidence, in seeing the film as 'anti-woke'. It is anything but. Neither is it 'woke'. The writers made the abuser an extremely gifted, clever & manipulative woman to separate the phenomenon of abuse/narcissism from gender, to make the true essence of the transgression clearer.
Because she did not want to be involved with the suicide. She was stupid to do so, because emails will not be scrubbed on the receiving end, but she probably didnt knew that. We saw parts of the emails, there was nothing there that would get her fired. For all we know she may be legitimatelly warning others about an unstable individual.
The issue is that Tar, as depicted in this film, is not an abuser. Not sure why you keep going on about "woke" though.
"Whatever gets you through the night"...
shareMy question about this is, though, by the end of the movie we are meant to question basically all actions that Tar had through the movie, and I guess we are supposed to look badly upon them?
At the beginning she says we don't need a female word for maestro. But then we realize she doesn't need this because she is "in the system" and gets along well with the old white dudes.
Then we see her belittling the ridiculous pansexual dude. But after, again, we see that she is a predator and uses the people around her...
I dunno, man... this was a weird movie :/
Why, though? The movie never shows here actually doing bad things. She gets falsely accused, repeatedly. We know this because we see the reality, and later see social media take on it.
I don't think that was the point, she was indeed a villain, a "well cancelled" person.
shareSo the point was to display a wrongful cancellation? I could agree with that, but so many people on this thread seems to be under the impression that she was actually evil.
I googled it up, its not based on a real person, so are people just misinterpreting the movie or whats going on?
No, I don't think the point was to display a wrongful cancellation.
If she really was a villain, and she was really using and harassing her own students, I believe the point was to show a "correct" cancellation, or at least someone who deserves some punishment.
Personally I don't agree with cancellations in general. But she was indeed an unethical person.
But the movie does not show her using and harassing her own students, nor her being a villain?
shareIt is pretty much implied all through the second half of the movie that she was indeed doing it.
They show her grooming that russian girl, and feeling upset that she was "rejected" or neglected by her.
They show that her assistant was only in this position because she was groomed by her in the past.
Her own wife (?) abandons her because she knows what she has been doing all along.
Is it implied? Because i did not see any of that in the movie. The russian girl has herself chose to go there and work with her. She was the only other person in that audition, if you recall. She was also not groomed. The reason Tar got upset is because the russian girl lied to her. She claimed she will go to sleep, but Tar accidentally saw she was actually going out.
No, they have not shown anything like that. How the assistant got the position is not shown. However given how incompetent she was i would agree that such possibility exists. Tar also flat out rejected the assistances advances in the scene where she returned with the keys to the apartment.
Her own wife abandons her without reason because of false claims on social media. I was flabbergasted at the scene. No sane human would react that way. She also committed a crime by preventing Tar from seeing her daughter.