Was ‘Tár’ Canceled at the Oscars?

Was “Tár,” a movie about cancellation, itself canceled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? That question surfaces in light of the blanking of the art house favorite in each of the six categories in which it was nominated at the 95th Academy Awards. “Tár,” a film starring a lesbian character and preoccupied with the intersection of culture and cancellation, not to mention sexual harassment, was unable to get on the stage despite a raft of nominations. Its subjects, it appears, are still too hot to handle.Directed by Todd Field and starring Cate Blanchett, “Tár” revolves around a maestra who begins at the summit of a cultural Mount Olympus. At its outset she is being interviewed by the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, who plays himself. By its credits she is conducting kitsch. The fall from grace has rarely been so steep.Lydia Tár — a protege of Leonard Bernstein — is both demanding and in demand, sought as not only a leader of orchestras but as a cultural magus. Her book bears her name, twice: “Tár on Tár.” She has won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards. She discusses Gustav Mahler as if she knew him and the Kabbalah as if she wrote it. The Berlin Philharmonic is her fiefdom.Menace begins to seep in at the edges. Tár’s wife, who doubles as the Philharmonic’s first violinist, teeters on the edge of breakdown. There are hints of a dangerous secret, an affair that threatens Tár’s triumphs. Ultimately, the darkness becomes visible, and scandal surfaces. Call it #TarToo; sexual relationships with young female musicians, who are promoted and then cast aside.We see Tár pursuing another such relationship, with a Russian cellist. Equally as intricate are her stratagems of seduction and subtle abuses of power, all undertaken behind a preserved patina of deniability. The movie runs cold rather than hot, all black turtlenecks, gray skies, and the occasional rosy cheek.Tár has another problem: She’s unwoke. That comes to light after a confrontation with a student during a master conducting class at Juilliard. The student, named Max and played by Zethphan Smith-Gneist, identifies as a “BIPOC, pangender person,” who can’t appreciate the music of Johann Sebastian Bach because he was a heterosexual white man. Bleeding edge, as they say. Tár’s response is indignant and icy, an ode to the canon and amoral artistic greatness that would have made Harold Bloom proud. Deceptively edited, however, it provides tabloid fodder that adds to Tár’s woes. A sex scandal and a woke scandal are too much even for her, and her next job in front of a live audience is conducting a video game score in the Philippines. Finis. “Tár” was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing, winning none of them. It picked up awards on the pre-Oscars circuit, but none at Hollywood’s biggest night. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” garnered seven trophies.“Tár” is a strange case. Movies get snubbed every year. Juries make mistakes, and one year’s masterpiece is the next year’s mediocrity. Some Best Picture awards have not aged well — “Green Book” and “Crash” come to mind. Leo Tolstoy never won a Nobel Prize in Literature, and “Goodfellas” never won Best Picture. Ms. Blanchett already has two Oscars, after all. The “Tár” detractors have couched their criticism in political as well as aesthetic terms. Richard Brody writes in the New Yorker that “‘Tár’ is a useful reminder of the connection between regressive ideas and regressive aesthetics.” A review in Mother Jones titled “Finally, the End of Tár” dispatches it as a “cancel culture movie focused on the abuser” and “middlebrow crap.”Autostraddle, a website focused on queer women, calls the film “Tár-ible” and lists its protagonist as another among “baffled rich cis white women who are staring down accountability with a scowl and a: ‘But… but… but… I, too, have been a victim!’” The review asks, “truly, do we need another lesbian predator in lesbian cinema?” It is not just movie scribes who have banged the drum against “Tár.” The American conductor Marin Alsop, who is mentioned in the film, labels it “anti-woman,” and adds that she “was offended as a woman, I was offended as a conductor, I was offended as a lesbian.” Ms. Blanchett stood her ground. “Power is a corrupting force,” she says, “no matter what one’s gender is. I think it affects all of us.”

Was ‘Tár’ Canceled at the Oscars?

Was ‘Tár’ Canceled at the Oscars?

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