This is an intense movie about an intense person, who is also very likely neurodivergent. Lydia Tár (played with fierce and seamless commitment by Cate Blanchett) is one of the wonders of the classical realm. She is a virtuoso pianist, an earnest ethnomusicologist, and a purposeful popularizer—she is apparently a member of the Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony (EGOT) club, which isn’t a common achievement for a classical person. And as a protean conductor about to conclude recording a cycle of Mahler symphonies, Lydia needs to get away from noise to do the work to which she almost stridently commits herself. She is noise sensitive and has trouble being around people and other living things.
The movie is set up in the opening scenes. A nervous Lydia walks out onto the stage of a concert hall to rapturous tribute. She’s not there to perform, but to be interviewed, as a feature of one of those culture festivals major metropolitan centers hold every so often. Her interviewer is New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, who plays himself, is a self-satisfied know-it-all who lays it all out for the rest of us. The sum total of what we learn here sets Lydia’s cultural status in a kind of stone, so the viewer looks forward to a film that will show how it all comes together. And how it all falls apart. Blanchett is so convincing in the role that you forget it is acting.
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