Tar

I can't join all of this Tar worship.

First, Blanchett irritated me. I think she did well overall, but she could have been amazing, if she'd acted like a real person instead of an Oscar-groping actor. I noticed this immediately, in her articulation during the early interview. The script was realistic enough -- amazingly -- but her delivery was not. I can't get behind such a lauded performance that starts so rocky. This continued through the Juilliard class and various other scenes: she had impressively down-to-earth lines to deliver, and she delivered them like a stage actor overthinking her theatrics. She had a lot of good moments; her worst moments were when she was trying to be professional and refined. I couldn't see the character's thought processes in her dialogue, I could only see that the actor already had the words behind her mouth, and was overthinking how to convey them.

Second, it just didn't level me like it needed to. It was open-ended without inspiring meditation, heartbreaking without inspiring heartbreak, frightening without being scary; in short, these worthwhile characteristics just didn't hit as hard as they should have. It's always uncomfortable to admit that an artwork very fine in form yet fails to fulfill its purpose, but that was Tar for me. Perhaps if I was more sensitive to issues of homosexuality, femininity, fame, or classical music, I would have felt differently.

Actually, as far as the music bit, I think I'm in the sweet spot: I'm musical enough to understand most of what's going on without being so refined in classical music that I could spot every inauthenticity. I'm refined enough in some things that I've hit that latter point in other movies (jazz in La La Land, physics in Interstellar, etc) but I should have been in a good position for Tar. I do think the music-related writing was strong; it just didn't hit me all that hard in the end.

I also never loved nor loathed Lydia. I didn't accept that she was a predator until just after the movie finished (I can be slow with these things), though I could see she was flying off the rails a while earlier and I therefore didn't support her. Perhaps this movie would have been more intense had I been more invested in or intimidated by her.

Okay, I don't think the movie was bad at all. Field was surgical with his writing and direction. The story was engrossing. I thought about it after it was over. I like and respect this movie. I just have to respond to any movie's general reception when my experience strays, and in this case that means slight disappointment.

Edit:

Okay, I gained some new insight. Apparently interviews are often scripted in the real world, hence not only was Cate Blanchett scripted when interviewing as Tar, Tar herself was scripted! That makes Blanchett's uncanny rigor in the way she speaks more forgivable. Had I known that, I might not have been biased against the performance from the start, and I might have treated future scenes of unnatural dialogue more sympathetically. I know that Blanchett as Tar has a forced way of speaking even outside the probably-scripted interview (Juilliard class, when she talks to her orchestra, other settings of attempted poise), but I might have found other reasons for these if I hadn't written her off so early based on incomplete information. Maybe all of this unnatural dialogue is accurate for the character, who is basically living a lie: Linda Tarr of Staten Island, unstable predator, is posing as perfect Lydia Tar. I'm not totally convinced, but I can see how that could lend more credit to Blanchett's work.

    As far as not knowing interviews are often scripted in the real world... I haven't seen lots of interviews, so I'm used to the raw spontaneity of such things as Norm Macdonald on Conan, or David Foster Wallace on Charlie Rose. These are uncomfortably authentic. So Blanchett as Tar's scripted version of herself just came off as inauthentic acting on Blanchett's part, when it may just be inauthentic acting on Tar's part.