The stars of “Tár” including Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss discuss their film in this interview with CinemaBlend's Sean O’Connell. They discuss their opinion on their protagonist, the online reaction to the film, creative inspirations and much more!
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 - I can't tell you how badly I want to read Tar on Tar.
00:03 I assume that that book is mine.
00:04 (laughing)
00:06 - I've written it.
00:07 I've written it.
00:08 (laughing)
00:10 - I've read it.
00:11 (laughing)
00:11 - Yeah, you've lived it.
00:12 You've lived it.
00:13 (gentle music)
00:16 - I'm wondering if your opinion of Lydia changed at all
00:27 from the moment you started reading the script
00:30 to the last day that you played her.
00:31 And if it did, how?
00:33 - I think it changed minute by minute.
00:36 But in a way, I don't think we have opinions
00:39 about ourselves.
00:41 We're always the heroes or the heroines
00:43 of our own narratives, aren't we?
00:44 We always think we're misunderstood,
00:46 that our actions are noble, that we're good people.
00:49 And I think Lydia thinks that she's in the pursuit
00:51 of excellence.
00:52 She's got a very powerful inner critic.
00:55 And I think great artists, people who achieve great things
00:59 in society are very robust and restless
01:02 and exacting on themselves.
01:05 And I think the interesting thing I got to grapple with
01:08 was how do you push the people that you're working
01:11 with creatively beyond their comfort zone
01:15 and be as kind of exacting on them, but do it respectfully?
01:18 You know, and I think that the film doesn't allow
01:21 an easy judgment of any of the characters.
01:24 It was really important to me as I filmed it,
01:27 and even from the first reading,
01:30 I thought the world was so complicated.
01:31 The world is as complicated as the character is.
01:34 And it was really important to me
01:35 that I never made a judgment on her
01:38 because otherwise it's telling the audience what to think.
01:42 And because it's a lot about time and misspent time
01:46 and institutional power, there's so few places
01:49 where one can have a nuanced discussion about those things.
01:53 And it was really important to Todd and to all of us
01:55 that we allow the audience to have that nuance.
01:57 So my judgment, my opinion was utterly irrelevant.
02:00 - Very interesting.
02:02 Miss Os, I'm curious, how do you feel about the fact
02:03 that people are leaving this movie
02:05 and Googling for more information about these characters
02:08 as if they were real people?
02:10 - Yeah, it's fascinating. - That's great.
02:12 - I've only heard about it
02:14 because I'm not so much on social media, I must admit.
02:17 But I hear about it sometimes,
02:19 and I'm like, really, that's something?
02:21 They have big articles about Lydia Tarr
02:24 doing her next concert and all of this.
02:27 I think it's fabulous.
02:30 I love it, I love it.
02:33 Because it means that it evokes fantasy.
02:38 It's like you want them in your life, so it's great.
02:42 - I can't tell you how badly I want to read "Tarr on Tarr."
02:45 I assume that that book is mine.
02:46 (laughing)
02:48 - I've written it.
02:49 I've written it.
02:50 (laughing)
02:51 - It's all up here.
02:52 - I've read it.
02:53 (laughing)
02:53 - Yeah, you've lived it, you've lived it.
02:55 - Miss Blanchett, there's this unforgettable moment
02:57 where Lydia goes home and she has these VCR tapes
03:00 of conductors that inspired her when she was younger.
03:03 And I'm just curious, if you had VHS tapes of performances
03:07 from actors or actresses that you adored,
03:09 and if so, which one did you wear out, do you think?
03:12 - Gosh, I think a film that really changed my life
03:17 was watching Jane Fonda in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"
03:21 And watching her in "Clute."
03:22 And also the life that she has lived.
03:25 I mean, she has had so many lives.
03:28 If I could, so I constantly refer to her,
03:32 and also Liv Ullman.
03:34 And I suppose the filmmaker that I'd constantly refer
03:37 to would be Krzysztof Kieślowski,
03:39 so his work is on constant rotation.
03:43 But yeah, I found that scene,
03:45 it was a real surprise, actually, when it happened.
03:49 And it comes quite late in the piece,
03:52 when the audience has decided they felt
03:56 whatever they felt about Lydia,
03:58 and then you realize that she is a human being
04:00 and makes mistakes and has regrets
04:03 and feels longing and yearning like everybody.
04:06 It was a very well-positioned sort of moment, I think.
04:10 - I'm just curious if you could compare
04:12 the relationship between a musician and conductor
04:16 with actor and director, is it even a fair comparison?
04:19 - Well, there are some similarities, I guess,
04:23 because you're working on an interpretation, you know?
04:27 But I do have the feeling, especially in this work
04:31 with someone like Todd, that it was very much also
04:35 in his interest to see what we're gonna do with it, you know?
04:40 And so the freedom of interpretation was very much there.
04:45 And in the whole body of an orchestra,
04:50 that is maybe probably what's difficult about it,
04:54 but also the incredible thing that they do
04:57 and the beauty that they do, you have to submerge, you know?
05:01 You can, if you do chamber music and so on,
05:04 then you can be more like an actor, maybe,
05:08 and interpret it the way you see things a bit more.
05:12 But there you just, you go, I mean, it's a similarity.
05:16 I love the vision of Todd, and I wanna play towards
05:21 that vision that the director has.
05:24 But how we get there is very much in the open,
05:27 and maybe surprisingly, we find other things
05:30 along the way that even he didn't expect, you know?
05:33 But that, I think, is a bit different
05:36 to the relationship between a conductor
05:39 who has a certain sound in mind,
05:42 and the whole body of an orchestra
05:44 is really trying everything to create that.
05:49 - That was the shocking thing to me
05:50 about our rehearsal process, us thinking,
05:52 "God, we've got so little time to rehearse
05:54 with the orchestra, and Nina has to play the violin,
05:56 and I've gotta conduct them."
05:57 But that is like imitating art.
06:00 Often a guest conductor will come in,
06:02 they will have eight hours, if they're lucky,
06:04 to rehearse this symphonic work,
06:07 and to put their interpretation on it
06:10 and try and elicit a particular sound from an orchestra,
06:13 whereas we had eight weeks.
06:16 So we chip away at it a little bit at a time.
06:18 (airplane engine roaring)
06:20 (man shouting)
06:23 (man shouting)
06:25 (dramatic music)