Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.5

Tár 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson January 25, 2023

Ever since the sound era, both Hollywood and international cinema have shared an occasional fascination with music conductors. Notable big-screen features include Break of Hearts (Philip Moeller, 1935), Song of My Heart (Benjamin Glazer, 1948), Deep in My Heart (Stanley Donen, 1954), The Conductor (Andrzej Wajda, 1980), Taking Sides (István Szabó, 2001), Copying Beethoven (Agnieszka Holland, 2006), Beloved Clara (Helma Sanders-Brahms, 2008), and Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014). With perhaps the exception of Whiplash, few of those films likely don't have the same ambition, scale, or intellectual complexity as Todd Field's third directorial feature, Tár (2022). In one scene, Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, talks about playing with form. Field does this after a strange prologue where the camera takes the POV of an unseen figure texting a friend about Lydia, who's sleeping. Instead of presenting a more traditional main titles sequence, Field carries out the reverse. He displays the end credits in multi-columns of text with a tiny font. I believe one of the reasons that Field does this is he's trying to draw a parallel between listing all members of a filmmaking team who contribute to the picture first, just as patrons would page through a program booklet listing all musicians and members of the orchestra who will perform that evening in front of them. More specifically, audience members will read about the pieces of music and players prior to the performance. Field is revealing early on all the artisans and technicians who have helped bring Tár to the screen.

Field connects these performative aspects in the following scene when he makes a direct connection with the cinema audience and the in-the-film audience. Lydia is being interviewed on stage in front of a packed auditorium by Adam Gopnik, the staff writer for The New Yorker who's playing himself. Cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister reminds us the audience of the other audience (inside the film's diegesis) taking observation of the artist (Lydia). Hoffmeister's camera also makes it an intimate gathering through the shot/counter-shot pattern where we're practically with the interviewer and artist on stage. It's sometime presented like an episode of Inside the Actors Studio where host James Lipton would ask an actor about his or her craft. (Lipton indeed interviewed Blanchett on his show.) In a similar vein, we're right there with Gopnik and Tár, who discusses her artistic career and more technical topics for her new book, Tár on Tár.

Setting the pace for the piece.

Field tells the story of Lydia's fall from grace in unconventional ways. He doesn't chart her rise to fame like more mainstream films do with a central character. A protégé of Leonard Bernstein, Lydia's already an EGOT winner and world-renowned musician who's been commissioned by German label Deutsche Grammophon to record an album of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. Even though Field tells Lydia's story in largely chronological order, there are gaps and ellipses in the narrative that's left up to the audience to fill. For example, who is the woman with the red hair in the back of the auditorium at the beginning? What role will she play? Lydia's romantic partner is Sharon (Nina Hoss), the lead violinist and concertmaster for the Berlin Philharmonic. The couple live in a capacious abode with their daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic). But Lydia also seems to have had romantic liaisons with Francesca Lentini (Noémie Merlant), her personal assistant, and Krista Taylor (Sylvia Flote), a young musician hoping to move up the ranks in the orchestra. There's also the brilliant cellist, Olga (Sophie Kauer), who Lydia has a growing fondness for. Field doesn't provide a lot of scenic exposition to these relational entanglements but there's probably enough in the dialogue and dream snippets to make some reasonable inferences of what they are. Tár is an unorthodox picture with many layers beneath the surface.

Tár 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This triple pack from Universal and Focus Features contains a 4K UHD BD-66, a Blu-ray, and an insert with a digital code (expiration: 1/31/24). My copy came with a slipcover. The picture appears in its original theatrical exhibition ratio of 2.39:1. (The frame grabs are in 1080p.) Tár's DI was finished in 4K. According to the American Cinematographer, DP Hoffmeister used custom optics created by Christoph Hoffsten of Arri Rental Berlin. The HDR10 brings out exceptional clarity on the actors' faces whether they're framed in close-up, medium shot, or long shot. I was struck how well I could see Tár's face in an extreme long shot when she's interviewed by Gopnik. In closer shots of Tár, I could notice the pores on her face. The source lighting and what it accents in the frame are immaculately rendered on this UHD. Hoffmeister sometimes employs a technocrane (aka stereoscopic crane) for the more expansive shots and they're breathtaking to see here. The Blu-ray often comes close to matching the UHD's clarity, detail, and sharpness. That disc uses the MPEG-4 AVC encode and fits on a BD-50 (disc size: 43.75 GB). It features an average video bitrate of 28849 kbps.

Twenty chapters accompany the 158-minute feature.

Tár 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Focus Features has supplied a Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD-compatible multichannel track (7.1+11 objects; 3337 kbps; 2889 kbps, 16-bit) on the UHD and BD discs. The Atmos recording delivers finite clarity to the actors' spoken words. There are only one or two instances in which dialogue is somewhat unclear to my ears (e.g., a medium shot of Francesca talking). The first time I can hear the full spectrum of the sound track is when Tár initially conducts the orchestra. In subsequent performances within the film, the instrumental sounds completely envelop my home theater room. The brass chords played from Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor produce some deep, thunderous sounds. When there's a knock on the door of Lydia's Berlin-based flat, it sounds like someone is pounding on my wall (front, back, or both). When Lydia's neighbor knocks again in a later scene, I could clearly hear it on SL. A significant element of Tár's sound design is what Lydia hears off screen. This includes sounds in the walls she aurally perceives while awaking from dreams and screams she hears while jogging. These f/x are subtly reproduced on the Atmos track but with noticeable resonance.

Universal includes optional English SDH as well as additional sets of subtitles in French and Spanish.

Tár 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no extras on either the UHD or the Blu-ray.

Tár 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It is slightly understating the fact that Cate Blanchett gives a a tour de force in Tár. She knows the title character that Todd Field wrote for her so well that not for a second did I find one false note in her performance of a megalomaniac and tortured artistic genius. Tár is a complex work that grapples compellingly with corporate backstabbing, identity politics, and cancel culture on social media. It's lamentable that Universal and Focus Features didn't includes any bonus materials on either disc. But the 4K transfer and Dolby Atmos track are immaculate and near perfect. Tár is ESSENTIAL VIEWING. I also STRONGLY RECOMMEND this package.