Latest / MUBI Podcast / With TÁR, Todd Field makes a power play
Transcript
- 0:04In March 2020, filmmaker Todd Field got a phone call from top brass at Focus Features.
- 0:10With an offer.
- 0:11Peter Kujawski and Kiska Higgs at Focus said,"Write whatever you like." Stuck at home during the first pandemic lockdown, he figured this was his chance to write a story about a character he'd been carrying around in his head for more than a decade.
- 0:26A classical music conductor.
- 0:28Once I started, it was about 12 weeks, and I really had no...
- 0:33Reasonable expectation that the studio would ever want to make the film.
- 0:37I kind of just wrote it because it felt like the world was ending.
- 0:40And who even knew if there was going to be movies on the other side of whatever we were, you know, facing.
- 0:46And I told them that at the time.
- 0:47I said, "I'm going to hand you a script"and you're not going to want to make it.
- 0:51"But don't worry,"I'll write something else for you so you don't feel like I stole your money." And I was shocked and somewhat horrified when they said that not only did I want to make it, but they wanted to make it immediately.
- 1:03What was horrifying about that?
- 1:03That's what most people dream about.
- 1:06I think it's always horrifying when you actually have to make a film.
- 1:14It turned out he had nothing to be afraid of.
- 1:16The movie he made is called Tár, one of the most celebrated of the year.
- 1:21But it definitely deals with some modern horrors.
- 1:25It's the story of Lydia Tár, an American conductor who leads the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
- 1:30She's exalted, catered to, a great artist, living a privileged life.
- 1:35Which slowly turns into a nightmare as first her colleagues, and then her lover, and then herself, come to terms with what she's done to get power, and how she's abused it.
- 1:47I'm Rico Gagliano, and welcome back to the MUBI podcast.
- 1:50MUBI's the streaming service that curates great cinema.
- 1:53On this show, we tell you the stories behind the great cinema.
- 1:56Season three is coming soon.
- 1:58But today, one more special episode to tide you over.
- 2:00It is my interview with Todd Field about Tár.
- 2:03Back in the early nineties, he graduated from my alma mater, actually, the AFI, the American Film Institute, and this is only his third feature since then.
- 2:11But just like his other movies, it's up for a raft of Oscars, including for Best Film Field's writing and direction, and his star Cate Blanchett's performance.
- 2:20She actually already won a Golden Globe for that.
- 2:23And since the next season of this show is all about music in movies, I thought Field was just the guy to talk to.
- 2:29He actually played in jazz bands and he entered college on a music scholarship.
- 2:34As an actor, he portrayed a pianist in Stanley Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut'.
- 2:38But as you'll hear later, when he dreamt up the character of musician Lydia Tár, music was the last thing on his mind.
- 2:45First up, though, I pressed him to tell me a little more about the horror of getting a green light.
- 2:53I mean, one of the things that, you're... You know, you were a fellow at AFI, as I was.
- 2:58And I think part of the pleasure and the pain of that program was the fact that we had to do these Cycle Projects with such little turnarounds.
- 3:06These very quick turnaround shorts that we had to make like many of each semester.
- 3:11Right. And it didn't give you too much time to to think about it.
- 3:15And I think that there was a real wisdom in that.
- 3:18Just having to make decisions and hang a lantern and get to work, you know?
- 3:23And the problem with feature filmmaking often is that it moves so glacially.
- 3:30That there's plenty of opportunity for anxiety and fear, you know.
- 3:34- So...
- 3:34- That's interesting.
- 3:36I mean, a mentor of yours was Stanley Kubrick, who also didn't take short amounts of time to make a movie.
- 3:42And I guess you got to watch him be fairly tortured, too.
- 3:44Well, I do remember having that conversation with him and asking, you know, gently saying, you know, is there a reason that you take such long periods of time?
- 3:53Because at that point in time, I had just been out of AFI for three years, actually a year...
- 3:58And had no forecast of what was ahead.
- 4:01I really thought I would just go off and, you know, make movies once a year or something, which is far from what occurred.
- 4:07But... And Stanley said, because it has to be something where I know I won't lose interest or I have a fair chance of not losing interest, because the most horrifying thing would be to start something and get halfway through and realize that it no longer engages you, you know?
- 4:23And I think that that is the sort of for anyone making a feature film, it is that, you know, the loneliness of the long distance runner.
- 4:30You don't want to be on mile ten or twelve, and not want to finish the race, you know?
- 4:34Yeah, that was... I mean, this is something I was going to ask away later in this interview, but I'll go to it right now.
- 4:39How much when you are planning a movie, to what extent is this the most important thing that, you know, you say to yourself, in this case, I want to do this because I just like classical music and I want to do a film where I get to be around it for several years.
- 4:51Oh it had nothing... I have no interest in classical music whatsoever.
- 4:54I mean, that's not why I made the film.
- 4:56The backdrop is important because it's such a very simple frame of looking at a pyramid or in this case, a triangle in terms of a power structure.
- 5:07I was more interested in taking a character and putting her in some kind of cultural hierarchy, and examining how that works.
- 5:16You know what what are the cornerstones of a pyramid of power and who has to hold that up, and who gains and who benefits and who feeds it and who is complicit in that?
- 5:28And how does somebody sit at the top of such a pyramid?
- 5:31Then let's talk about that character who I know you've said you dreamed up, you know, ten years ago.
- 5:38Where did that character come from as sort of the vessel to examine power?
- 5:42Well, I work in the film business.
- 5:46So I'm sure that character sort of was birthed out of many parents.
- 5:51Let's put it that way.
- 5:53That's all you're going to say? Seriously?
- 5:55Well, this is... Do you want me to get confessional?
- 5:57- I mean.
- 5:57- Yep.
- 5:58Well, I'm not! Well, let me... What's the essence of that character that was that leapt into your mind?
- 6:07Like, I want to do a character who is what?
- 6:09I think it was just, you know, the idea that there's a reason people rise to power and as this character would say, it's not always so polite.
- 6:19You know, there's always going to be some road kill for someone to reach that destination.
- 6:25That's fascinating to me.
- 6:26It's fascinating to me about how people are enabled to exist like that and have been, you know, from the beginning of time.
- 6:33- This is nothing new.
- 6:33- Yeah.
- 6:35I mean, for me, this is a movie that puts us in the mindset of a narcissist.
- 6:39And I mean, it's interesting to me that you've been carrying this character around for many, many years because the first thing that came to my mind was we've had several narcissists running major countries over the last few years.
- 6:49There's also a few asides about democracy in this movie.
- 6:52Lydia Tár actually says at one point about her orchestra,"This isn't a democracy." The politics of our modern world enter into your mind as you were structuring this?
- 7:00Well, certainly. And what she's saying actually, in fact, is untrue.
- 7:04If you are in a German orchestra, it actually is a democracy.
- 7:08So in actual fact, she doesn't necessarily have the right to do that.
- 7:12She's been granted that privilege essentially by the orchestra.
- 7:16And that orchestra is, in fact, led by the concertmaster.
- 7:19And in this case, that concertmaster is her partner.
- 7:22- Yeah, yeah.
- 7:22- So that partner benefits from allowing her to be out front, you know, in the spotlight.
- 7:28And she's sort of safely in the wings, but is doing a lot of scene shifting from the wings.
- 7:34She's an enabler.
- 7:35She's an enabler.
- 7:36And she has the ear of that entire orchestra because she's the most powerful player in it.
- 7:41It actually occurs to me, you you know, you've said that you're not particularly interested in the classical world just for its own sake, and that this does have, you know, some political ramifications.
- 7:52Why not set this in the realm of politics?
- 7:55Why set this in the realm of the arts?
- 7:58Well, I mean, it's an auto...
- 7:59Audio visual medium, and you can fit a triangle in a frame.
- 8:05I mean, if you look at her on the podium, she's literally at the tip of a triangle, right?
- 8:10I mean, it's a very efficient way to very simply illustrate a power system.
- 8:16You know, if nothing else.
- 8:18It's also there's I've always been fascinated by front of house, back of house, you know, whether it's a play or a film like The Dresser or what have you.
- 8:27But the idea of how does the show actually get on its feet, you know, and what is the drama involved in that show.
- 8:33And that's a little bit different than, you know, political intrigue is fascinating and rich and interesting to a point, you know, or if she sat at at the top of a media organization or something like that or an energy company, anything.
- 8:48But you have to actually be able to stand atop mount Olympus and throw thunderbolts with your hands and have and have there be an explosion, which is what it's like to be a conductor is fairly dramatic.
- 8:59- You know.
- 8:59- That's great.
- 9:00It does it makes for a better movie in some instances, although I will say it's like the Speaker of the House sits up on top of a podium looking down at an arc of people before them.
- 9:09That's a triangle, too.
- 9:10Well, it, you're right about that.
- 9:10Maybe.
- 9:12Maybe we do Tár 2: The Senate.
- 9:15Maybe we do Tár 2: Yeah.
- 9:18Maybe we do Tár 2: I'll look forward, that'll be the most bizarre sequel ever.
- 9:21Maybe we do Tár 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes.
- 9:23Maybe we do Tár 2: - The comeback!- What an interesting franchise.
- 9:26Maybe we do Tár 2: Um, there's a scene, speaking of power, there's a scene, and it's been the subject of a lot of conversation.
- 9:32Maybe we do Tár 2: Before I saw the movie, I was reading, you know, the reviews as I do, and most of them mention this scene, the scene where Lydia's teaching a conducting class, and she gets in an argument with this student who is conducting a very atonal piece by a modern female composer.
- 9:47Maybe we do Tár 2: And, you want to set up the rest?
- 9:49Maybe we do Tár 2: Well what's going on with the scene is she...
- 9:52Maybe we do Tár 2: Basically declares war on the atonal.
- 9:55Maybe we do Tár 2: - So you're a violinist? All right.
- 9:55Maybe we do Tár 2: - Yeah.Okay, well...I can see why you would choose to conduct a piece like this.Must be a familiar pleasure in presidingover a bed of stringsthat behave as if they're tuning. And she declares war on the atonal, quite conveniently, because the piece of music that she's torpedoing is by another woman who's very celebrated, who's very young and beautiful by her own accounts.
- 10:22Maybe we do Tár 2: But instead of talking about that, she's really kind of going after the student and basically saying, go back to the this old dead white man thing.
- 10:31Maybe we do Tár 2: Instead of admitting that she's jealous of this other composer, she tells the student that he would be better off- playing the classics.
- 10:37Maybe we do Tár 2: - Yes.
- 10:38Maybe we do Tár 2: Have you ever played or conducted Bach?Honestly, as abipoc pan-gender person,I would say Bach's misogynistic life makes it kind ofimpossible for me to take his music seriously. And when the student very politely says that they're not interested in that, she essentially guts him.
- 11:00Maybe we do Tár 2: But you see, the problemwith enrolling yourself asan ultrasonic epistemic dissidentis that if Bach's talentcan be reduced to his gender, birth, country,religion, sexuality and so on,then so can yours. Here's what is interesting to me.
- 11:16Maybe we do Tár 2: The New Yorker's published two analyses of this movie, one by Richard Brody and one by Tavi Gevinson.
- 11:22Maybe we do Tár 2: And they couldn't have more divergent takes on the movie and this scene.
- 11:26Maybe we do Tár 2: Brody is basically like, this is a regressive conservative movie about the evils of so-called cancel culture as embodied in this scene.
- 11:33Maybe we do Tár 2: And Tavi is like, this is an exposé about artists who abuse power.
- 11:37Maybe we do Tár 2: And how surprised were you that you could get such totally different reads on this scene?
- 11:43Maybe we do Tár 2: Because to me, it's very clear what this scene is about.
- 11:45Maybe we do Tár 2: What's thrilling?
- 11:46Maybe we do Tár 2: I mean, the scene is constructed in a way to be a punching bag for whatever you bring to it.
- 11:52Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, it's not... I wouldn't offer any other interpretation of the scene.
- 11:57Maybe we do Tár 2: The only thing I would be sad about is if somebody watched the scene and was indifferent to it.
- 12:01Maybe we do Tár 2: You know?
- 12:03Maybe we do Tár 2: I mean, the conversation itself is a useful tool for a character that's going to preach religion and purity and then violate that, a half a dozen scenes later with their own hypocrisy.
- 12:14Maybe we do Tár 2: But this to me, this is what I'm saying.
- 12:15Maybe we do Tár 2: I 100% agree with you.
- 12:17Maybe we do Tár 2: So I don't understand how one can take this as a movie about, you know, the evils of so-called cancel culture when you've got at the heart of it the person who is canceled is so hypocritical and has so many negative things.
- 12:30Maybe we do Tár 2: It's not like where I don't feel like we're totally sympathetic to this character.
- 12:33Maybe we do Tár 2: I do think we're fascinated by her.
- 12:36Maybe we do Tár 2: But it's not like this is a character that is ever painted as somebody that you can totally get behind.
- 12:41Maybe we do Tár 2: And she's capricious and she's as full of hypocrisy as any of us, let's put it that way.
- 12:48Maybe we do Tár 2: Where are you going?You're a fucking bitch.And you are a robot. So I want to talk a little bit about your return to filmmaking after a long hiatus there.
- 13:03Maybe we do Tár 2: And just to put this in personal terms, we take a few months between the regular seasons of this podcast to research and do interviews and stuff.
- 13:13Maybe we do Tár 2: And every time that part's finished and we go back to actually writing and producing episodes, it feels like I'm the Tin Man, in need of oiling.
- 13:20Maybe we do Tár 2: I'm kind of like creaking back to life and figuring out how to move again.
- 13:24Maybe we do Tár 2: And that's after a few months.
- 13:26Maybe we do Tár 2: Fifteen years you took. What...
- 13:28Maybe we do Tár 2: Actually sixteen years to be more...
- 13:30Maybe we do Tár 2: Actually seventeen years to be, to be more precise, because we shot little children in 2005, and it was released in 2006.
- 13:38Maybe we do Tár 2: But who's counting, right?
- 13:41Maybe we do Tár 2: My question being like, what muscles were the hardest of flexing for you, when you got back on the set?
- 13:46Maybe we do Tár 2: None, because I haven't stopped shooting in seventeen years.
- 13:48Maybe we do Tár 2: I've been doing advertising.
- 13:49Maybe we do Tár 2: So, I mean, I'm on the floor all the time.
- 13:53Maybe we do Tár 2: I've been at the forefront with many other commercial directors in terms of developing technology, both in the editorial areas and visual effect areas and camera systems long before they ever get to feature film or television directors.
- 14:07Maybe we do Tár 2: So I shoot constantly.
- 14:09Maybe we do Tár 2: I actually feel much stronger than I did with my previous two films.
- 14:15Maybe we do Tár 2: The one difference was sort of the...
- 14:17Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, moment where you realize,"Oh yeah, I remember" you know, I remember it was like to get in this on this animal again, which is the very first day of the shoot with, with the actors.
- 14:27Maybe we do Tár 2: And just on the very first day with Cate Blanchett and Noémie Merlant and Nina Hoss, that was like opening a door that had been locked firmly for a very long time for me.
- 14:37Maybe we do Tár 2: And that was a that was a revelation.
- 14:39Maybe we do Tár 2: And that made coming to work intensely exciting in a manner that, you know, working in advertising never will.
- 14:46Maybe we do Tár 2: You mentioned Cate Blanchett and working with her, you've said you wrote this film with her in mind and that you wouldn't have made it without her, actually.
- 14:53Maybe we do Tár 2: What does she have that this movie could only get from her?
- 14:56Maybe we do Tár 2: Well, I had met Cate on another project, that didn't happen about ten years ago, a script that Joan Didion and I had written together.
- 15:02Maybe we do Tár 2: And I didn't know Cate before then.
- 15:05Maybe we do Tár 2: I mean, I knew her work, obviously, but the time that we spent together talking about doing that, was some of the richest dialog I'd had with another filmmaker.
- 15:16Maybe we do Tár 2: She's not just looking at her character and what her character can do, she's looking at the entirety of it.
- 15:22Maybe we do Tár 2: And when that project didn't happen and I sat down to write this, I just couldn't stop thinking about her.
- 15:28Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, clearly the quite impressive practical things that she had to master for this because she she's playing the piano, she's playing Bach.
- 15:37Maybe we do Tár 2: Note for note on screen.
- 15:38Maybe we do Tár 2: She's conducting for real.
- 15:40Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, she's speaking German.
- 15:41Maybe we do Tár 2: She's doing an American accent.
- 15:43Maybe we do Tár 2: She's she's doing all of these things.
- 15:45Maybe we do Tár 2: And you know, what she would tell you is she would say poo poo about all that, that those are givens.
- 15:51Maybe we do Tár 2: You have to do that.
- 15:52Maybe we do Tár 2: But that, but that's not where the character is.
- 15:55Maybe we do Tár 2: That's just the character's, you know, particulars.
- 15:58Maybe we do Tár 2: And she's right about that.
- 15:59Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, we shot such an aggressive schedule.
- 16:03Maybe we do Tár 2: We never looked at dailies.
- 16:04Maybe we do Tár 2: And it wasn't until Monika Willi and I were sitting in Scotland seven days a week, watching the work, where you see what's important about the performance is what she does with the character in a almost pointillistic way, just the tiny physical actions that she's mapped out that when you see them in their entirety, are rather breathtaking.
- 16:25Maybe we do Tár 2: - You know.
- 16:25Maybe we do Tár 2: - Like what?
- 16:26Maybe we do Tár 2: This very small things, the way this character is obsessed with intent listening.
- 16:33Maybe we do Tár 2: What she does with her hands does tiny things, tiny things that have their own sort of rhythms and hues to them. You know.
- 16:40Maybe we do Tár 2: There's a moment early on in the movie and it repeats later on, she's waiting to go out on stage for an interview with Adam Gopnik, and she's trying to get to a point of relaxation before going on stage.
- 16:52Maybe we do Tár 2: And then suddenly does this kind of like batting at her face and kind of brushing off her clothing.
- 16:57Maybe we do Tár 2: And it really struck me as an amazing moment that sort of get something about what's going on inside of this character.
- 17:05Maybe we do Tár 2: Is that her then, or did that come from you?
- 17:07Maybe we do Tár 2: Well, where that came from was this character suffers from misophonia.
- 17:12Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, part of, and this is not uncommon for people that are conductors.
- 17:17Maybe we do Tár 2: Where they're highly attenuated to noise and they can't stand sound that they can't control, which is probably why they're gravitated to this vocation in the first place.
- 17:26Maybe we do Tár 2: So in actual fact, what she's doing there is she's responding to sounds that she's hearing in particular in the audience now, those sounds are described, the whole first page of the script is just one big black dense description of the sounds that she's hearing and what they're doing to her.
- 17:46Maybe we do Tár 2: So the plan had always been that we would play her those sounds and she'd be responding to the sounds.
- 17:52Maybe we do Tár 2: But when we shot it...
- 17:56Maybe we do Tár 2: And I saw what she was doing physically to respond to those sounds...
- 18:02Maybe we do Tár 2: I realized it was so much better if we didn't hear what she heard.
- 18:05Maybe we do Tár 2: It was much better just to see what was activating her.
- 18:10Maybe we do Tár 2: And yeah, that's a very good example and I'm glad you brought it up.
- 18:14Maybe we do Tár 2: That sets the tone, that's table setting for her.
- 18:18Maybe we do Tár 2: And and she's also doing a lot of other things.
- 18:20Maybe we do Tár 2: She's trying to get, she's trying to brush off energies.
- 18:23Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, she's going through ceremonies and she's going through these things that she's done forever to calm herself enough to be able to go out and perform, because, of course, that is the performance that this character is sort of self constructing in the whole movie.
- 18:38Maybe we do Tár 2: That first interview with Adam Gopnik.
- 18:39Maybe we do Tár 2: Oh, true.
- 18:39Maybe we do Tár 2: So for her, the interview and kind of her whole life are as much of a performance as, you know, a concert.
- 18:47Maybe we do Tár 2: Yeah.
- 18:48Maybe we do Tár 2: Ready for them.
- 18:55Maybe we do Tár 2: I think it's interesting, by the way, that earlier you were talking about how scary it was to get the green light for this, but you're also saying that dealing with actors, which is the thing for you that was the hardest to get back into about directing a movie was also the most exciting.
- 19:10Maybe we do Tár 2: There was nothing hard about getting into it.
- 19:12Maybe we do Tár 2: I think my what I was horrified about is the length of time.
- 19:16Maybe we do Tár 2: When I work in advertising at the most, I'm gone for three weeks and then I go home, you know, and it's on the air in front of the Olympics, you know, two days later, and it's already in the rearview mirror.
- 19:27Maybe we do Tár 2: But when you work on it on a film, you've got a couple of years of your life, you know, and away from your family and away from your children. And...
- 19:35Maybe we do Tár 2: If you care, you're working seven days a week and you're not sleeping well and your health is probably not so great.
- 19:40Maybe we do Tár 2: And so it's a huge amount of physical, emotional, and philosophical investment that you simply don't have in these shorter sprints.
- 19:49Maybe we do Tár 2: Again, it's like the loneliness of the long distance runner.
- 19:51Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, you have to know, can I get through 26 miles?
- 19:55Maybe we do Tár 2: And, that's the fundamental question that you really don't know.
- 19:59Maybe we do Tár 2: Can you do it?
- 20:00Maybe we do Tár 2: Given that, do you, are you actually looking forward to doing another film quickly or is it kind of like, okay, I'm happy doing these every decade?
- 20:08Maybe we do Tár 2: And in between, I can just do the quick hits of commercial work?
- 20:11Maybe we do Tár 2: You know, I don't know.
- 20:12Maybe we do Tár 2: I mean, you know, it's a...
- 20:14Maybe we do Tár 2: Given the paltry output, you know, post AFI I would like to make another film quickly.
- 20:21Maybe we do Tár 2: We'll see. You know, we'll see whether it comes together or not.
- 20:25Maybe we do Tár 2: Let's say, I like the 26 miles.
- 20:28Maybe we do Tár 2: I prefer it.
- 20:32Maybe we do Tár 2: Todd Field Last week, his movie Tár got nominated for six Oscars.
- 20:37Maybe we do Tár 2: And that is our special episode of the MUBI podcast for today.
- 20:41Maybe we do Tár 2: In just a few weeks, we're going to drop our full season three, telling the stories behind the legendary pairings of great songs and great movies.
- 20:49Maybe we do Tár 2: Guests include Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, Noel Hogan of the band The Cranberries, and many more, all talking about movie tunes from dream pop to classical.
- 20:58Maybe we do Tár 2: Follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it.
- 21:00Maybe we do Tár 2: While you're at it, declare your love for this show by leaving a five star review, wherever you listen, it'll help others find and love us too.
- 21:08Maybe we do Tár 2: This show was hosted, written and edited by me.
- 21:10Maybe we do Tár 2: Rico Gagliano. Our booking producer was Jackson Musker.
- 21:13Maybe we do Tár 2: Mastering by Steven Colón.
- 21:15Maybe we do Tár 2: Yuri Suzuki composed the theme music.
- 21:17Maybe we do Tár 2: Thanks this week Ciara McEniff and Dallas Taylor.
- 21:20Maybe we do Tár 2: The show is executive produced by me, along with Jon Barrenechea, Efe Cakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca.
- 21:26Maybe we do Tár 2: Thanks for listening, be safe.
- 21:28Maybe we do Tár 2: Now go watch some movies.