"Tár" by Todd Field (2022)

"Schopenhauer measured a person's intelligence against their sensitivity to noise"

"Didn't he also famously throw a woman down a flight of stairs who later sued him?"

"Yes, though it's unclear that this private and personal failing is at all relevant to his work"

The very first sentence seemed so important during the movie and I did my best to memorise it. But today, with a cup of coffee and a relatively fresh mind, I noticed that the whole conversation absolutely makes sense. Not only that Schopenhauer noticed a link between person's intelligence and their sensitivity to noise but he also might have been a conflicting individual - which should not really affect his work and what he left behind. In this short but oh so meaningful dialogue, we have a story of "Tár" in a nutshell. Here she is, a music genius of her times, celebrated many times over - and than tarred (what an interesting pun) and feathered because social media generation don't forgive any human failings. Perhaps even more importantly, same character (elderly musician and her former mentor Andris) warns her that when he became really big and successful, he made sure his public life was spotless. "“I made sure all the hangers in my closet were facing the same direction.”

I knew and expected that I would love "Tár" on the strength of my admiration for Cate Blanchett. Purposely, I have been avoiding reading anything about the movie because I wanted to approach it like tabula rasa and to enjoy it without any preconceptions. It was also exciting visit to a newly renovated and recently re-opened cult cinema "The Movies" that goes all the way to 1912. and it might be Amsterdam's oldest cinema. I even thought its my first cinema this year, until this very blog reminded me that in January I have seen "Triangle of Sadness" which was also brilliant, this makes two masterpieces so far. Perhaps the only weak link was my company who has never even heard of Blanchett and most of the movie went above her head, but I just had to accept that this time there will be no interesting after-movie discussion.

Cate Blanchett was sensational. I would even say, almost intimidating. As a celebrated classical music conductor Lydia Tár she is a very intense, confident and demanding individual who leads Berlin Philharmonic and is basically a balls crusher. She is bossing everybody around her and perhaps only with her elderly mentor and her adopted daughter, there is a fleeting moment of tenderness - it takes a specific kind of artistic integrity and I would even say courage to play such unsympathetic character, Blanchett does not even tries to soften her up, she is cold, manipulative and angry most of the time. She treats her personal assistant with disdain, her wife with barely concealed annoyance, people around her are here to serve. And just when it looks that she is at the top of her professional success, it takes one wrong step to show all the previously hidden animosity people felt towards her - there were hints trough the movie, like someone's cell phone with hateful messages (but we were never told who wrote them) - when proverbial  shit hits the fan, this dominatrix finds out there is nobody to help or support her. Not even her own brother. 

Some observations:

- The dialogue is out of this world. Since we are dealing with a rarified world of classical musicians, the way they talk is beautifully tailored and everything sounds so sophisticated that I even wondered is this perhaps too off-putting for a regular cinema audience fed with action heroes, but I must say that cinema was full and everybody very quiet & appreciative (confused?) so I should not doubt them after all. 

- Lydia Tár is very clever and manipulative. She ruthlessly steers her orchestra towards her goal and works on replacing elderly conductor assistant with someone else - but when it turns out her choice is not her own long-suffering assistant Francesca, there is a shade of "All about Eve" because Francesca uses her knowledge of Lydia 's previous personal affairs to create a public scandal that engulfs and sinks her whole career.

- There is a very interesting scene where Lydia gives a masterclass at the Juilliard - some young and cocky student dares to dismiss Bach (because as non-binary-whatever-person he can't listen music made by someone who fathered 15 children) and she is dazzlingly menacing in the way she treats him. Unfortunately this backfires at her. 

- Schopenhauer's idea that intelligent people react to a noise is ever present - not only in the way Lydia is haunted by all sorts of strange noises in her apartment, but also later as strange noises and even construction work gets more and more disruptive towards the end of the movie. 

- At almost 3 hours, the movie was really a test for my bladder. And the only reason why I couldn't get up was because my seat was in the middle of the row and I could disturb everyone - I still have that old fashioned concern about people around me - perhaps the ending where everything unravels was not even necessary and the movie could have been shorter. However, it has been a long time (probably not since 2008. "Doubt") that movie excited me so much, so for me this was definitely a 100% masterpiece. Even though its overlong. I will watch it again. 

Vermeer collected works in Rijksmuseum

 

Probably THE exhibition of the year, "Vermeer" in glorious Rijksmuseum had attracted huge international interest and the tickets were booked months in advance - there is something just so right about all this artwork coming back home where it started, after it has been scattered all over the world (many of these pieces have found their home in such various places as museums in Brunswick, London, New York, Vienna, Abu Dhabi and Dublin) - even more so, when considering that during his lifetime Johannes Vermeer very probably never went further than his provincial little town of Delft and now posthumously enjoys cult status of unprecedented proportions. Mind you, this is not the first ever exhibition of his collected works - there has been a similar 1996 exhibition in Mauritshuis (The Hague), a place that is home of his celebrated "Girl with a Pearl Earring" but this one actually managed to collect even more of his work than ever before. Still not complete - there are 28 pieces on display, several are still around the world (Vienna refused to send one particular painting) this exhibition is so far the biggest ever display of Vermeer's work under one roof and what is the better place than Rijksmuseum?

I would have probably never got the tickets if it hasn't been for a good friend who managed to book them back in January - appropriately it was me who gave her the annual museum card as a birthday present so it came back to me just nicely. We had a reserved time slot at 18:30 and believe me I have never experienced more enthusiastic and passionate audience EVER in my life before. This was not a tourist crowd, these were art lovers who have actually reserved their tickets in advance and the crowd was just ecstatic to be there, standing in line patiently in front of each painting, admiring all the little details and whispering to each other. The whole exhibition was displayed quite brilliantly, because naturally these 28 paintings could have been squeezed in one single room but were instead spread over 10 large rooms, often only one piece per wall and giving them a proper, regal space to be admired. 

Naturally I was thrilled. And yes, many of the pieces were priceless and lovely. But afterwards I thought how big part of the thrill came also from the crowd - if I was alone in the building, I would probably stroll along and just glance at the paintings that mostly have (dare I say?) repetitive subjects and very much same persons all over again standing in the same corner of the same room, with even same floor and same background. Having all these excited people around me and being forced to wait in line before I could approach the paintings made everything somehow much bigger and more important. I even thought that having all these paintings together somehow works against them - one alone stands out in any museum, because Vermeer's touch is so delicate and lovely - when they are lumped together, suddenly one becomes aware how similar they are. Is there such thing as too much of a good thing? Or would I feel the same if facing ANY collected work by any other artist, after all I felt certain fatigue in Van Gogh museum. it made me even pondering about the nature of the art versus hype - how we react to certain art just naturally and spontaneously, while in other occasions (like this one) it becomes more as a validation of how cultured and informed we are. Or maybe I just feel a bit annoyed with a sheer number of little, white-haired ladies tottering around and breathing my air. 

God's children: Muhammad and Samir

Every now and than a photo found online stop me in the tracks. This was one of them. Surely, we can't always take everything we read online for granted and most of the time its not true anyway - what we know for sure is that this photo was taken by Italian photographer Tancrède Dumas who had worked in the Middle East and had his own photo studio in Beirut, ca 1860. While living and working there, he took some very unusual photo portraits of now completely forgotten and lost world - one of them is this heartbreaking and highly memorable photograph of two unfortunate souls who depended on each other for survival. Various web sites have mentioned their names as Muhammad and Samir - the story goes that one was blind Muslim and another paralyzed Christian and they were beggars who lived as one, sharing whatever lodging and meals they could find, until death eventually separated them and the survivor quickly perished from grief as one could not live without the other. While the story itself is certainly moving and inspirational, we don't need to take it as a literary truth - neither their names or history can not be confirmed but what is certain is that these were two beggars dependant on each other and very probably completely alone in the world. 

The writer in me wants to know everything - who were their parents? Were they both rejected after birth? How did they found each other? Were they raised on some kind of orphanage and than kicked out as they grew up? How did they scramble for the food, survive harsh conditions of being homeless on the streets of Damascus, where did they found a place to sleep, did they comfort each other and wipe each other's tears? It is only a photo from a long gone world but my heart aches for them. If only I could go back in time, I would do everything to make sure they have roof over their heads and decent food, I find this so heartbreaking. Somebody should write a whole novel about them.

More of Josipa

 

Because it is 50th anniversary of our legendary rock masterpiece "Dnevnik jedne ljubavi" (The Diary of One Love), Croatian rock legend Josipa Lisac is all over the news again - while haters will hate, fans are celebrating this fantastic piece of music released back in 1973. and to my biggest surprise no less than Croatian State Archives have published several less known photographs celebrating this outstanding artist - amongst others, there was a photo that even I as a hard-core fan have never seen before, so I was thrilled to bits to discover it and admiring it ever since.

The photo was taken in 1973. just when "Dnevnik jedne ljubavi" was released and my guess would be that it was the same photo shoot that produced picture later used for her 1973. single aimed for that year Eurovision. Up to that point her music was quite downbeat (which I loved but it did not register in sales) and starting from now her lover, composer and Svengali Karlo Metikoš will steer her into more upbeat direction, resulting with this single and subsequent rock releases. There is a clear, audible change in sound, starting from now she will be our only female rock singer for quite a while. Above mentioned single was one of three attempts to break Josipa into Eurovision - she went on national TV selection in 1969, 1973 and 1987 - curiously, seems that her visual extravagance always worked against her and the mainstream audience just couldn't accept her so she never went further than local competition but 1973. and 1987. songs were major hits nevertheless. Because her later visual metamorphoses were so striking and memorable, public tends to forget how relatively demure she was at the start (and even more entertaining is the idea that this was supposed to be outrageous and rebellious back than).