Most ‘terrifying’ role of Blanchett’s career
Cate Blanchett tells Josh Rottenberg why she took on the part of conductor Lydia Ta´ r.
Cate Blanchett has played her share of formidable characters – rulers who could bring mere mortals to their knees with a single icy stare: Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth, Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the goddess Hela in Thor: Ragnarok.
But none of that could compare with the surge of power – and terror – the actress felt the first time she stood in front of the Dresden Philharmonic orchestra with a conductor’s baton on the set of her new film, Ta´ r.
‘‘Nothing will prepare you for the moment when you stand on the podium, which was terrifying, and give the downbeat and start making that sound with an orchestra of that size,’’ says Blanchett, who plays Lydia Ta´ r, a brilliant but deeply flawed classical conductor in writer-director Todd Field’s psychological drama. ‘‘I will never forget that moment.’’
Ta´ r chronicles the precipitous fall from grace of a conductor who has achieved the pinnacle of success in her rarefied field.
The first woman to lead the legendary Berlin Philharmonic, Ta´ r reigns with imperious mastery over her domain, only to see her carefully composed life unravel following the revelation of a scandal involving her abuse of power. By turns chilly and searing, the film unfolds as a tragic character study and a #MeToo-inflected thriller with a grand, symphonic sweep.
‘‘This film is not really about classical music, it’s not about conducting – it’s about power,’’ says Field, who returns to feature-directing for the first time since 2006’s Little Children.
‘‘Music just happens to be the world that we found this character in.’’
That said, music is the wellspring of Ta´ r’s power and the air that she breathes, and faithfully capturing the passion and artistry of her musical life was critically important to Field and
Blanchett.
‘‘We’ve all seen films about industries, the film industry being one of them, where we say, ‘Well, that’s cute but that’s not really how it is’,’’ says Field, who consulted with conductor John Mauceri as he developed the script to make sure the smallest details were accurate. ‘‘My fear was doing a sort of toy town version of this milieu and having people who are in the trade say, ‘Bulls..., that’s not what it is.’’’
The film’s narrative is constructed around two canonical classical works – Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 5 and Elgar’s Cello Concerto – which are interwoven with a haunting score by Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnado´ ttir. With Field insisting on absolute authenticity, all of the music performed in the film, which costars German actress Nina Hoss as Ta´ r’s violinist wife and concertmaster, was played live in front of the camera. To prepare for her role, Blanchett not only learned how to conduct but also how to speak German and play piano. ‘‘I learned piano as a girl, but that was a very long time ago now,’’ says Blanchett, who is already considered a veritable lock for an Oscar nomination. ‘‘With each subsequent pregnancy, I kept saying, ‘I must pick it up’. But, being terribly lazy, it’s not until it’s demanded on me from work that I actually learn a new skill.’’
For the scenes in which Ta´ r is conducting rehearsals for an upcoming performance of Mahler’s Fifth, Blanchett and Field strove for the greatest possible accuracy.
‘‘I didn’t want to stand up there doing some kind of trick,’’ Blanchett says. ‘‘I wanted to be able to look at the score and be referring to the exact note and dynamic marking. I didn’t want to have to fake it because those musicians weren’t faking it.
That would have been profoundly lazy. But also, where’s the joy in that? If I was never going to have that experience again, I wanted to try to get as close to the thing as possible.’’
Field is well aware that the prospect of spending twoand-a-half hours immersed in the world of classical music could be an intimidating prospect for many viewers, who could find themselves occasionally lost in the film’s references to esoteric musical terminology and past conductors like Wilhelm Furtwa¨ ngler.
The film opens with a long, dialogue-heavy scene in which Ta´ r is interviewed onstage by New Yorker writer Adam
Gopnik, throwing the audience into the deep end with a crash course in the art of conducting.
In the end, Blanchett says, for all the technical preparation she brought to bear to play Ta´ r, it was music that ultimately brought the character to life.
‘‘I like nothing better than when you can dispense with words and explain something through a sound,’’ Blanchett says.
‘‘One of the seminal moments for me at drama school was playing Electra [in Sophocles’ play] and breaking down grief into vowel sounds, feeling what vowel sounds resonated in different parts of your body. Todd’s screenplay affected me on a rhythmic level as much as it did on an intellectual level. My way in was through the music.’’
‘‘I like nothing better than when you can dispense with words and explain something through a sound.’’
Tar opened in NZ cinemas on Thursday.