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
00:00I can't tell you how badly I want to read Tar on Tar.
00:03I assume that that book is 900 pages long.
00:06I've written it.
00:07I've written it.
00:10I've read it.
00:11Yeah, you've lived it.
00:12You've lived it.
00:13I'm wondering if your opinion of Lydia changed at all
00:27from the moment you started reading the script
00:30to the last day that you played her?
00:31And if it did, how?
00:33I think it changed minute by minute.
00:35But in a way, I don't think we have opinions about ourselves.
00:41We're always the heroes or the heroines of our own narratives,
00:44aren't we?
00:44We always think we're misunderstood,
00:46that our actions are noble, that we're good people.
00:49And I think Lydia thinks that she's
00:50in the pursuit of excellence.
00:52She's got a very powerful inner critic.
00:55And I think great artists, people
00:58who achieve great things in society,
01:00are very robust and restless and exacting on themselves.
01:05And I think the interesting thing I got to grapple with
01:08was, how do you push the people that you're
01:11working with creatively beyond their comfort zone
01:15and be as kind of exacting on them, but do it respectfully?
01:19And I think that the film doesn't
01:20allow an easy judgment of any of the characters.
01:24It was really important to me as I filmed it,
01:27and even from the first reading, I
01:30thought the world was so complicated.
01:31The world is as complicated as the character is.
01:34And it was really important to me
01:35that I never made a judgment on her,
01:38because otherwise, it's telling the audience what to think.
01:41And because it's a lot about time and misspent time
01:46and institutional power, there's so few places
01:49where one can have a nuanced discussion about those things.
01:53And it was really important to Todd and to all of us
01:55that we allow the audience to have that nuance.
01:57So my judgment, my opinion was utterly irrelevant.
02:00Very interesting.
02:02Miss Os, I'm curious, how do you feel about the fact
02:03that people are leaving this movie
02:05and Googling for more information
02:07about these characters as if they were real people?
02:10Yeah, it's fascinating.
02:11That's great.
02:12I've only heard about it, because I'm not
02:14so much on social media, I must admit.
02:17But I hear about it, and I'm like, really?
02:20That's something?
02:21They have big articles about Lydia Tarr
02:24doing her next concert and all of this.
02:27I think it's fabulous, you know?
02:30I love it.
02:32I love it.
02:33Because it means that it, you know, it evokes fantasy.
02:38It's like you want them in your life, you know?
02:40So it's great.
02:42I can't tell you how badly I want to read Tarr on Tarr.
02:45I assume that that book is going to be my number one.
02:48I've written it.
02:49I've written it.
02:52I've read it.
02:54Yeah, you've lived it.
02:54You've lived it.
02:55Miss Blanchett, there's this unforgettable moment
02:57where Lydia goes home and she has these VCR tapes
03:00of conductors that inspired her when she was younger.
03:03And I'm just curious, if you had VHS tapes of performances
03:07from actors or actresses that you adored,
03:09and if so, which one did you wear out, do you think?
03:12Gosh, I think a film that really changed my life
03:17was watching Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
03:21And watching her include,
03:22and also the life that she has lived.
03:25I mean, she has had so many lives.
03:28If I could, so I constantly refer to her
03:32and also Liv Ullman.
03:34And I suppose the filmmaker that I'd constantly referred
03:37to would be Krzysztof Kieślowski.
03:39So his work is on constant rotation.
03:44But yeah, I found that scene,
03:45it was a real surprise actually when it happened.
03:49It comes quite late in the piece,
03:52when the audience has decided they felt
03:56whatever they felt about Lydia.
03:58And then you realize that she is a human being
04:00and makes mistakes and has regrets
04:03and feels longing and yearning like everybody.
04:06It was a very well positioned sort of moment, I think.
04:10I'm just curious if you could compare the relationship
04:12between a musician and conductor with actor and director.
04:17Is it even a fair comparison?
04:19Well, there are some similarities, I guess,
04:23because you're working on an interpretation, you know.
04:27But I do have the feeling,
04:29especially in this work with someone like Todd,
04:33that it was very much also in his interest
04:36to see what we're gonna do with it, you know.
04:41So the freedom of interpretation was very much there.
04:47And in the whole body of an orchestra,
04:50that is maybe probably what's difficult about it,
04:54but also the incredible thing that they do
04:57and the beauty that they do.
04:58You have to submerge, you know.
05:01You can, if you do chamber music and so on,
05:04then you can be more like an actor maybe
05:08and interpret it the way you see things a bit more.
05:12But then you just, you go, I mean, it's a similarity.
05:17I love the vision of Todd
05:19and I wanna play towards that vision
05:22that the director has.
05:24But how we get there is very much in the open
05:28and maybe surprisingly, we find other things
05:31along the way that even he didn't expect, you know.
05:34But that, I think, is a bit different
05:37to the relationship between a conductor
05:40who has a certain sound in mind
05:42and the whole body of an orchestra
05:45trying everything to create that.
05:49That was the shocking thing to me
05:50about our rehearsal process.
05:52Us thinking, gosh, we've got so little time
05:53to rehearse with the orchestra
05:54and Nina has to play the violin
05:56and I've got to conduct them.
05:57But that is life imitating art.
06:00They, often a guest conductor will come in,
06:02they will have eight hours, if they're lucky,
06:04to play this, rehearse this symphonic work
06:07and then they, and to put their interpretation on it
06:10and try and elicit a particular sound from an orchestra.
06:13Whereas we had eight weeks.
06:16So we chip away at it a little bit at a time.