The Big Picture - 'TÁR' Is the Movie of 2022. Here’s Why.

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

Sean and Amanda dive deep into one of the year’s most exciting and resonant movies, Todd Field’s ‘Tár' (1:00). Then, Field joins Sean to discuss the world of classical music, Cate Blanchett, and how he made the film (1:27:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Todd Field Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, this is Rob Harvilla from 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, the world's greatest loopy and perverse and inaccurately named music nostalgia podcast. We're doing 90 songs now because there's too many songs. Pearl Jam, Jay-Z, Jewel, U2, Cher, Hootie. These are just some of the names people yell at me on the internet because we're back. More great songs, more rad special guests, more loopy perversity. Join us once more on 60 Songs That Explain the 90s every Wednesday on Spotify. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started.

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Tar. It's one of the most discussed movies of the year. It's our turn to talk about it. This will be a deep dive into the beguiling tale of Lydia Tarr. Later in the episode, I'll be speaking with writer-director Todd Field, for whom Tarr is his first film in 16 years. But first, Amanda, we're going to talk about this movie. We'll talk for a bit without spoiling anything. We'll give you a general review of the film, and then we're going to get into the weeds and talk about what we think this movie is really about. It has been a subject of fascination, of conversation, of debate. There's been really takes in all kinds of directions about this movie, and we've both seen it. In fact, I saw it a second

time last night, and I had quite a good time with it, honestly. So, Tar, what'd you think? I loved it. I've talked about this already, that I really was invigorated by this movie-going experience in a way that I have not been since Top Gun Maverick, honestly, in a completely different way. And we're getting near the end of the year and we're gonna have to make our lists.

And I only have two guaranteed entries on them. And it's Top Gun Maverick and Tar which is in a lot of ways like the full spectrum of the film going experience right this is everything that Top Gun Maverick is not it is uh cold it is chilly it is about the it is about high art it is like capital h highbrow in a way that is um almost possibly a parody of itself it is intellectual it is uh provocative which i suppose top gun maverick is in a different way um more emotionally provocative emotionally provocative well it it is possibly politically provocative too if you think about it um but unintentionally so whereas tar is really trying to like egg you on and it's sort of like a a third rail of a movie

um and i think it has not just i think has, it does have the performance or one of the performances of the year in Cape Lanchette playing, um, Lydia Tarr, who we'll talk more about, uh, an incredibly specific and intricate and I think remarkable script. Just like a real craft movie, very intentional, and something that I've wanted to talk about with literally everyone I know who has seen it. So. So I love it as well. This is, seeing it a second time was very helpful for me for a variety of reasons. I first saw it at a film festival. It was greatly anticipated at the film festival. It had already, I think, premiered at Venice. And after it did premiere, people were like, this is it. We have our hot topic of 2022 in the movies. And I saw it and I quite liked it, but I walked away with some questions and even some slight confusion.

And maybe we can talk about some of that. A lot of those questions and confusion were answered for me it's not a after much deliberation it's not a five-star masterpiece for me but it's pretty close it's like right on the edge of this is that if you're going to make a film set in this world about a figure like this this is about as good as you can do there are a couple little things at the end that i would probably change and we can talk through as we get later into our conversation. But, you know, the film, for anybody who's not aware, it is set in the international world

of classical music. The film centers on Lydia Tarr. She's considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors on earth. And she's the first ever female musical director of a major German orchestra. She works in Berlin, though she has,

as we learned very early on in the film, because of a Q&A at the New Yorker Festival with Adam Gopnik. She is a woman who has conducted in Cleveland and in Boston and in New York and London. And she is an EGOT winner. And she is a true blue superstar in her world. The decision to center this film

in the world of classical music, I find to be the first of many fascinating creative decisions. Because on the one hand, this is a very, as you say, highbrow, kind of elevated world, a very cloistered world, very clubby, very sophisticated, or at least faux sophisticated. But also pretty much just like any other world of the arts. This is what the book world is like. This is what the movie world is like. If you operate in this elevated space, frankly, this is not so far away from what it's like to work in magazine journalism. There are stars. There are the people who make stars successful. And then there's everybody

else trying to be like them. And Lydia Tarr is a figure who, the first time I saw the film, I was like, okay, so she's just a full-blown genius. And this is a movie about the genius myth. And the second time I watched it, my opinion started to change. Yeah, which is fascinating. What do you think? Do you think this movie is more interested in being great at something or how one becomes great at something?

I think it's more interested in how one becomes great at something and even the question of what someone is great at. And art versus artist is a term that we get bandied, that gets bandied about a lot, that we use a lot usually in sort of like a fatigued way at this point because it comes with a lot of online discourse and people talking around each other and uh reductiveness but also just grossness that we don't want to touch or not don't want to touch but just it's hard to it's hard to get resolution around a feeling of what's right and what's not right in that conversation but to me this is very much about art versus artist in all of the normal ways that you associate with that phrase but the idea of what is the art and what is and who is the artist in this and um it's a movie about performance and she is a conductor and she is you know shaping performances all the time it's right there in the text but also um this character this lydia tar and this creation of this person

who is successful is something that not that she is invested in that everybody else in the movie is invested in uh this movie is about power and there is power in her persona as much as there is power in the work that she does and her quote genius. So and maybe like maybe she's just a genius at being like really successful. So another thing I like about the movie is that it doesn't totally provide a lot of answers to all of that. So it just makes you ask a lot of questions. I think it asks all of those questions about the character, but also about all of the people around her in the movie and really how we respond to someone who is a quote genius and what we're invested and interested in when we are interested in these types of

successful people. So you wrote, is this a deconstruction of the genius myth? I think it is, but not in the, I think it almost has very little to do with whether she's a great classical music conductor. So, and that's the thing that has shifted for me as I've watched it. I think I was enthralled to the marketing in some ways the first time that I saw it and then the second time that I saw it and I closely observed say her relationship with Sharon who is her partner and they are mothering a child together, parenting a child together and she is also a violinist in the orchestra that she conducts. She's the concert mistress is I guess the term. She's the first chair. Yeah. And hearing their conversations and listening to the script a little bit more closely, you begin to learn that

being a genius is not just about talent, that it's about manipulation and strategy and politics. And the same is true for the deconstruction and destruction of a genius. And that is also a part of this story. This is a rise and fall story. I don't think we're spoiling anything by saying that this is about someone who not only flies too close to the sun, but we almost literally see their wings get burned off. And it's fascinating because

whether or not we're supposed to have empathy for a character like this has been a subject of much debate. I think I've been describing this movie as a Rorschach test to people who've been asking me about it. I still don't fully know where I land,

but that ambiguity that you're suggesting and the nuance with which the story is told is very powerful. And sometimes, this is something a filmmaker just said to me

on the show recently, vagueness is bad. Ambiguity is good. This is a movie that lets you dig into it and determine how you see it. And no one's really wrong, but it does say a lot about you in terms of how you interpret this character, her rise and her eventual fall. Yeah, it asks questions. And I found myself really asking a lot of questions while I was watching it because I did have some time because this movie is almost three hours long which is one thing that we will talk about I think

its pacing is certainly intentional and ultimately really effective but it does go on for a long time and I think you are it is giving you room to be asking questions, not just like what's going to happen here or what are they doing, even though there is almost like a miss, not a mystery element, but there are things you are shown and things you see and things you do not see. And you're putting the pieces together and kind of trying to solve and predict and, and, um, anticipate what's going on in real time. But then you, I was asking myself questions, okay, of like, how do I feel about this character? Am I supposed to have empathy for this character?

Does this film have empathy for its character? Is this film commenting on the relationship that we have to people that we have on screen? And what does it mean to make someone a protagonist in a piece of art and you know those are all questions that i'm super interested in outside of movies or classical music but yeah it it really is provoking not in like the cheap way but in the just your brain starts worrying way. And that was great.

In the early stages of the film, it immerses us in the nitty gritty details of Lydia's life. How she pursues her wardrobe, how she plots her album covers, how she interacts with the people who provide funding for her various projects, what she eats, when she goes to sleep, what kind of hotels she stays in. The details are overwhelming in this movie. It is, to your point about the script,

it's impressive how intricate and lived in this person's life is, how specific all the choices are. But as time goes on, and it pivots at a pretty critical scene that I think is probably the movie scene of the year which is the scene that takes place at juilliard in the classroom from that moment forth things start to we start to learn that she is not just successful and

arrogant but abuses her power it seems like and is perhaps quite immoral and maybe even dangerous and then i think the first question that the movie confronts you with which is somewhat in and is perhaps quite immoral and maybe even dangerous. And then I think the first question that the movie confronts you with, which is somewhat in the realm of that art versus artist question, but it's really more to me, can brilliant people be tolerated if they are immoral? And should they be tolerated? If someone is as great-seeming as Lydia Tarr, but she uses her power to manipulate people and to get what she wants,

should that person be allowed to publicly operate and have great success? Or should they be banished? Because that's like the idea of like, whatever it means to be canceled is certainly in the, it's not quite as cut and dry as that question is, but it's edging towards it. It's saying like, is anyone allowed to transgress and continue or are we not allowed to accept

this kind of behavior in our society? Now the stakes as the film goes on get higher and higher and things happen to characters because of those abuses of power that make that question easier to answer. But at the outset of the movie, we're sort of like, is she just kind of a sleazy person?

And is that going to lead to her downfall? And I think that that nuance and that slow revelation and the shift in the storytelling in the movie feels very intentional. What's interesting about the movie is that just textually, she is allowed to do all of these these things until she isn't and as you said there is escalation and maybe there are lines but the characterization of everyone around her and the way that she operates in the world and it's small things like um nina haas plays her a partner wife you know I don't know their legal status.

They're raising a family together and is an incredible actor. And you can see all the shades of recognition and avoidance and disappointment in her face. And everyone is inching around this person. And you never know what they know. And frankly, you don't always totally know what the audience knows. There's like we there's so much implied, but we we see Wikipedia editing. We see like snapshots of emails. We see a lot of things inferred.

But you don't know for sure. You just have a suspicion. And we see a lot of people in her world kind of raising an eyebrow and then going along with a lot of things because of what, or not asking questions, right? Because of what this person does and because of the myth of herself that she has created and that the rest of the world goes along with and not even goes along with but hungers for there is like the adulation that is thrown lady atar's way in the movie within the world of the movie but also the way that she is presented is like really beguiling and compelling. And she, Cate Blanchett picked

out her own suits and she looks spectacular. And she is living in this really rarefied world, which if this is a Rorschach test, of course, Amanda's like, oh, but look at those apartments, you know? Check out that Porsche. Yeah, of course. Like, I too would like to have these custom suits. It's very attractive. It's very appealing, very purposeful. Shouldn't you also aspire to this kind of greatness? Right, but so it's, everyone is just going along with it

in a way that even the movie asks the audience or kind of lulls the audience into going away with it or I shouldn't say that it lulled me into going along with it and then being like uh-oh okay so this is gonna this is gonna go badly and even there you're questioning who am I rooting for what do I think what do I want to happen like what, what is the right outcome of this? One thing that really struck me, I picked up on this the first time, but the second time I watched it, it really struck me,

is that the film opens unusually. There is black to start the screen, and we hear almost like someone preparing to perform. And then we start to hear this kind of vocal arrangement. And then the credits begin. These credits are significantly different from most credits you'll see in a movie because they are aired in reverse, and they are the credits you would see at the end of a movie.

And the last thing you would see in a movie is the first thing you see in this movie. And then they roll through for two, three, four minutes. And we see everybody who was an artisan on the movie. We see them first, four minutes. And we see everybody who was an artisan on the movie. We see them first, not last. And that seems like a loaded message that geniuses are held up, are pedestalized by lots and lots and lots of people. And as a society, as a culture,

we love to see Lydia Tarr in her perfectly manicured and tailored suit. We love to see her on stage at the New Yorker Festival. We love to imagine that she is the only person who contributed to any of the music on her records. And we're not interested in who was fourth cello in the room or who played the bongos very quietly with a brush. That's not part of the genius myth. That's not part. And this movie, it seems to be a real kind of cockeyed about that concept. But also the filmmaker of this movie is someone who obviously has extraordinary control over his vision,

is an expert writer. He's been twice nominated for an Academy Award. I'm almost certain he'll be nominated for another Academy Award for his screenplay. And who starred in a Stanley Kubrick movie and studied Stanley Kubrick while making that movie, Eyes Wide Shut, in which Todd Field plays Nick Nightingale. Stanley Kubrick is probably the model

for the control freak genius filmmaker. So there's this intellectual clash. And that is one of the provocations of the movie is you need the person who can do the thing, but it can't be done without 500 people. And the movie consistently confronts us with this up until the point when it shifts from a kind of character study and an investigation of what it means to become one of these people. And then it becomes a kind of psychological thriller and i'm actually quite curious if you think that that which part works best do you how do you feel about this shift from a story about a great woman to a story about a woman who is becoming haunted by what she may or may not have done i think the supernatural

esque elements which is they're not really supernatural. Just a handful, yeah. It's some dream sequences and some things are the part where I personally checked out. And I don't know how you do the denouement of this movie without it. But the movie is walking such a line in in that character study the i mean the setup is just so engaging that you know it's a narrative film at some point like something has to happen and if things aren't resolved at least there needs to be forward motion so i guess that's got to be it. And you need, I guess, some sort of window into what's going on with Lydia Tarr to keep up that possible investment, or should I empathize with this person or not, that the film is very clearly going for. But, you know, it's not as direct and electrifying as the first hour, for sure. Yeah, I agree with you. And I agree with you about the sort of dream sequences. I think one of the most skillful aspects of the movie is the way it manipulates sound,

not just the music, though the music and Hildaildur guanda didger uh her score is amazing and seeing lydia conduct is some of the most kind of captivating and exciting stuff in the film the sound that haunts her whether it's in her sort of pied-a-terre in berlin or while she's asleep or hearing her daughter screaming in another room or when she's out on a run and she hears a kind of ambient noise in nature. She's kind of consistently surrounded by and overwhelmed by noise. At a certain point, her mentor, Andres, indicates that Schopenhauer measured a man's intelligence by their sensitivity to noise. That's kind of a signal line in the film. And I feel like

we would have gotten the point and we didn't need the kind of dream sequences and the kind of visions, the Malickian visions of the movie to tell us that we should be unnerved and that something is wrong and that she has a kind of,

like a subconscious that knows that she has transgressed. That's really the one thing aside from feeling like there was maybe five minutes too much at the end of the film that I kind of struggle with. And that's why I'm kind of in that we're in four and a half star territory here. A couple of choices where I would be like, I probably wouldn't have done this, but I can see for some others that might have been effective. When it was more grounded and practical about how things were kind of coming apart at the seams,

I was hyper engaged in the story. That's also because that's when Cate Blanchett is just, what's the sports metaphor? Batting a fat, it's, she's out of control. She's in beast mode. Is that still a thing? Yes, she's in beast mode. Yeah.

She's Marshawn Lynch lynching her way through yeah um just coiled and tense and withholding and you know that she has all the cards up but she isn't showing them to you yet and that is some of the appeal of the character itself and then you know her ability and those cheekbones ability to communicate it is like extraordinary and at some point they have to reveal a little i guess to make her a real character again not surprising that i am at am disappointed when like the control freak actually has to lose a bit of control because that is also part of this movie, right? That someone is so in control is a little scary, but also a little compelling to us or at least to me. Maybe some people are just like, wow, this person's a psycho and I don't want anything to do with her.

Not me. I was drawn to it even as I knew it was dangerous. Well, there's another aspect of it. The film is not entirely objective. No movie is. For the bulk of the film, we are seeing it through the eyes of Lydia, or at least we're observing Lydia closely. She's in almost every frame of the action.

But there is another subjective point of view that is not even necessarily fully explained. But there is someone who is at times with her or who is at times with her or who is at times observing her using their phone and communicating with someone else now we can speculate about who those people are i think some of it is quite obvious which is to say that um nomi merlon plays her assistant um and someone who is aspiring to be a conductor herself and has grown very close to her perhaps too close to to her. And we see her capturing her on her private plane or in her hotel room

and sort of appearing as though she is writing an email or something, but is in fact filming her while live chatting with someone. And who those people are is a bit unclear. Are there multiple people kind of tracking and conspiring against Lydia to bring her down or at least to accurately portray the sort of evil that she's putting into the world? And that is a really modern storytelling technique. It's not something that you could have done in a movie this specific way in the 50s or in the 70s or in the 90s because it's about technology and it's about our kind of mediated and fractured landscape. And it's about technology and it's about our kind of mediated and fractured landscape and it's about social media. Social media is a big part of the dynamic of the storytelling here.

I thought that was really interesting and while we're talking, I have not yet spoken with Todd Field. So I really want to know, are you on social media? Do you look closely at this?

And like, what relationship do you think that the film has? Do you think that it is a destructive force? Do you think that it is something that can make our society better by exposing people? What do you think its point of view is? I thought you were asking me whether I was on social media. I know you're on social media. You know I'm on social media and you know I'm engaged and you know I think it's a force, whether I think it's destructive or not, is TBD.

This is where we get into some, dare I say, cancel culture stuff, right? Or the idea that a prominent person can be held accountable in the court of public opinion and really social media for behavior that is not ideal. How about that? And I think that the movie, I guess it's pretty, well, I don't know. I have no idea what Todd feels, thinks about social media. I really don't. I think that it, and that's maybe another part of the movie that I liked is that it's just more a fact of the world that we live in, rather than it being dicey or, you know, condescending one way or the other, because you can venture into like old man yells at cloud territory when you're just like, oh, social media is just like where all the

terrible things happen. Um, it does play a significant role in the movie. And I, I do think that everything that makes Lydia Tarr grand and contributes her mythology is, like, very purposefully not of not just social media, but, like, our generation. She is, you know, she is harking back to the great old composers and conductors and she's wearing old suits and everything is very like analog purposefully but that just puts her in opposition to social media not the movie itself yes i think that's very astute in particular there's a sequence where she's having a conversation with a young cellist over lunch and she asks her about her favorite performances and um symphonies and she talks about uh one in particular and she says oh did you was it on this record and she says no no use youtube youtube is where i saw it my relationship with music is on youtube and you can see lydia almost being like jarred almost disoriented by the idea of engaging with this world and this culture in

a different way and in a non analog way, which is really fascinating. And yet the first time we see her in the film, she's on through a camera lens on a phone. She is kind of consistently surrounded. We'd later see her in a hotel room and we see another similar chat function. And she's in Placido Domingo's room, a figure who was famously quote unquote canceled. And in the correspondence, I love that moment when

the person who was typing says she thinks she's being ironic because obviously things come to seem not very ironic in that sequence. And as you said, like live editing a Wikipedia page, which is something that happens to people who fall into the court of public opinion, or being the subject of a highly edited YouTube video that is captured in a place where she didn't know she was being captured. So I kind of want to shift into a little bit of spoiler territory

so we can speak with more specificity here. If you haven't seen this film, I think it's safe to say that our advice is to go see it. It is like quite possibly the best movie of the year. It is certainly the movie that feels the most modern to me. It is a movie that I've seen this year that I'm like, this is actually what it is like to be in an environment where you're constantly observing successful people. They're sort of forced upon you every day. And like our life has very much become, how do I become one of these successful people? And that's through influencer culture. It's through our mass media. It's our popular culture. This movie is really about a collision

of those things, even though it's set in the world of classical music. So go see it. Come back. Listen if you want. Like I said, the movie really turns, I think, on this sequence where she goes to teach a guest lecture at Juilliard and it's a conducting class and she's surrounded by young students. The classroom and college campuses is already the subject of many New York times op-eds and a lot of like fraught and lame discourse. And I'm not really personally interested in navigating whether or not college campuses are good or bad. I don't know. I'm not on them. I don't, I have nothing to say about that,

but the sequence I think is the best written sequence in the movie. And it's fat. This is in many ways, the Rorschach test, because when I saw the film, I saw it, I tell you, right.

There are a lot of old people there and the sequence, which starts off actually quite more, more subtle and more graceful than I had remembered. But it is largely a largely a kind of walkthrough with a young student named Max who identifies as BIPOC pangender. And he has selected something to conduct for the orchestra.

And then Lydia uses that as an opportunity to sort of interrogate his taste, interrogate what excites him about music, and then ultimately intellectually attack him for his point of view on art and it's a really dynamic sequence it's just it's all in one take so that's a little bit of catnip for me yeah um and it's blanchette really like at in to quote you in her beast mode you know she really is firing off this very intricate complex series of monologues about... And playing Bach in different styles while... Which I just...

That's when I... Incredible. Music nerd, like classical music nerd, man. It just absolutely lost my mind. It's a pretty remarkable scene. And it's a scene that if you lean a little right on the cancel culture thing, you might be applauding. And if you lean a little left,

you might be a little bit disgusted. And it might see that, oh, okay, she sucks. She's the kind of person who thinks in this kind of binary art versus artist question and will do whatever she can to defend her position, including attack and insult a young student who maybe doesn't know as much as she does about the world. And then if you fall in the middle, which is where I fall, which is I think that there is like dynamics in both directions and that she's making some good points, but is also clearly a heinous person,

that, to use a relevant word, I think triggers something, triggered something in me about the direction that the movie was taking. And then that scene becomes this kind of critical moment later in the film when it is used to cancel her, for lack of a better phrase. what did you think watching the scene you know like what what do you did it work as well

for you as it did for me did it like resonate in the same way yeah absolutely and it's when the movie really ascends to oh we're going here and everybody is bringing their a game and also we're we're gonna have these conversations because it's kind of inching around it. And it's like the first time it touches the oven. And I think I'm in the middle like you. It's written in such a way where and performed in such a way where you do go with each person a little bit as the scene unfolds. And you have those moments of revelation and exasperation and trepidation and just kind of disgust all at once. And along with the meta experience of like, I will be seeing this in like award season reels for the rest of the year,

which you just know instantly. And there is almost a interesting self-consciousness to this scene that is like mirrored and crucially not mirrored and what Lydia Tarr is doing in that moment. Like she is also, she has a captive audience in this room and is like, okay, now like this is what you want from me. Right? I'm just gonna show off. She seems to be holding back at first and and it's like okay now like this is what you want from me right i'm just gonna show off and she seems to be holding back at first and then it's like

fuck it i'm going for it i'm gonna give you my speech on this yes and and then has the moment of weakness where because it goes on and on and she's made her point. And, like, basically won. Not really, but, like, she wins. And then she uses her... She keeps going. And is, like, suddenly using all of her knowledge and power and sway over these people to humiliate this kid. And goes too far. And it's very revealing about the character. And complicates some of the arguments i guess and

um just leaves you with an uneasy feeling and you know even watching that like oh this is this is not gonna go well and it's just a question of how it's not gonna go well it's the first time that she shows us all of her cards and we can be impressed by her intellectual rigor and the depth with which she understands the history of her art form and frankly i'm a sucker for that sort of thing yeah if you come with the facts i'm really interested it but it doesn't change the fact that her morality is stark and her attitude is downright mean. She's a mean person. And she will do whatever she can to win a conversation with a kid.

Yeah. With a kid who means well. And it's just a fascinating, it's a fascinatingly written sequence. It's actually a little hard for the film to kind of like match that and this the sequence happens about 25 30 minutes into the movie and i i found myself thinking about that scene over and over and over again because it is like so dynamically locating what you see on social media a lot of the time and it's not a mistake that social media is then like where it ends up living right you know like that's a very that's a very clever structural choice that is made there's also a

couple lines in the sequence that i just think are remarkable you know like a soul selects her own society or the architect of your soul appears to be social media lydia is obsessed with this idea of the metaphysical even though she is like kind of a materialist, barren person, she almost like makes people feel worse by suggesting that there is more than just your feelings, that there is an elevation of understanding of art. And then we hear this like breathy material from her memoir in which she's talking about the joy of the noise and all of this kind of like highfalutin bullshit honestly you know yeah it's performance yeah it's it's the creation of your own significance and also the creation of your own genius um there is a yo-yo ma really liked this film. And he was like, this asks important questions.

Like how does art get its power? And she is, you, you see that of her assigning the significance of what she's doing and creating basically like mumbo jumbo that other people involve, you know, and invest in, in order to think that she has like a singular gift.

Do we think that she's a great conductor? She's probably pretty good, but so much of the movie is about, you don't actually have to have, the goods don't even matter if you can perpetuate this kind of whole world around you and get everyone to buy in on it. How do you facilitate your own stardom and how do you facilitate your own power seeming to be at the root of it? There's a conversation later in the film as things start to fall apart for Lydia. We see her talking to Sharon as Sharon starts to learn that there are perhaps more extramarital affairs than she was aware of. And in fact, maybe Lydia was even more destructive towards people that she was mentoring than she knew.

And she's so distraught that Lydia didn't tell her about any of these things that were coming because she's so wounded that she didn't prepare their family. And she says something I thought really fascinating to her that maybe I didn't catch the first time, which was, you know, you could have told me and we could have strategized for this together the same way we strategized when you first came to Berlin. And the way that I helped you understand the politics of the landscape to put you in the position that you're in. And again, it's about collaborators, you know, it's not about this singular person who comes in. And the movie is just very deft at slowly dispensing with this information and undermining your expectations of who the character is. Like, it's a little silly to keep saying, like, over and over again, like, man, this movie is pretty smart. But it's very, very smart about how we learn what is happening.

And even if we arrive after that classroom sequence early in the film at the conclusion that she's kind of a shitty person, we don't really fully know the magnitude of it until we get even deeper into the film. Right. And the film is kind of continually asking, okay, but like how much of a shitty person is she? And also like, where's the line of shittiness where you have to start facing consequences for it? And not just, you know, what what happens but how do you feel about that and where is your personal line and how much you know do we all regularly allow for and even how much do we accept or even condone in the because it is wrapped up in this idea of like the great man uh except that it is wrapped up in this idea of the great man, except that it is very purposefully a woman in a male-dominated world. And the character makes a big deal out of that. Adam Gopnik introduction that like ungenerous people have complained as like, Oh,

it's very like neat exposition, which it is, but it's also a commentary on how she, this, what this character has positioned herself as like the first female composer, a conductor of this orchestra and an EGOT winner. And really, I guess like how people use exceptionalism and and um

accomplishment to build this kind of unimpeachable on like impenetrable fortress around themselves yeah I'm glad you brought that up because we see the Nomi Marlon's character miming the words that Adam Gopnik is saying because they come directly from her Wikipedia page, which is to say that this is all constructed myth that has been managed

by her own team. And the reason it's not convenient exposition is because the whole purpose of the film is to consistently undermine everything we see in the first five minutes.

That's a genius structural decision. Yeah. But I think you're right that it is, I think, both undermining the idea of exceptionalism, but is also still fascinated in greatness. Yeah. The movie constantly returns to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schopenhauer, all of these figures who were flawed

or who made immoral choices. But at the end of the day, what survived? What do we really think about them? Does one kid at Juilliard not being into Bach because he sired 20 children really matter to the material legacy of Bach? Not really. And maybe things will change over time

as our society changes. But this question of kind of immortality and star myth is in some cases more powerful. And I wonder, like, this is more of a personal perspective. As we go through this period in time that it really kickstarted a few years ago and is really maybe not as noisy as it was circa 2020, but is still quite powerful. The idea of saying like, we need to tear this person down because they've done terrible things and no matter what they've contributed to our society, creatively or structurally,

it's not worth it. You think that will hold? Or do you think this is sort of like a wave in a tide of acceptance and rejection? God, I have no idea. I mean, that's... Just speculate. Yeah, no, I'm thinking out loud.

It's like the kind of question that the movie begs of you. Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking out loud. It's like the kind of question that the movie begs of you. Yes. I think that the way that we evaluate people and who we hold up before we even, or not who we, but who gets held up before they get torn down will change and i think you know this movie goes to great length to establish all of the really like old school conservative primarily like white male bona fides that this character has and um has added to and i think probably the traditional kind of accolades or requirements to be considered a great person will just become different. But this idea of a fascination with someone and then this person not living up to the myth that we all create together. I mean, that's before 2020.

That's like a tale as old as time it's just kind of the different ways that it happens and our different expectations and standards and and interests i think what has changed and it's easy to draw parallels in the world of film and like i think even on this show there's a challenge to discussing woody allen or roman polanski or kevin spacey or any number number of people who have participated in the world of movies or have made great art in the world of movies or we have celebrated in the past but have pulled back from talking about because we're having a hard time rationalizing putting those people on a pedestal in the face of what they've been accused of or even in some cases

what they've been convicted of and it is really difficult but for the most part i think you're right that there is sort of like there's a generation of people who've been grandfathered in and if they're people in the past hundred years of movies if their transgressions were not on the level of crime but were on the level of racism or misogyny like john wayne's an interesting character i think like in the history of movies and like what he represents to people. John Wayne's not getting quote-unquote cancelled. I think actually people just accept that there is

a kind of imperfection to his hero standing. And maybe over time people will celebrate John Wayne less and less, but that's not going to change. But, if a new John Wayne comes along, and we learn quickly that that new John Wayne is a racist or is a misogynist or what we learn quickly that that new John Wayne is a racist

or is a misogynist or what have you, that person's not going to be able to be elevated in this way. And Lydia feels like she's kind of on that cutoff point, right? She's about, what, 45, 50 years old. She's had 25 years on top. She's kind of at the peak of her powers. She's about to complete this Mahler symphony, right? It's the fifth of the nine I think um

and this is sort of a crowning achievement and so that's the other thing is that the film meets her at her moment and it comes down and that's another interesting tension that I think sometimes when the spotlight is brightest there are more likely to be people hunting for the issue now the other interesting ambiguity of the film is that one of the motivations of the sort of downfall and this isn't true spoiler territory but is is important is that when nomi marlon's character is not elevated to the role of assistant conductor which is what she has essentially been apprenticing for as her assistant for a few years it seems that's when the downfall really

begins because she is helping to orchestrate the revelation about the way that she acts in the world, what she has done, how she has transgressed, who she has hurt. And there are a couple of messages to take from that. Obviously, it's understood that you should manipulate people in your rise to power, but you also have to be strategic about how you take care of the people that are closest to you and that's a bit of a um cynical read but i think it's a point and you could make the case that if rather than overthink her circumstances with sharon and not elevate this woman because the people in her universe would think oh she's only elevating her because she does special favors for her sort of like interns who maybe she also has a sexual relationship with.

If she had just said, I don't care what everybody thinks about this thing that I'm doing, she might have been protected from this in a way, or at least somewhat protected from this in a way. Because we learn later that when one of her mentees with whom she has had a relationship commits suicide. That there is some news about it and it is covered in the New York Post, but that the crisis manager is essentially saying like, this might just go away. Right.

And it's not until there's a social media post that things really get out of hand. And there is a sort of like, do I have the timeline right there? You've seen it more recently do I have the timeline right there? Like I'm, you've seen it more recently than I have, but yes, though. I, I got the impression that it was just as these things often do, there's one kind of crack in the armor and then another thing comes out and

then another thing comes out and there's just sort of a ground softening and that everyone decides, Oh, well, okay, now it's all right. I mean, this is a ridiculous recent example. James Corden and the great egg yolk incident at Keith McNally's restaurant. I have legally no confirmation on any events that happened. Allegedly. Allegedly, I should say.

But Keith McNally accuses James Corden of some rude behavior at one of his restaurants. And then suddenly there are other posts all over social media about that I have, again, no confirmation of, of like James Corden ignoring his baby on a plane. And it really does become one person jumps in and that on the other. So I don't know whether that's like their crisis manager just underestimating social media um and not being very good at their job which is you know like a i'm sure intentional like the the limitations of the crisis manager in this film um are purposeful and commenting on crisis managers more broadly. But I think,

I think the timeline is that it's all sort of coming to a head a little bit, or at least that's what I took away from it. And I, even with the Nomi Merlant character, not getting the job, you've seen it more recently. Is there some sort of implication that she has to give someone else the job. You've seen it more recently. Is there some sort of implication that she has to give someone else the job

to fix something else? Not really. Not really? There's not really any time spent on who that other person is. Okay. Because she pushes out the former assistant conductor

and that's just out of spitefulness? No, I think the reason for that is, so the assistant conductor is this character named Sebastian who, what I understood more clearly the second time I saw it, has that job because he is the lover of Andrus, who is her mentor. And that there is a withering line that she delivers later after she removes him from his position about how he has an apartment apartment on the same floor as andrews even though andrews is a married man and that he she accuses him of being a misogamist which is to say a person who hates marriage and that that is like her her firing back at him in some way so anyhow

i think you know one of the kind of subtle implications of that is that for someone like andrews having a relationship with someone who works in the orchestra much like lydia does and then who sort of by legacy proxy keeps that person installed in their cushy position as the assistant conductor in the orchestra is someone who manipulated their power to their own ends but he's really really old. And he actually says, literally, when she asks about if there was any impropriety leveled in his direction, he says, well, like, I'm out. You know, you can't accuse me of anything. I'm not in the game anymore. And she's still in the game. That conversation is so critical. Like, there are a couple of different lines that are delivered

during it, one of which is nowadays being accused is the same as being guilty, which, of course, is something you hear quite often on social media. And then later, after they get into this conversation about Nazis and Nazi collaborators and sort of like the world of classical music at that time, Lydia asks Andrus directly, you're not equating sexual impropriety with being an accused Nazi, are you? And I think trying to navigate that nuance is so critical to this movie because Lydia in her mind has rationalized all of her decision making even though it has led ultimately frankly it seems like to the death of someone that she was close to and the movie's fascination with how much worse can it get how much worse can it get how much worse can it get how what did people before me do that they

got away with? Why can't I get away with the same things? And the other thing too is that the movie kind of checkmates you by making this character, not just a woman, as you said, but a lesbian woman. And a lesbian woman who is a mother and who is a fierce mother. And who, you know, even at her, you know, best mothering is her worst mothering. She literally threatens an eight-year-old girl. That, a transcendent scene.

Amazing. That's the second best scene of the film so at some point her daughter is getting bullied just isn't really talking at school um and nina haas sharon her partner lets her know and lydia tar is like i'm gonna fix the situation and so and she does she has like a a nice relationship i would say with her daughter that's the other sort of humanizing to the extent that pure thing in her life and and i think sharon even says at one point like the every other relationship you have is transactional except for this petra with your petra with our daughter yes so lydia tar is like you know i'm gonna handle

it and takes her to school and identifies the the bully and goes on to the playground and confronts an eight-year-old child outside of school and is like if you and threatens her and says if you say anything or you know do anything to hurt my kid, I'll get you. I'll get you. I'll get you. It's honestly like a scary German fairy tale. And completely psychotic behavior. of the recklessness of this character that springs from a belief just like in her total untouchableness.

That, I mean, the only way that you would go confront a child like seemingly on school grounds and threaten them is that if you've come like completely dissociated from your sense of reality and consequences. And like basically don't believe that consequences exist. And yet it works.

What she does ends the bullying. It's true. And so she is once again justified in her actions. And as new parents, the idea of my daughter being bullied is horrifying. Horrifying to me. Do I know how to navigate it? Have I read the books that tell you how you talk to other kids or how you engage their parents? I don't know. I'm sure there's a whole line of thought about how to manage this. And there are many different schools that know how to handle these situations. But once again, this sort

of blunt force that Lydia applies to all aspects of her life often leads to success. And so the movie kind of continues to both valorize and defy how she lives her life and complicate the idea of success. It's just over and over and over again, it returns to these fascinating examples of her relentlessness and her recklessness, to your point.

And the carelessness. This is not a person who has ever had to think through oh will someone complain about this or there could be a social media post that says xyz she is so in a bubble a cocoon of of of fame and adulation that it doesn't even to occur her in the way that i had the thought while watching this okay but legally you're gonna be in some trouble ma'am and that was not the way that she legally came into trouble there are some other ways but it's it doesn't occur to her ever eventually Eventually, all of these issues, the revelation about her mentee committing suicide, the sort of edited clip of her speech at Juilliard, accusations from the past, all sort of bubble to the surface. She takes a trip to New York for her book tour, and there's a protest outside of the trip.

And then very quickly, things fall apart. We We fast forwarded almost entirely over the cellist. Oh, sure. You want to talk about that a bit? I mean, we don't need to talk about it except to say that that is like the one time. That's the most specific and illustrative example we're given of her bad behavior like it's the most that we see which is as you mentioned she had lunch with this up-and-coming cellist who declines to order the cucumber salad despite her recommendation which then definitely is like part of what's interesting um to lydia tar about this woman just to double down on the control stuff. And she just rapidly elevates the cellist's rise within the orchestra. And, you know, there's a blind audition cellist, who's not even officially a part of the orchestra, to perform the Algar concerto solo. But even there, I believe there are more auditions, and the other person who auditions is very bad.

And the woman who Lydia Tarr has started a relationship with plays beautifully. And you see everyone else sitting in on the audition looking very happy because despite everything unsavory that has led to this circumstance, she's playing beautifully. And they're responding to the music, which again is like a very rich great greatness trumps yeah yeah and so sharon seemingly becomes aware of it it's like everybody seems to know what's going on but it's unspoken to your point they're not no one is really confronting the issue yeah and even as i say everyone seems to know what's going on, that's my interpretation, right? And that's me reading it to faces and unspoken moments. It's never said point blank, but it's pretty obvious. Only Sebastian, when he's fired, the assistant conductor, is the only one who says,

we know about the favors that you do for these people, these young women. And that's the only time when someone directly confronts her with something like that. But I think it's important just to point out because otherwise we don't see any of these young women. Right? And the portrayal of what goes on between them is really the only concrete evidence or not even evidence that we get everything else is done in illusions and emails and whispers but even olga the cellist and her relationship to her and she's a she's kind of a russian wunderkind who comes from a family that plays in symphony but she's also this kind of like ravenous seemingly almost like middle class

person who's disinterested in the kind of vagaries of this world. She just wants to play music. She loves music. And we don't see them have sex. We don't see them romantically. We see that they are building a friendship, that Lydia is using her power to kind of entice her into circumstances, including traveling to New York, which is how Sharon learns that Olga and Lydia are carrying on something.

And in fact, the irony could be that maybe they have not consummated their relationship, but that this is the relationship that is the signal of her downfall, at least from her family, because Lydia overstepped. Lydia thought she was impervious to this kind of thing. There's something really fascinating about that. There's something fascinating about only showing us, say, the young woman who died's emails. That's really all we know about her and that they are kind of desperate and they seem frantic, but also emotionally cogent. They're sort of like, how can you do this to me? I've done nothing but support you and put you in a position to succeed. And this constant aversion to showing the crime,

I think is a really fascinating choice in the movie. You know, and it almost like speaks to our relationship to these people where it's like, well, we get hearsay and we see social media posts, but like we weren't in the room. And so in your heart of hearts, even though you think someone's a bad person, if you don't show it to me, if I don't, if there's no evidence, quote unquote, how do we process this? How do we accept it? How do we know what's real? What's true?

And it's pretty obvious Lydia is an awful person. Is she a demon? Maybe. I don't know. There is like this 10% of the film is still like, are we totally sure that this is the right way to evaluate power and allow for people to both thrive and then eventually be taken down? It still seems to be kind of chewing on that. And it's chewing as much as it's asking the audience to think about the way that we process these sorts of, these people and these incidents and what we know about them and how much do you need to know in order to feel a certain way? And where is your line? Again, where is your line of being like, well, this is not great, but I can tolerate it to now I need to cast this person out of my life or no longer consume their work or now I feel differently.

And what makes you, like, what is it? What makes you feel differently? And honestly, why do you need to actually see, you know, the tape in order to actually feel differently if you kind of have an inkling? And I think this movie is, to me at least, really great at, if not indicting the audience, then at least really pointing the finger at him, being like, okay, so how are you responding? What are you thinking? What does this make you feel? Why does it make you feel that way? Why are you willing to believe this or support this and not support that? And how involved are you in the creation of the world that allows a lot of this to, that creates people like this? And then also, like, aren't you still kind of interested

in a person like this? And aren't I also? And isn't this movie? Everything that I said sounds like it's a lot more decided. And I don't think that the film is decided. But I do think the film is like aware of the questions that it's asking. And trying to make you feel a little uncomfortable. No question. It implicates us. I think is what you're saying.

Yes. And it confronts us with some of these things. Even if it doesn't answer our questions. The first time that I saw the movie my i was slightly disappointed by its final 20 minutes not its final scene which i think is kind of masterful but its final 20 minutes i felt like it was a very kind of slow and almost like a dull unfurling of her downfall. And my takeaway from it was something that was actually quite un-nuanced, which was bad person done bad, lose everything.

That's actually not a very compelling conclusion to a story with such a richness. And then upon revisiting it, I think I'm starting to feel differently i still think that the it's a little shaggy in the last 15 minutes it's like it could it needs to feel a little tighter and there is no real momentum but that is certainly the i think the point now which is that when this happens to someone they're alone they do lose their connection to the life that they've built. Lydia is ejected from the Berlin Symphony. She loses her family entirely. We get the sense that she is in some financial straits because she's lost all of her sponsorships

and her opportunity to conduct. In fact, she's driven mad by losing her role and she appears on the opening night of Mahler's Fifth and she attacks Mark Strong's character, who we have not mentioned, Elliot Kaplan, who is a kind of banker, facilitator, slash aspiring conductor. He's the only like a little too convenient character for me.

Yeah, I agree with you. I was like, I don't know about this type of person, but continue. It creates a couple of interesting scenes for Cate Blanchett speaking to him, but anyhow, it shows her like kind of ragefully fighting for what she's lost. And then what we learn is that when a person who is of great talent has all these things taken

away from them, there's still opportunity for them. There's still ways to make money. I thought of Louis C.K. a little bit while watching this. It's like Louis C.K. is still making money, still touring. He's still selling comedy hours on his website, even though he has been removed from his FX television series and his film was never released. And in sort of proper society, we don't respect or talk about Louis C.K. But he still has a career. And there are still people who, despite what was revealed about him, want to support him or interested in his jokes. And Lydia eventually is hired. After traveling back to the East Coast,

she visits her childhood home. We see her reflecting on her past. We see her watch a videotape of Leonard Bernstein. We haven't talked about Leonard Bernstein at all in this conversation thus far. He is described as her mentor. I'm not totally sure if that's even true. That's one of the other things

that I think is really funny about this movie is like, did she just adopt that idea? and did she only have two conversations with him but she watches him on his video cassette and we see her being moved by him talking about what music does for us it's very powerful lynda burnstein of course a genius and somebody who i think um is maybe not as examined and will be examined in the future. Yeah, I was going to say, very different, but not without the division between public and private life. Exactly. And we will actually see Bradley Cooper engage with that concept. So she kind of reignites her passion slash reflects on everything that she's lost.

And then she takes a job. It seems like in Vietnam, I can't tell what country it is specifically. I don't know if they identify. Maybe it's Thailand. It's unclear. They don't tell us where she goes to work as a conductor. And she is in demand in a way. And the closing sequence of the film,

after she has explored this country for a few days and she lives lavishly in not ideal circumstances, we see her conducting. And it's clear that she's conducting for a group of cosplaying video game fans and that there is this world of music and storytelling and love and appreciation and enthusiasm but it is the most low rent version imaginable to her and she has been reduced to probably getting a tidy sum of money but she's now a member of low culture. And this is the only way she can kind of claw her way back to something resembling success or even respectability. And it's pretty chilling.

And the slow shot that pulls away from her conducting the orchestra into the audience that reveals all of these teenagers dressed up like creatures. It's hilarious. Now, I'm not sure if audiences around the world will enjoy that joke. I'm quite curious to see how people respond to the ending of this movie because it doesn't do what a lot of the movie does, which is full of crescendos and emotional excitement

and vivacity. It's a very subtle, like, this is how you get fucked. Like, this is how you get screwed when you trample through the world. I really liked it. What did you think? I laughed. And I had that exciting moment where as it's panning through the audience, I thought to myself, oh, my God, is this how they're going to end it? And then they end it. And I was like, oh, you is this how they're gonna end it and then they end it and I was like

oh you did that which amazing in terms of just sticking a landing and going for it which movies never do I loved it I agree with you about the reservations of the last 20 to 30 minutes of the movie but differently my reservations are essentially and again maybe i'm just revealing too much about myself but she lydia tar loses control of her life obviously but the character also loses control in a few instances in a way that I didn't quite buy. Specifically, there's an accordion scene where her apartment is, the apartment above is put up for sale. This is the second apartment that she keeps to work in, also immaculate. If you had to choose between the two homes, which home would you live in?

I mean, you know that I would choose the nicer, newer one. And I would obviously choose the, you know. This is the modernist versus the traditionalist. Exactly. But so to disrupt the open house, she just like marches around with an accordion singing a song, which is like funny. Genuinely a funny thing,

but completely out of character and a little showboaty. Do you think that it's just that she's had a psychotic break? Like, are you willing to accept that she's been pushed over the edge by her own misdeeds? Yes, but also I don't accept. I think that that's a change of tone and intent for the movie itself. Okay. is really having it both ways and showing you the the appeal and also the danger of this person

and then at the end as you said it just becomes like she loses control and maybe part of me as a viewer is just like disappointed that this person who is so fully in control just loses it, which is interesting. But I just think that it becomes a little looser in a way that I just, that's not what this film is doing. It's so meticulous. then I thought the ending, the last shot is really funny and leaves you with a lot of questions, but it's like also like just kind of like a little cheap, like it's a little arch in a movie that is not arch. Exactly. Yeah.

And I was like, well, this isn't what we were doing with this movie and that's okay. And, and in some ways the film is interrogating what we're doing with everything and so that i took it this seriously and thought the stakes were as high as it was i didn't really invest in the world of like beauty that was an art and finding yourselves that was this cosplay convention in the way that you did. I felt that the shot was slightly more condescending, I guess, that it's meant to convey just the depths of.

It's in such contrast to the world that Lydia Tartt creates for herself. I think it's condescending to her, but not to the audience. Yeah. Okay. I think that's fair. I think that she knows that this is like, you know,

when they, there's a brief moment where we see her with kind of like her management team near the end of the film. And it's sort of like, we're going to start small. We're going to go slow in terms of rebuilding everything here. And the idea that this would be small and slow is no question insulting to her whether or not like the world of classical music is more important than the world of video games and

cosplay like it isn't actually video games and cosplay mean a lot more to the culture at large no question i mean just financially culturally like it's just there's there's no conversation there i think um i had a conversation with someone you know very well. I don't want to reveal this man's name, but let's just say you share a home with him about this movie. Hold on. Disclosure on this one. He found out he had COVID a day after seeing this movie.

No, no. I'm not going to reveal his opinion about the movie necessarily, but I thought he made some interesting points about how different places where the movie could have ended and that resolved some of this concern over the final 20 minutes of the movie necessarily but i thought he made some interesting points about how different places where the movie could have ended and that resolved some of this um concern over the final 20 minutes of the movie which is to say that the movie definitely could have ended as soon as lydia tarr tackles mark strong's character on at the podium and that would have been a kind of like convulsive kubrickian like boom or like there will be blood like i'm finished kind of a moment

or it could have ended with her in tears watching Leonard Bernstein. Now that might have been perceived as too sympathetic and too like but it would have been it also would have been I think hotly debated. I think you and I

would have had a nice 10 minutes of conversation about closing the film there. It also could have ended with her underneath the waterfall in this country kind of alone

and watching two people who are in love through the waterfall and seeing everything that she's lost. There were a number of times when i think todd field created an image or showed us an idea that felt conclusive and he went to one that as you say i think could be seen as cheap or condescending or just arch but i like it better than every other option that you just mentioned so and i think we've talked so much

about how this movie presents questions and not answers and is really trying to make you think through things rather than provide you an answer. So it's categorically impossible to end like a movie like that in any one way, you know, that defies the purpose so and it's hard to end any movie so i sympathize so i guess presenting a few different options of a conclusion is sound and i i would have been furious if it were the leonard bernstein um video because that is

sentimental and that but also like i think that that would have underlined her narcissism even more i think that there's a way to see that and to once again wrong foot the audience by saying you think that we're saying that deep down she's really an artist who loves music but in fact she can't get out of her she can't get out of her own way she can't get out of her own sense of greatness and what what music means to her which is total fucking bullshit and and it means the power but i think that that puts too much trust in the audience. And I think this film really respects the audience and doesn't lay everything out on a platter. But is also consistently wrong footing what our kind of programmed response is to these movies and movie characters and to

and to a protagonist or a quote-unquote anti-hero or you know or a villain on screen are and i think that todd field knows that too many people would watch that and just have a conventional response to it you're probably right and i'm not i'm sure he'd never even considered ending it there. Yeah. But, now that we're at the end, I probably should have said this at the beginning as an enticement

to the listeners of the show, but the movie that this reminded me of the most, especially the second time I saw it, were The Social Network and The Shining. That, the collision of those two feelings,

that sense of like, everything is tightly paced, tightly controlled, very subjective in its point of view, morally gray, raising the question of do you have to be savage to succeed? And also just the absolute mania of creativity. The Shining is one of the best movies ever

about the psychosis of trying to write or create or the sense of aloneness that one has to feel in order to truly succeed but how that alienates you from everybody in the world like all of those ideas like these are my favorite kinds of movies i know that you love them too like it's rare to get into that kind of atmosphere i'm not saying that this movie is as good as the social network or the shining i don't i don't hold it in the same esteem but it made me think of them and uh that's like a it's a pretty high recommendation yeah i think they're great comparisons do you think this movie is really about creativity yeah but not in the way that we think of it's not about the creativity of writing

music right in the same way that we have no idea what kind of a writer jack torrance is conducting music no it's about the creation of the self it's the creation of the persona and that also like you're you're a semi-public person. Like, it's a thing. It's a... I thought you were going to say I was interested in celebrity.

Don't bring me into this. No, but anybody who puts anything into the world that is consumed publicly, like, there is a... I'm not saying that there is any comparison

to be made between what you do and what Lydia Tarr does, but I am saying that having a sense of presentation is itself a form of creativity. It is a lower form of creativity

from what Mahler did. But it needs to be kind of confronted. And I think this movie is very good at confronting. The same way that like creating Facebook is not like making 2001 A Space Odyssey,

but it is a powerful invention. It's about the performance of the self which on one hand we all perform all of the time in all interactions with other people but a very modern idea of that we all need to be brands essentially and have you know our predominantly online representation as well as but just kind of be who we are. But then also that your art is an extension of yourself and this quote unquote idea of authenticity that it all has to be one sellable thing, which is I guess a form of creation, but like a pretty,

you know, depressing one when you think about it. You think audiences will care about this movie? You think that there will be like a, it's a complicated moment for sort of art house cinema. And this is somewhere

between that mainstream and the art house. It's obviously been highly touted and critically acclaimed and critically panned in very curious ways. Yeah. That I largely don't agree with.

I don't really either. I think we're talking in large part about a Richard Brody review that became like its own kerfuffle which I like also Richard Brody

is a fantastic critic and knows like more than I've ever forgotten and is really on it. I don't agree with him at all. You know, I think typically he really, he doesn't really like movies that with intricate scripts very much.

So this is a really written movie. So I understand some of his objections to it. I also, he called it regressive and it like might be extraordinarily regressive in aesthetics, at least that it is espousing a lot of things that we find um gross in in order to convey or to evoke feelings and and maybe it slides into the area of espousing or um celebrating those aesthetics i think it does so intentionally,

but you could disagree on it. I find this to be an odd movie to moralize about because of its ambiguity. And I found that review to be quite moralizing. I saw Amy Taubin, very similar to Richard Brody

in that she's an extraordinary critic, knows more than I'll ever know about the history of cinema, called the movie racist, which I find an odd read. I assume it's because of the last shot and the history of cinema called the movie racist, which I, I find an odd read. I assume it's because of the last shot and the interpretation of the way that, that.

Well, there's also like a kind of Teutonic Germanic portrayal. It's set in Berlin. There's discussion of Nazis. The max character is a non white student who is humiliated on screen. I think there are a lot of representations that could be perceived that way. But to me, those are purposeful choices

that are meant to undermine our lead character, that are meant to situate this person. And is it possible that that character is racist? Absolutely. I couldn't say for sure because she's imaginary. But the idea that the film is, I find to be odd. Brody's review, I mean, I frequently disagree with Brody.

Brody has assumed this kind of reputation as like a more benevolent Armand White, like somebody who goes against the grain often. The project is becoming a bit cinema originalist, but that's his right. It is. I think it's interesting that those are two critics

that are a little older, you know, that are in their 60s and maybe have a slightly different relationship but wouldn't necessarily feel the need to politicize

their point of view about a film. You wouldn't think that that would be the sort of bailiwick of an older critic but that's the thing is that this movie

is drawing all kinds of reactions and not necessarily exactly what you would think. I am really interested in it as an awards conversation piece. I think actually recently, Ann Thompson wrote a column for IndieWire

that I thought was quite interesting about locating this movie as potentially the movie that this year could be like, no one's going to watch the Oscars because they're just going to give tar everything and nobody's going to see tar, which I found interesting, like making it this year's Nomadland

or Power of the Dog. To me, it's much more dynamic than either of those movies in terms of its provocations and a little bit less inert than those movies. But it is cold, which is one of the first words that you use when we started talking about it today.

And it is high art. It's cold and long. Long. And if you don't get really excited about immaculate German apartments and Deutsche Grammophon records, then you might also want to take a nap in it. I mean, I could see Power of the Nap happening at some point, which is still one of Bill's greatest moments, even though I did like that film. So it's probably not, it's certainly not for everyone. I do kind of think that it is hot button enough that people who like movies, people who have listened this long in this podcast, and even people of different, you know, different generations who seek out the movies will at least respond to it in a way that it felt like Power of the Dog

at least fell a little quiet with that type of viewer, possibly just because they had to watch it at home. It also has something that those other films don't have, which is it has Cate Blanchett. Yeah. And I think it's safe to say she's the front runner for best actress she's already won an academy award but she certainly feels like someone who could have two or three by the time this is all done hasn't she won she went to already

right because she won best actress for blue jasmine which is she is absolutely planning to everything that goes on with kate blanchett here from being an icon to the lesbian community, which I have a friend of mine followed several Instagram accounts for me. So now I'm just really immersed in that. It's great content. And then to having won acclaim for a Woody Allen film in which she plays a really terrible person as well. So there are layers even to that that I think

are all working in her favor. She is magnificently cast and magnificently performing in the movie. I've seen people suggest that perhaps Lydia Tarr is Carol Aird's daughter,

which I thought was kind of a funny bit. I think it's probably going to do the whole, it's going to get everything. It's going to get best picture, screenplay,

director, Cate Blanchett. Probably that's it. I don't think Nina Haas will be nominated, though she's a great actress. If people like her, they should watch Phoenix. That's like one of the great movies of the 2010s.

Cinematography, almost certainly. Score, like editing. It is in play for that like eight nominations kind of thing. Absolutely. But there's a difference between eight or 10 or 12 nominations

and winning the big awards beyond best actress, as Netflix can tell you. And this does really feel like what an accomplishment, sweep the nominations, not make it across the finish line. I'm really interested in how older viewers and older voters and perhaps more conservative or less social media, you know, brain-damaged voters respond to this film. They might appreciate the craft and really disagree with the ambiguity. Or say it's not ambiguous or have hard readings of it.

Exactly. And Oscar voters tend to like a lesson-based film and a movie that, a film that projects, that they can project their own values upon.

The Shape of Water, Moonlight. These are more morally clarified films. Or films that they feel, can feel good about voting for because it represents something about themselves. And it's a very,

this is a very feel bad movie. Yeah. This is a very like, we're fucked kind of a film. Of course. Yeah, it implicates the audience throughout. So I have a hard time imagining Tara winning Best Picture.

I just, I just don't see it. I don't think it will. I think it's safe to say it won't. It's been a weird few years. You and I still have not talked about the fact that Koda won Best Picture. Yeah. Maybe we will at some point. Yeah, we should probably do that.

Yeah. We should do that. Yeah. Nice movie. Nice movie. Yeah. I cried before I had a child, so I have a heart. And you were made of stone.

But it's a weird academy, but I think a lot of nominations, probably yes for Cate Blanchett and and you know, it's an honor to be nominated. I think you're probably right. I still haven't seen a couple of movies that are going to be in the conversation.

And so I think, cut to about a month from now, I think we'll have a pretty good handle on the landscape. And I haven't either, but you don't have to see the movies to guess this out.

But I don't know what's going to win. Most of the... Everyone seemed to think that The Fablemans is going to win. We haven't seen The Fablemans. Yeah. The Fablemans is obviously

a Steven Spielberg movie, so of course it's going to be in contention. But that's not some big... Now, maybe it'll make people feel good, to your point, but that's not some big film. It's actually quite

a personal, smaller film. And I don't know what the front runner is i i i i don't know if we've gotten to the end of october and not really known we nobody's seen babylon we have no idea what that is but fabelman's won the tiff award right yeah fabelman's is the front runner it's a steven spielberg movie that won the best audience award at TIFF. Like, okay, it's about his feelings. So are like half of his other movies, you know? E.T. is also personal.

I understand that this one doesn't have an alien who rides a bike, but... What won the audience award in 2021 at TIFF? I have abs... What won... Okay, so Coda won

best... What else was nominated? I don't know, man. I was... That was a long Okay. So Coda won best. What else was nominated? I don't know, man. I was, that was a long year for me. Belfast. Oh yeah. In 2019, Jojo Rabbit won. I do remember Jojo Rabbit winning.

In 2017, Three Billboards won. In 2016, La La Land won. In 2015, Room. This is not a guarantee of anything. I understand that, but I'm usually the person reading this list to you being it's not a guarantee of anything i understand that but i'm usually the person reading this list to you being it's not a guarantee but here i am the thing is is that toronto is sort of a um a broad broadness indicator of how wide can it go plus as you noted this is a steven spielberg film people him. And it's also a personal film. And I

have, again, have not seen it, but I seem to understand that it's about the power of cinema, among other things. Just like Tar. You should probably wrap up here. Okay. It's been a long chat about Tar. Feel good? Yeah. I don't remember what I said. So that's always alarming at the end of a podcast about how social media edits can undo someone. I was just going to say, hopefully somebody can super cut you saying terrible things.

Please don't. I really liked this film. I am excited to hear from people who really hated it. I think even the reviews that I completely don't agree with are fascinating. Real dinner party movie.

Yeah. Like, let's make sure everyone saw it before we all get together so we can talk about it for 45 minutes. I saw it. Let's go to my conversation with Todd

Field. Absolutely delighted to have the writer director of one of my favorite films of the year, Todd Field on the show. Hi, Todd. How are you? I'm well, Sean. How are you doing? I'm hanging in there. Todd, I'm going to jump right into this. I'm wondering when Lydia Tarr first appeared in your imagination. Do you remember? Oh, I don't remember the precise moment, Sean, but I, you know, approximately, I'd say probably about 10 years ago.

And was the intention always as a feature film or were you thinking of her possibly as in another format? It was just a, it was a, it was a character that, that I was sort of looking at, you know, I really, I don't, I wasn't thinking about doing anything with that character. It's just, um, I think a lot of, a lot of people that, um, you know, that are in the sort of pretend business will, would probably say the same thing that, um, sometimes you, you kind of walk around with, uh, uh, a group of, of characters that, um, either in a notebook or in your head or on your shoulder that, um, you know, keep sort of asking for your attention. Um, and, and sometimes you ignore them and sometimes you look at them, um, sometimes, you know, that's all there is to it, but she just wouldn't go, go away. So. I'm curious about your relationship to classical music and

the decision to place her, you know, in this, in this milieu, are you, are you, are you an expert? Are you a serious fan? How do you, how do you come to that world? Um, well, I came by that world. Um, I'd been asked to, to write a script about a young conductor many years ago, um, as a, as a piece of work. It's just a straight up writing assignment. So I had dipped my toe into that world very briefly, but it was a very, very different kind of film. And it didn't require that much. It wasn't, it totally was, you know, the classical was was purely a backdrop for that film um so when i started this um i really knew that i didn't you know i didn't

know my onions about any of it i had i was a a total civilian and i needed to get smart about things uh or try to get as smart as I could as quickly as possible. So the first thing I did was I started reading. And one of the first books that I read was a book by John Moucheri called For the Love of Music. And that book completely activated me in a really, really wonderful way. And then I kind of finished the book and thought, okay, well, what am I going to do now? And I had been speaking with Mike Noblock and Natalie Hayden at Universal Music. And they said, well,

we have someone in mind that you can talk to. His name is John. Now Cherry has said, well, funnily enough, I just finished his book. So this was a March, 2020. And I spent about the next three and a half, four weeks sort of as John's student, you know, we had a,, four weeks sort of as John's student. You know, we had a, it was the beginning of the lockdown and neither one of us had anything else to do but to talk to each other. So he gave me a very, very intense sort of cram course on the milieu and pointed me at different things and had me reading different things and looking at interviews and listening to music and things like that. So that sort of was my gateway drug, so to speak, into the sort of finer points of concert music. There are all of these echoes of ethical

compromise through the history of classical music that the film kind of returns to or cites and notes that you know great composers of the past also were imperfect or perhaps even troubled people was that also something that came up in that research stage or is that something you had some familiarity with too well i mean there's the there are the you know they're the um sort of modern uh obvious examples of that and those are spoken about in the film by the character Andrus Davis, her predecessor, in the second scene that they have together. But yeah, I mean, I think that these things have been going on in the arts for a very, very long time.

I mean, the difference here is that those sort of abuses of power and hierarchy have been strictly you know propelled by males you know um and i think that that's been fairly consistent and i think that uh it is probably a uh you know it's probably a uh a a pretty quick thing to sort of have an opinion about, you know. And so it seemed important that this character not be a male so that we might have just an opportunity to wonder how we're supposed to feel about the same sort of behavior, you know. You know, and that's where Lydia Tarr tar sort of came from you know this sort of idea that now when i was looking at her there was a um you know again you've had this you know very

clear patriarchy within this milieu for a very long time it's been strictly male and the few pioneers that we have who was a mentee of Leonard Bernstein in truth, who was the first and only until Natalie Stutzman came along in Atlanta to a female conductor to head a major American orchestra. So it's still such a tiny sampling in the world and if you look at a if you look at germany they still have never had a chief conductor or a principal conductor that's been a female ever and and if you talk to people over there they'll look at you like the suggestion of it is absurd so in that way this is very much a fractured fairy tale you know um but that abstraction is there for, for a purpose.

It's to be able to examine the sorts of behavior that have been in that enacted, you know, in classical music for ever since, you know, ever since it existed in modern times anyway, and, and be able to look at what that really is, you know. It's interesting that you bring up Marin. I actually, as I was watching the film for a second time i thought i wonder if she or someone who has had a somewhat similar career has seen this movie or what she thinks of this movie and it also makes me think about because of the kind of story you're telling how much is kind of accuracy and authenticity

important versus the ideas and the kind of psychological landscape that you're trying to draw in the film? Well, I don't think that that accuracy is important to civilians, you know, and I would count myself at the front of the line of that category. I think what's important is that you believe that she knows her stuff, that she is accurate. You don't really need to know what she knows. You just need to believe that she does. So I think in that sense, the very particular and the quotidian things that are covered by her are important,

because just to portray that she has a sense of mastery. On the other hand, like a lot of people, there's a lot of self-mythology in her and you know she's you can see in the very beginning that this bio that's being you know trotted out by adam gottnick it's clearly been crafted by by she and her assistant um and one of the things in those biops some of the stuff in that biography you know for that character they're they're very true and some of things are not, you know, one of them being a sort of, you know, super origin story of having, you know, been mentored by Leonard Bernstein. I mean, that's patently false.

And, you know, she may feel that way, because that was her gateway into this view of the world as a child, but it doesn't hold any water. So some of the things are very important and some of the things are just messy show business stuff. People make up all kinds of things. Yeah, that is something I wanted to ask you about as well, which one of my favorite things about the film is the notion of subjectivity and that for a lot of the film, we're only sort of seeing it through Kate's character's eyes, but we're also seeing it through this camera, this prismatic view

of someone whose face we don't necessarily see, or we're not always sure who is capturing her. Is that something that was always in the story, the idea of maybe two different points of view on the story and the sort of unreliable narrator quality that Lydia has? Indeed. I mean, I think that the film is sort of designed in a way to where there's sort of, you know, I would offer that there's sort of three points of view, right? There's this sort of, you know, this unseen point of view. There's a point of view of Lydia herself, such as it is. But really our only sort of access point for what one would consider

someone bearing witness is really her partner, Sharon Goodenow, played by Nina Haas, you know, and that's really kind of the only time that you have any sort of, you know, if there's a point, if Lydia's point, that's Nina Haas is really a counterpoint in the film, you know, you get a little bit of it with her assistant, Francesca, who's the binomial of the Marvel law, but it really is her partner. The film is obviously interested in power and who wields it, how they acquire it. You've obviously worked in Hollywood for a very long time. I'm curious, just broadly, what have you learned about how power operates in show business? Well, it's an age-old thing.

You know, I mean, there's a sort of, there's an old saw about Jimmy Stewart in World War II, you know, Colonel Stewart, going to check into a hotel in France and them at the front desk, you know, the front desk clerk thing, very apologetic and saying, you know, we're very sorry, Mr. Stewart, but, you know, we have this policy we've always had, which is we can't allow actors to check into our hotels, you know, to which Jimmy Stewart supposedly replied, well, then you'll just check me in as, you know, Colonel Stewart, you know. But, you know, those things, those are, people in show business were sort of considered rogues and unseemly sorts and they and they lived outside of society and sort of operated by their own rules and their own systems so um i i think that you know there's something about there's something about entertaining other people there's those sort of closed systems, and those systems are sort of outside of a lot of people's view, the sort of back house as opposed to obviously a key part of the story but i think

contemporarily how we see them on social media is a huge part of the story i'm curious like what's your relationship to social media are you on it are you lurking anywhere how do you how do you know so much and how are you able to render it in the movie um well i'm so i'm pleased that you say that that um it doesn't feel like i'm um the old man telling the kids to turn the music down next door uh i i don't i don't have do anything in social media um and i really don't know much about it i mean i kind of i know my some of my kids do you know um and i certainly wanted it to be accurate uh but uh no i don't i don't know a great deal about it, to be honest with you. I do know that, you know, obviously, I do email like everyone else and am ruled by phones and texts like the

rest of us. But I don't know that much about it. Did you have to get a crash course from your kids? Because it feels pretty close to accurate in terms of watching how someone like Lydia goes through this sort of cycle of, I'm not even sure what the right word is, but this cycle of analysis in a public forum. Yeah. you know, and, and then tried to get smarter when we were actually prepping and shooting by talking to, you know, to, to people on the crew and my assistant and things like that. I mean, most of that stuff, we didn't shoot any of it when we were shooting, you know, most of that was all done when we were in Scotland and we were cutting and John Kolsonikow, who was our apprentice editor, he created all of that stuff. He did that literally on his own machine. So any accuracy with all of that is a tip of the hat to John. I wanted to ask you about the eyes wide shut connection between you and Kate and Kubrick too, because his name is coming up

a lot in comparison to your film. Did you two know each other back when she was providing that voice work in the film and you were acting in it? No, we didn't know each other. Not then. And I didn't, you know, until a few years ago, I didn't even know that that had been kate's voice um i found out about that very late um so no we didn't know each other then when did you first meet you and kate um there's sort of a dispute between the two of us she claims that we had some kind of um uncomfortable meeting where um i was dismissive of her or something like that, which is absurd, patently absurd. I think she's thinking of another Todd, but we met, I think about 10 years ago, we met in New York.

We were going to, we both wanted to do this film that I'd been working on with Joan Didion for, for a year or two, but it never happened. And was she always the pick for Lydia? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, she always the pick for Lydia? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I wrote the script for her. And so did you know what she needed to do to pursue this role?

Obviously, a lot of actors, they have their own research and their own sense of mastering the role. But did you say, you need to learn how to do X, Y, and Z when you sat down to talk to her about the part? She knew what she had to do. I mean, I think she knew pretty quickly that, you know, like me, she was going to need a crash course in this world. Unlike me, you know, I get to hide behind the curtain and she doesn't get to do that.

So she had to learn everything I'd learned and go way well beyond that. And she is a fine student of whatever she's focused on. So she had a year uh before we started shooting and um during that year she made two other films and uh she would come back from work and then and then start working on this at night so she was taking piano she was studying german she was um this beginning technique with natalie marie beale who um over zoom and things like that so So she was, by the time she and I really got on the ground together, she had a good 12 months under her belt. Thinking about Kate playing the piano, you remind me of some breathtaking sequences in the film, some long takes,

some tracking shots. I'm curious in terms of the design of the movie, do you storyboard it fully? Is it evolving as you're shooting? How does it work? Um, I, I, I'm not a storyboard person. Um, I'm a rehearsal person. Uh, uh, that's something that, uh, storyboards are wonderful tools when you don't have a lot of time and when you're doing very particular things. So for instance, if I were to have a scene that involves more than 100 people,

I would storyboard because if you have 100 people, it's going to be an expensive day and probably means you have to do a lot more work than you would normally do. So you have to make those decisions and have some sort of pretense about what you're doing um without the luxury of rehearsal so for instance um uh with the orchestra scenes those were things that were supposed to happen very very late uh in schedule as far down the schedule as possible but

unfortunately um that simply wasn't possible that was the window that we had the Dresden Philharmonic to work with. And so those sort of 10 days were what we, you know, those are the cards we were dealt. So we all, you know, we came out of rehearsals in Berlin, acting rehearsals and music rehearsals with an accompanist and things like that. But we really had to dive head first so when you're doing 95 camera setups in the first day you they have to be boarded because you have to coordinate three different camera crews simultaneously um so so we started out very heavily boarded um now having said that the rest of the movie um once we once we weren't with 100 plus people, I didn't board anything. I typically would rehearse alone with the actors, block with the actors, then bring the camera crew in and say, this is what we're doing. And then we shoot.

It's been noted that it's been 16 years since you last directed a film and that you wrote a lot of stuff that didn't get made in that time. I was wondering, did you miss being on set or did you have to relearn directing a film with that much time off uh no actually i think i was much stronger uh technically anyway because i for the last um 16 years i've been shooting commercials so i shoot all the time and i shoot with with very very good crews and great great camera camera people. And when you work in advertising, you're kind of the guinea pig for new technology before it actually finds itself in the feature world. So you're working a very, very high technical level, and you tend to build muscles that you don't have the chance to do when you're working in feature films. This is kind of a strange question, but why was this the one that got made and not the others?

Yeah, I asked myself the same question, Sean. I mean, the short answer is because the studio said yes. I mean, when I wrote this, I just figured it would be something to do and i would turn it in and they would say thank you very much but instead they said we want to make it and i had to ask it can you repeat that please you know um so yeah no i had it was a it was not at my election it was really at peter Kujawski and Kiska Higgs' pleasure at Focus. And they wanted to make it

and they insisted that they were going to make it. And I'm still asking myself the same question as you, which is why this one? I know that you're sort of joking, but did you find yourself sliding into certain assignments with the idea that, oh, well, this just isn't going to happen, but I'm going to do it because it's a job? Did you ever fall into that trap because of the time that had gone by? You mean as a director? Or even as a writer, in terms of being able to execute on something that you were in front of being able to sort of like execute on something that you were in front of? I know you had had, you know, long term projects in my TV series as well. But I'm just curious, like,

when when you work hard on something, and then it doesn't happen, which I understand is a vagary of Hollywood in general. But does that set in some complacency or frustration? How does it what is that like? No, you kind of have to, you know, I think, here's the thing, I think, when you work in the business of pretend, whether you're a performer or whether you're someone behind the lights or behind the camera, ambition or passion, those are important things, but equally as important is the ability to, uh, have water off a duck's back in terms of rejection and in terms of people saying no, because mostly that's what you're going to face. So, I mean, I've met such talented people in so many disciplines in, um, in, in motion pictures of incredibly talented people

that simply aren't built that way and take it very, very hard. And I think that that's the difference, you know, is to not let it get you down too much. Just go, okay, let's start again.

You know, I've done it once. I've done. Just go, okay, let's start again. I've done it once. I've done it twice. Maybe they'll let me do it three times. I'll just keep trying. The film opens with a long credit sequence, essentially running in reverse. I have some theories about why you decided to do that,

but I was curious if you could talk about that decision. Well, I, you know, i i you know i you know um i yeah i mean offline i could you know um yeah i i uh you know that have some really practical reasons and i have some um you know some high-flown philosophical reasons i guess but um i'm i'm curious why uh what you think well I'll just say I you know obviously we're talking because I I really really love the movie and and admire it and it does seem like you're interested in the idea of like maybe some of the falseness of the genius myth and that the idea that you know it takes a lot of people to make a great piece of art and uh even just any piece of art honestly especially a film and foregrounding those people and those names

seemed like an idea that you were confronting us with early on. And I don't know if that was your intent, but that was what I took away from it. Well, I wouldn't argue with your interpretation. My older son wrote a poem when he was, I don't know, like seven, called Many. the first line is many are the hands you know and um so yes i i uh i completely agree with you uh about uh how many people it takes to actually um make something and um uh the people bought you know the people that are setting the footlights

that are not in front of them and uh uh so um yeah yeah it takes it takes a lot of people to make something so you worked as an actor for many years and i was thinking about something that you hear from actors sometimes maybe from like anthony hopkins when he plays hannibal lecter or you know even the most devious villains that that performers love them or find empathy for the character that they're playing I was wondering if you feel something similar for Lydia despite all of her complexities and frailties and failures um well I you know I hope that um the aim is to try to to paint a picture of a of a human being um and and all human beings are flawed you know um we're all hypocrites we all behave capriciously we all have our allergies and we all have our impulses so So she has those things, I hope.

I mean, in that way, I would relate to her, as I would hope maybe other people might. In terms of the specificity of her behavior or her manner or her actions, that's a whole nother thing you know um but um but sure i mean there are things about her that i think um aside from you know the aside from her what she's her flaws are which are which are um apparent and you know very fairly clear um that that i of course would admire. She has a sense of mastery over something that's incredibly difficult. Last time you had a film in theaters,

the movie business was in a very different place. I'm not sure how much you think about that, but releasing a film like this that is a very adult drama with sophisticated themes and a longer running time. Do you think about the commercial aspect of Tar? At what point? Are you talking about today? Are you talking about... Yeah, meaning like, is box office performance something that's on your mind, for example? Oh, well, of course. I mean, you want to have a film that makes the people that believed in the film uh continue to to believe in making films of this sort you know i mean again that i the studio took a gigantic um gamble

making this film it it's i don't i think it's you know increasingly rare and and when you talk about let's put it this way when you talk about doing something that um is day-to-day hollywood if you talk about doing something that's considered quote-unquote drama um and i quote i had an agent tell me you might as well be pitching something about cancer. Because if you're doing something that is qualified or is talked about as drama, the first thing they'll say is streaming. You can't put that in a theater. People aren't going to go into the theaters to see dramas. That's what they will tell you um now that's a you know they're probably you know

the last few years has probably borne those out but it's a chicken and egg thing are they not going because they're they don't have any dramas to see or are they not going because those things aren't being greenlit because the fiscal upside isn't quite as uh full of contrast in terms of an investment you know versus return of other sorts of movies. You know, I don't pretend to know those things. Are you writing anything at the moment? No, not at the moment. I'm not, I, I, I will, you know, once I'm sort of rested, I mean, this is a, the tempo with which this film was sort of made from the time the script was

written all the way through post was, was brisk to say the least. And I've been working seven days weeks on this film in some manner since I started it. So I need to probably take a little time off and clear my head and try to get this thing off of me. Is acting in the past for you? Yes.

How do you feel about that? Well, I never was much of, you know, I started out as a musician. I went to school as a music scholarship. I kind of wandered in and followed someone into the theater department, ended up doing some plays and directing as a musician, I went to school as a music scholarship. I kind of wandered in and followed someone into the theater department, ended up doing some plays and directing and whatnot.

But I really was interested in film from the very beginning and film in terms of being able to make my own films. So I tried to get as close to cameras as I could. Even when I was a young fledgling uh actor in New York I would volunteer on NYU film projects not to act in them but to like pull cable like anything I could do to kind of get around it and learn about it and um I really only acted uh on camera for you know four or five years trying to figure out a way to to stop doing that you know, four or five years trying to figure out a way to stop doing that, you know. And it was only when my wife, Serena Rathbun,

took on a whole lot of work to put me through the American Film Institute that I was able to do that. The irony, of course, is when I got out of the American Film Institute, the last film I had acted in, which the film of victor nunez um called ruby in paradise had gone to sundance and and i didn't even have an agent my phone just started ringing and i really acted for the next sort of 10 years um without an agent just just based on taking calls as a way of paying off my student loans so i um you know one of those calls was from stanley kubrick himself so that was a you know i'm glad i kept acting you know, one of those calls was from Stanley Kubrick himself. So that was a, you know, I'm glad I kept acting, you know, because that was a very meaningful experience as a fledgling filmmaker. But I didn't have any burning desire to be in front of the camera, let's put it that way.

Just a couple more questions for you, Todd. In terms of Kubrick, one of the things that I thought of while I was watching your movie is it has something in common with a lot of his films, which is that a lot of his movies, the organized, these organized environments, these kind of tightly managed societies or worlds are disrupted by kind of major chaos. And then that unfurls in a kind of a funny and kind of a tragic and kind of a scary way. Tar has had a similar energy to me. Did you think of Stanley while you were writing or making the movie? Not really. I mean, I, you know, I, I thought of Stanley probably, probably thought of Stanley before I worked with him more like everybody, you know, we've all, we've all been influenced

by, by him. There's only a few, there's only a few filmmakers that, you know a few filmmakers that we're all generally contaminated by. But I certainly, you know, there were things about ways that seemed sensible about going about your work that were really confirmed in a really meaningful way for me after having had that experience with him. But no, I didn't. I mean, if you draw those lines, I'm sure they're there, but it wasn't on any conscious level, certainly. Todd, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing that they have seen? I know you're a cinephile. Have you seen anything great lately? I have. Yeah, I have seen some really, really incredible work lately. The last film I saw was Noah Baumbach's film, White Noise, which I really, really, really think is incredible.

Can you tell me what you, I saw it as well, and I really liked it, but I'm curious to me what you i saw it as well and i really liked it but i'm curious to hear what you dug about it he does something really incredible with this film uh in terms of how he braids it tonally and um and his fearlessness in terms of taking that braid and wielding it without getting caught. I think there's so much humor and potency and pathos in that film. And I feel very, very lucky that I got to see it projected. I think it's a film that begs to be seen in a theater. And I hope that people do. I hope that...

I know it's put out by a streamer. I know it's Netflix, but I hope that they keep it out there. And I would encourage anyone that has the ability to see it in the cinema. It's a great recommendation. Todd, thank you so much. Been looking forward to having you on the show. Congrats on Tar. All right. Thank you, Sean.

Thank you to Todd Field. Thanks to Amanda, of course. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's episode. Next week, Amanda and I will dig into a few new movies, specifically James Gray's Armageddon Time. And maybe we'll talk about our favorite autobiographical movies. We'll see you then.