FX’s “Shogun” Is A Stunning Accomplishment

MINOR SPOILERS FOR SHŌGUN EPISODES 1 – 2 AHEAD!

Epics. Every streaming service (with the possible exception of Peacock and Paramount+) has one nowadays – a visibly expensive series of breathtaking scale and scope, typically an adaptation of a classic fantasy, sci-fi, or historical fiction novel, boasting inspired cinematography, immersive production design, stunning visual effects, gripping action sequences, an outstanding cast, and in at least a few cases, strong writing to match. Think HBO’s House Of The Dragon, Amazon’s The Rings Of Power, Andor on Disney+, Apple TV’s Foundation, Netflix’s…uh, relentless barrage of live-action anime adaptations and projects set in The Witcher universe? Most of these are good shows. A few are even great. But with high price-tags come even higher expectations, and in this economy it’s not enough to be a good show, or even a great one. You have to be the best, and your first season needs to be an unprecedented success within its weekend of release, or you’re getting canceled. So every one of these shows is inevitably and unfairly measured up to Game Of Thrones, which for one brief shining moment in television history had all of the aforementioned elements in abundance as well as keeping audiences glued to their TVs week-to-week, and most fall short. Heck, even Game Of Thrones itself went from being great to good, to just okay, to downright bad, over the course of its last three seasons, though that didn’t stop the controversial finale from having record-breaking viewership (somewhat justifying the slew of spin-offs and prequels that HBO has greenlit since).

Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga in Shogun, seated on a white horse on a grassy hillside, with a hawk perched on his hand. He is wearing golden-brown garments, and a tall straw hat with a chinstrap.
Yoshii Toranaga | ca.style.yahoo.com

So when I saw that critics were using the phrase “the next Game Of Thrones” to describe Hulu and FX’s Shōgun – a remake of the 1980 miniseries adapted from James Clavell’s best-selling 1975 novel by the same name – I didn’t think too much of it. I’ve heard the phrase misused so many times before that it’s lost virtually any and all meaning that it ever had. There is no “next” Game Of Thrones because streaming doesn’t accommodate that kind of communal viewing experience the way television did for Thrones, and streaming shows are given too few episodes and seasons to gradually prove their value, as Thrones did. Don’t get me wrong, in a fair and just world, Shōgun would absolutely be a cultural phenomenon, maybe even running for several seasons and accumulating dozens of Emmy awards and other accolades along the way to a satisfying series finale, but it doesn’t have to be. What it is, however, is an extremely high-quality production with a fine-tuned script, so in that regard, I suppose it is comparable to early Game Of Thrones, and probably more deserving of the comparison than most.

Now, I’ll confess, I’ve never seen the original miniseries and only read about a quarter of the book before putting it down, as I recall being unmoved by Clavell’s writing style and suspicious that the protagonist would turn out to be a white savior (though I’ve heard that’s not the case), so this reimagining of Shōgun wasn’t on my radar until fairly recently. But that only makes the pilot episode more of a triumph, in my opinion, because even without much prior knowledge of the story I was hooked in almost instantly – by the artistry, authenticity, and attention to detail on display in every frame, by the magnificent performances from the entire cast, and by the subversive score from Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross, and Nick Chuba.

This adaptation’s smartest and most significant deviation from the source material is in putting the focus squarely on Shōgun‘s Japanese characters, thereby gently nudging English explorer John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) into a secondary role for which he’s much better suited. He still functions like a window for (white, Western) viewers into the (to white Westerners) unfamiliar world of feudal Japan throughout the first episode, but Shōgun trusts its audience not to need him after a certain point and to come join the party on the other side of that window where all the really interesting stuff is happening, leaving Blackthorne to just keep strutting around confidently – and most amusingly – as if he’s the protagonist, while in reality, he’s unknowingly being used as a pawn in the power struggle between Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and the other warlords on Japan’s ruling Council of Regents, spearheaded by Ishido Kazunari (Takehiro Hira).

Sanada, who also serves as a producer on Shōgun and was instrumental in getting this series made in the first place and, furthermore, made with historical accuracy front-of-mind, needs virtually no introduction after more than fifty years spent working across every medium and genre, but outside Japan, audiences far too rarely get a chance to see him in starring roles (in Hollywood blockbusters, most egregiously in Avengers: Endgame, he’s often cast as expendable sword-wielding villains). Shōgun rectifies that. Sanada lifts a sword only once in the first two episodes, and his most memorable scenes have him employing carefully-selected words and precipitous silences as his weapons of choice in negotiations with his enemies and prospective allies. With any stoic and seemingly unshakeable character, there is a balance that must be skillfully maintained to convince the audience of both their humanity and their almost inhuman composure in equal parts, and Sanada walks that invisible line with such ease that you simply have to marvel. It is especially evident through his profoundly intimate conversations with Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), a noblewoman of his house whom he appoints to be Blackthorne’s translator, that Toranaga’s sincerity and his solemnity are not in conflict nor in danger of canceling each other out, but in fact conspire to keep him on the path to victory.

Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko in Shogun, kneeling on straw-mats covering the floor of a large room. She is wearing a white robe over a black and blood-red kimono and has a crucifix on a necklace. She has long black hair, parted in the middle. There are people seated behind her and to either side.
Toda Mariko | dish.com

Mariko, on the other hand, finds herself torn in different directions by her loyalty to Toranaga and her commitment to her Catholic faith, after Blackthorne’s arrival brings with it the chilling revelation that the Portuguese missionaries embedded in Japan are but the forerunners of a brutal empire that would absorb the country and eradicate its culture. In the middle-ground, that limitless sandbox, Anna Sawai sculpts the series’ most complex and formidable character, who must overcome obstacles that do not exist for the men around her if she intends not only to survive the dark days ahead but carve out a path for herself across blood-soaked battlefields. Her performance is made up of subtle, immensely purposeful movements – the merest flicker of the eyes conveys a hundred emotions.

The cast are backed up by a clean, concise script from Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks (among others) that moves between Japanese, English, and English-representing-Portuguese (one of the few immersion-breaking choices in the series, but ultimately a small grievance to hold against it). The original miniseries notoriously shunned the use of subtitles, a decision one could conceivably praise as subversive if it weren’t made with the explicit intention of shackling the series’ majority non-Japanese speaking audience to the viewpoint of the white Western protagonist, Blackthorne. All this while also aggressively whittling down the book to focus exclusively on Blackthorne, discarding many of the Japanese characters, their subplots, and with them, just about everything I can think of that makes Shōgun worth adapting in the first place. As I’ve mentioned, this new iteration of the story distributes the focus more evenly amongst its cast, denying us access to no crucial scene because Blackthorne isn’t there to witness it.

While I am by no means qualified to speak over actual historians, Japanese historians in particular, as to everything that Shōgun gets right (or wrong; in a production of this scale, it would be shocking if a few small inaccuracies didn’t slip past even the most hands-on cultural consultant, but I have not yet come across any), it has been heartening to hear the whole cast and crew emphasize the importance of telling this story as truthfully as possible, with Japanese creatives in key positions behind the camera as well as in front of it, and to have this further accentuated by the series’ clear, crisp lighting that ensures no aspect of the set design, costume design, or visual effects used to reconstruct entire early 17th Century Japanese cities and castles on Vancouver backlots is lost in the literal darkness that has subsumed so much of modern television as a quick fix for dodgy CGI and cheap wigs. There is a tangible sense of age and wear and depth to every set, every costume, every prop and piece of furniture, on this show.

Now, to be clear, lavish production design is only half the battle in making a visually outstanding piece of television. Good lighting also helps, but cinematography is crucial. I can think of several shows with genuinely beautiful set decoration and costumes and whatnot, that are burdened down by conventional cinematographers who prioritize blunt efficacy over artistry. Shōgun does not suffer from that problem, at least not under Christopher Ross (Ross, whose credits most shockingly include the film adaptation of Cats, only worked on the first two episodes). Intentionally or not, the elegant composition of each shot heavily evokes the artform of Japanese garden design, and many of the same design elements that go into creating these three-dimensional structures, concepts such as empty space, enclosure, and borrowed scenery, can be found in the texture of Shōgun‘s cinematography, albeit adapted for the stark rectangular confines of a television or phone screen.

Cosmo Jarvis as John Blackthorne in Shogun, from the chest up, wearing a dark brown robe. He has close-cropped brown hair and a beard.
John Blackthorne | msn.com

Debuting with a perfect score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, which it was able to hold for a couple of days before dipping by a single point based on a single review, Shogun is poised to remain one of the highest-reviewed series’ of the year, and there is no doubt in my mind it will be a strong contender at next year’s Emmys in practically every category (it’s being called a limited series, but that term is used somewhat…liberally, these days). On every front, it is a mighty force. If that holds true throughout the remainder of this season, it may well be that future epics of this staggering scale and exceptional quality will no longer be measured up next to Game Of Thrones, but to Shōgun. Ideally, we would do away with the comparisons altogether, as they help pretty much nobody, but I for one would probably consider it the greatest honor of my life to someday have my work mentioned in the same breath as this masterpiece.

Review: 10/10

Lightning Round-up: What I Watched The Week Of August 7th – 13th

Something new from me today, a compilation of bite-sized reviews for films and TV shows I watched in the past week that I probably wouldn’t be able to review otherwise. I can’t assure that I’ll have one of these posts going up every week, but I wanted to test out the format after considering for a long time how I could review a wider variety of titles without feeling the pressure to write a specific amount of words about each one, or get bogged down simply trying to find images. So without further ado, here’s my “Lightning Round-up” for the week of August 7th to 13th, 2023.

*  – A title I’ve previously watched

(left to right) Yeom Hye-ran, Jo Byeong-kyu, Yoo Jun-sang, and Kim Sejeong in The Uncanny Counter, all wearing black suits, standing in an alleyway filled with blue mist at night.
(left to right) Yeom Hye-ran, Jo Byeong-kyu, Yoo Jun-sang, and Kim Sejeong in The Uncanny Counter | pueblerino.info

The Uncanny Counter (Netflix). The premise: an unconventional family of grim reapers in the business of rescuing souls from evil spirits and leading them to the afterlife lose a member in battle and recruit a teen boy to help take on their greatest threat – a powerful demon being maneuvered by political forces. The sixteen-episode first season is a perfect blend of heartwrenching drama, endearing humor, compelling intrigue, and low-budget special effects, anchored by emotional performances from all the main cast, Yeom Hye-ran in particular. The second season (airing weekly on Korean television and on Netflix, with five episodes released thus far) is tonally inconsistent with the first, and devotes entirely too much screentime to new characters that range from uninteresting to downright grating, but Kang Ki-young and Kim Hieora are genuinely brilliant additions as the season’s primary antagonists, bringing an effortless ferocity to their action sequences, which are longer and more intricately choreographed this season thanks to a higher budget (at the cost of a few episodes). This is probably some of the most fun I’ve had watching a television series this year.

Lee Si-Young carrying Park Na-rae on her shoulders in Zombieverse as they run through a parking lot at night pursued by zombies.
Lee Si-young and Park Na-rae in Zombieverse | undeadwalking.com

Zombieverse (Netflix). The premise: contestants must work together to survive a zombie apocalypse on the streets of Seoul, South Korea. I’ve only watched the first two episodes so far, but I could tell you from the trailer alone that this is the kind of show designed and destined to become a viral sensation (EDIT: I wrote this paragraph earlier in the week; checking back in, it seems that Zombieverse has indeed acquired a large and loyal fanbase, though many viewers are casting doubts on its claims of being “unscripted”, so I was partially right). My anxiety spiked when, at the end of the first episode, a stunt double playing a zombie was seemingly run over by a car and “killed”, along with a passenger in the vehicle. I’m assuming there’s safety measures in place to prevent anyone being seriously injured in the gory chaos? I’m rooting for contestant Lee Si-young, who kept her wits about her in a crisis while most of the others panicked and fled.

Rosamund Pike as Moiraine and Sophie Okonedo as Siuan in The Wheel Of Time, lying together in a wooden bed wearing red nightgowns. Moiraine is sitting up slightly. while Siuan is gazing up at her. They are in a low wooden hut with fishing-nets hanging from the ceiling.
Rosamund Pike as Moiraine and Sophie Okonedo as Siuan in The Wheel Of Time | pt.jugomobile.com

The Wheel Of Time Season 1, Episode 6* (Amazon Prime Video). The premise: Moiraine Damodred fights against time to free herself and her five young traveling companions from the intricate political machinations of the Aes Sedai before her plan to pit the Dragon Reborn against the Dark One is exposed in an episode written and filmed almost exclusively from her perspective. I stand by much of what I wrote regarding this episode in my initial review, though I would add that in retrospect, while it’s still one of my favorite episodes in the first season (purely due to Rosamund Pike and Sophie Okonedo’s phenomenal performances, which should have landed them both Emmy nominations), the writing is inconsistent – and noticeably weakest when it comes to fleshing out antagonist Liandrin Guirale, though if she lacks nuance, at least she’s never boring with Kate Fleetwood in the role, rocking her distinctive crimson get-up. And on that note, costume designer Isis Mussenden finally struck gold with her designs for this episode; Moiraine’s blue satin gown and diadem is iconic as far as I’m concerned.

Greg Hsu in Marry My Dead Body, wearing a white suit, sitting alongside a similarly-dressed mannequin beneath a red canopy in a darkly-lit room.
Greg Hsu in Marry My Dead Body | digitalspy.com

Marry My Dead Body (Netflix). The premise: in Taiwan, the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, a fervently homophobic police officer accidentally marries the ghost of a young gay man killed in a hit-and-run, and together they investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his untimely death in this zany, oftentimes heartwarming, LGBTQ+ buddy comedy. “Gayer than I expected, straighter than I would have liked” is probably how I would sum up Marry My Dead Body, which plays a cruel bait-and-switch on its viewers regarding the main character’s sexuality in just the first few minutes. And while it teases the idea of its male leads developing a romantic connection (almost having them kiss at a gay nightclub in a scene played not for laughs, but with surprising earnestness and intensity), this subplot trails off towards the end, leaving the exact nature of their relationship up to interpretation. I mean, I ship it regardless, but it’s a bit of a shame the film doesn’t fully commit to the bit, because Greg Hsu has excellent chemistry with costar Austin Lin that ought to have been utilized to the fullest. Still, Marry My Dead Body is a lot of fun and I enjoyed it immensely, particularly for how unabashedly raunchy it is in comparison to a lot of queer comedies that deliberately “sanitize” their characters and depiction of queerness for the sake of straight audience-members.

(left to right) Kato Ago Missile, Shin Dong-yup, Sung Si-kyung, and Cerestia Grown in Risque Business: Japan, standing on a street corner in Tokyo.
(left to right) Kato Ago Missile, Shin Dong-yup, Sung Si-kyung, and Cerestia Grown | netflix.com

Risqué Business: Japan (Netflix). The premise: across six episodes, comedian Shin Dong-yup and singer Sung Si-kyung aim to initiate more open and casual conversations amongst their predominantly Korean audiences about sex and sexual expression by exploring the vivid adult entertainment industry in neighboring Japan. I have so far found the series fairly enjoyable and occasionally illuminating, if somewhat limited in its scope and noticeably lacking perspectives from queer people in Japan (approximately 1 in 10 people in Japan identify as LGBTQ+, according to a 2019 survey). The second season, set in progressive Taiwan, premiering later this month, will hopefully help to make up for this deficiency and boost Korea’s own LGBTQ+ rights movement, which has made only slow progress in recent years. But the series has also received warranted backlash for talking extensively about the AV (adult video) industry without ever touching on the abuse and exploitation of AV stars, so there’s definitely still a lot of refinement to be done with this concept.

Han Ji-min in Behind Your Touch, wearing a white veterinarian's coat and looking down at her hands with a slight smile on her face.
Han Ji-min in Behind Your Touch | m.gohitv.com

Behind Your Touch (Netflix). The premise: a veterinarian in a small town is struck by a meteor that gives her the psychic ability to read the memories of animals when she touches them, unintentionally putting her into conflict with a recently demoted detective bored by life in the countryside. With only two episodes on Netflix so far, the new series starring Han Ji-min has already popped into the platform’s Top Ten, and for good reason; it’s fun, fresh, abundantly quirky, and clever, with charming characters. I’m excited to keep up with this one.

Pretty sure that’s everything. Have you watched any of the titles on this list, or do you plan to? Tell me what sounds most intriguing in the comments below!

1st Trailer For “Dune: Part Two” Teases War On Arrakis

The massive success of Denis Villeneuve’s brutally austere sci-fi epic Dune made Paul Atreides a household name and put the desert planet of Arrakis on the map, something that no previous adaptation of Frank Herbert’s esoteric 1965 novel has managed to accomplish, so it should come as no surprise that Paul and his supporting cast of vaguely-characterized yet vividly real allies and antagonists will be returning to movie theaters later this year for Dune: Part Two, the middle-chapter of a planned trilogy (augmented by television spin-offs) that ought to ultimately surpass Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings in terms of scale – although something tells me that even Villeneuve will have a hard time convincing general audiences and many critics that capping off his trilogy with an adaptation of Dune Messiah, the first of Dune‘s increasingly bizarre sequels, was a smart move.

Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Zendaya as Chani, standing side-by-side against a dusty orange background, wearing matching gray, form-fitting, full-body uniforms. Paul holds a knife horizontally over his head in his right hand, and has a flowing black cape.
Paul Atreides and Chani | yahoo.com

Dune: Part Two, on the other hand, is a box-office hit just waiting to happen, and it’s not just because Zendaya will actually have screentime in this one. Assuming it stays fairly close to the source material (and my understanding is that Villeneuve doesn’t have any intention of diverging greatly from the narrative), Dune: Part Two will contain all the plot-beats expected of a finale, including a battle unlikely to be dwarfed anytime soon that most people looking no further than the book’s synopsis on Wikipedia would tell you is the culmination of the story’s driving conflict; the showdown between Paul Atreides and his father’s killer, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen of House Harkonnen. So I have no doubt that the vast majority of people leaving the theater come November 3rd will feel satisfied with what they will mistakenly perceive as the natural “ending” to the series, and that when they inevitably ask for spin-offs, what they won’t have in mind is what Frank Herbert wrote into Dune Messiah, a book that acts as a gatekeeper, denying most readers access to the rest of the series. My dim recollection is that I only made it through by page-skimming (I’m not proud of it, okay), and then I gave up less than halfway through Children Of Dune.

But Villeneuve’s Dune Messiah is still a long way away, and between then and now those of us who have read the books (or in my case, just enough of the books to say I tried, and little enough to prove I wasn’t a fan) will have plenty of time to prepare the film-only fans in our life for what’s ahead. In the short run it’s easy enough, deceptively easy, for anyone and everyone who watched Dune to predict where Dune: Part Two is headed, which is all to the film’s benefit. As you may remember, Dune ended with the remnants of House Atreides, a clique of conventionally attractive colonizers, scattered far-and-wide across the hostile deserts of Arrakis, which would be a fair and fitting ending to them all if only their successors weren’t the Harkonnens, an even worse bunch. But even in exile, Paul Atreides and his mother Jessica still think like colonizers. By choosing to hide amongst Arrakis’ indigenous people, the Fremen, Paul and Jessica are all but forcing them to choose a side in the coming war between the two Houses, though neither side is particularly concerned with what happens to the planet, much less the Fremen, as long as they come out on top.

As we see in the trailer, the Harkonnens have an obvious advantage when it comes to military might and the sheer amount of resources at their disposal. Crucially, they now control the flow of spice, a precious substance only found in the sands of Arrakis that enables space-travel and gives the planet its unparalleled value to the rest of the Known Universe, compelling the Emperor himself to kneel before its merchants. But Paul’s got something they haven’t got. Paul has worms.

Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha, standing with his back to the camera, silhouetted against a white oval in  an otherwise darkly-lit room, holding two long knives loosely at his sides. He is bald, and his head is tilted downwards. He wears flexible armor, and a long skirt.
Feyd-Rautha | joblo.com

Let me rephrase that. Paul has giant worms. Nope, still not working. Paul has giant sandworms. Better? Better. The giant sandworms that slither deep beneath the surface of Arrakis, producing spice, are at the center of the intricate spider-web that is Dune‘s mythology, and learning how to ride them and communicate with them as the Fremen do is a transformative event in Paul Atreides’ life. My possibly controversial opinion about the sandworms is that no adaptation of Dune, neither Villeneuve’s nor Lynch’s, has ever successfully conveyed the staggering sense of enormity, grandeur, and mystery that accompanies every appearance of the sandworms in Frank Herbert’s novel, which has always disappointed the child in me who first read Dune (back when I was far too young to truly understand the book) solely for the sandworms, and who’s waited a long time to feel all those sensations again upon seeing them erupt from the sand. I don’t know if Villeneuve’s sandworms are too small, or too crusty-looking, or if I just dislike their design, but they remain the most underwhelming aspect of an otherwise stunning film.

Everything else on his Arrakis, everything man-made at least, is massive and majestic, from the sand-encrusted ziggurats that scrape against the heavens to the donut-shaped starships that transcend them. We see plenty more of that aesthetically distinct, Oscar-winning production design on display in the trailer for Dune: Part Two, and with so many new worlds and new areas of Arrakis to visit in the sequel it’s very likely that the team headed up by Patrice Vermette will find themselves nominated once more, alongside costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan, who have compiled a bleakly elegant wardrobe of prickly metallic gowns and headdresses for Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan, a minor character in the first book, excerpts of whose writing are quoted by the author as if they were historical sources. Austin Butler, inexplicably wearing a bald-cap and painted blindingly-white for the role of Feyd-Rautha, is a slightly tougher sell, but that’s just another example of Villeneuve’s style and my mental image not perfectly aligning.

Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, standing against a dark brown background with floating sand particles creating a hazy effect, wearing a metal, gem-encrusted cap and veil that clings to the sides of her face and extends down her neck, where it meshes into the collar of her tunic.
Princess Irulan | pinkvilla.com

But all quibbles aside, I’m excited to return to Arrakis, and now I want to hear your takes on the trailer, the new characters introduced, and the future of the franchise after Dune: Part Two. How far into the series can Villeneuve make it before mainstream audiences give up? Share your own thoughts, theories, and opinions, in the comments below!

Trailer Rating: 8/10

Cate Blanchett Delivers A Monumental Performance In Todd Field’s “TAR”

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR TÁR AHEAD!

Whoever accepts the Academy Award for Best Actress this year, be it Michelle Yeoh or Cate Blanchett, will ascend to the stage knowing that while it could just as easily have been the other making that same victory-march, they themselves deserved it no less. If, in a staggeringly unfortunate turn of events, it’s Andrea Riseborough, Michelle Williams, or Ana de Armas whose name is instead read aloud from that life-changing envelope, well, they ought to be wondering how they even made it to the ceremony when one of them only started her controversial Oscar campaign in the last few weeks before the nominations were announced, one is essentially committing category fraud when she could have easily beat the competition for Best Supporting Actress, and one is nominated for an unspeakably exploitative Marilyn Monroe biopic that should never have been made in the first place. But it won’t be one of them. It will be, it should be, and it must be either Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All At Once or Blanchett for TÁR.

Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar in the film TAR, sitting at her piano and writing notes on a musical score.
Lydia Tar | theplaylist.net

Blanchett’s nomination for TÁR is her fifth in this category, her eighth in total, and her first since 2015’s Carol. And not since she seeped into the cozy fur stoles of Carol‘s enigmatic titular character has Blanchett immersed herself in a role so wholly with only the slightest physical transformation to facilitate her; yet she deliberately holds her cards close to her chest, remaining so curiously plain, unintimidating, and approachable throughout the film’s opening sequence (which takes the shape of a long, deceptively monotonous sit-down interview with The New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik) that the audience is made to feel embarrassed, even childish, for being at all apprehensive of her quaint sophistication or for detecting a hint of an edge in her voice when the conversation strays in a direction she doesn’t like. She looks like Blanchett, dresses like Blanchett, and perhaps most crucially of all, talks like her, with an eloquence that would probably come across as pretentious if her delivery wasn’t so merry that the listener is left feeling smarter for hearing her speak and eager to hear her again.

It’s only as you inch closer, close enough to discover that her eyes are eerily devoid of any merriness, that it will finally dawn on you, much too late, why Blanchett was cast and why director Todd Field wouldn’t have made the film without her. The very qualities that endear her to her fans, her approachability and mesmerizing manner of speech included, are qualities that continue to be abused by celebrities (and by virtually anyone on or adjacent to the uppermost levels of the hierarchy in their respective industry), and Blanchett demonstrates for us in the first few minutes of TÁR by creating an atmosphere that feels safe, luring an entire audience in within arm’s length of the fictional-yet-familiar monster inhabiting her skin, and waiting until the cameras are no longer recording to drop the act and dig her claws into her prey. From that moment on, Blanchett is gone, subsumed into the character of Lydia Tár.

Tár, a world-renowned conductor and composer preparing to close out a long career throughout which she has accumulated an almost hyperbolic number of prestigious accolades and awards, including the coveted combination of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award collectively dubbed the EGOT, is a character who stands stubbornly with one foot on either side of the boundary between blunt Caricature of a subject, and nuanced Commentary on that selfsame subject – the subject in this case being every celebrity who’s been hearing a lot of stuff about “cancel culture” in the news recently and knows they would hate it if it happened to them, but isn’t online enough to know that it’s a complete and utter fabrication of the far-right: an imaginary war being waged against the authors of badly-written children’s books and offensively unfunny comedians, by some hypothetical mob of angry young people indoctrinated by the left. Lydia Tár probably isn’t the type of person to publicly align herself with the far-right voluntarily (she strikes me as a moderate liberal), but the exaggerated threat of “cancel culture” is too great for her to stand idly by, and in acting frantically to defend herself against an invisible foe she accidentally exposes her own “cancelable” offense – her history of coercing her students into trading sex for job opportunities and blacklisting them when they broke up with her, driving at least one woman named Krista Taylor to suicide.

It should come as no shock to anyone that this was the true purpose of “cancel culture” all along – to make vocal right-wing allies out of those in the arts who would otherwise have kept their mouths shut, and to convince the general public that buying their books, their music, their movies, or tickets to their shows, is tantamount to a victory against the online mobs trying to “restrict free speech” and therefore a moral obligation for the consumer. But what the right-wing doesn’t state out loud is that they pick and choose which “victims” of “cancel culture” to throw a lifeline. And Lydia Tár, a married lesbian and a classical musician, is expendable as far as the right-wing is concerned. Which is how she ultimately finds herself conducting an orchestra at a Monster Hunter game convention in the film’s final scene.

Nina Hoss as Sharon Goodnow and Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar in TAR, hugging each other in a room with pink lighting.
Sharon Goodnow and Lydia Tar | news.sky.com

This stunning moment can be variously interpreted as the first of many humiliating low-points in Tár’s career following her fall from grace or the first necessary step in her scrabble back up the social ladder – and then, of course, there’s the distinct possibility that it is Tár herself who has contrived this bizarre, self-flagellating sequence to cap off the fictional narrative she’s been constructing in her head throughout the film, one in which she’s the victim of vaguely supernatural powers out to get her. It occurred to me that Tár is so desperate for a taste of “cancel culture” that it’s possible she’s been fantasizing about Krista’s accusations jeopardizing her career all along. In fact, prior to the outrageous third act, who else besides Tár’s personal assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) even knows the details of her inappropriate relationship with the conductor? Francesca, who disappears without a trace – almost like a specter herself – after being passed over for the job of assistant conductor, perhaps causing the increasingly paranoid Tár to retroactively invent reasons to fear her?

As Tár spirals out of control with dizzying speed, whether literally or all in her imagination, she gradually becomes aware that she has fallen out of the carefully-curated biopic she had hoped TÁR would be, and into a grotesquely claustrophobic dark comedy from which there is no escape. Everywhere she turns, she is confronted by demons mundane from one angle, nightmarish from another under Florian Hoffmeister’s lens – the neighbor in the upstairs apartment who won’t stop banging on her door pleading for assistance with her elderly mother; the monstrous black dog that watches her stagger down dimly-lit underground corridors in panicked pursuit of Olga (Sophie Kauer), the mysterious Russian cellist she begins wooing midway through the film; household objects vanishing and turning up in places they don’t belong, like the work of a poltergeist. This string of events culminates in an incident where Tár storms onstage during the live performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 and physically assaults the conductor standing in for her, eliciting gasps. It’s simply too ridiculous to really be happening…right?

There is only one character besides Tár herself who can escape being ushered to the back row or ejected from Lydia Tár’s self-serving autobiography entirely until the final third, and that is Sharon Goodnow (Nina Hoss), Tár’s indispensable wife, whom the composer dejectedly returns home to after Krista abandons her and Olga leaves to party with her own friends, not for any lingering love but for a potent reminder that she controls Sharon (at least in part by deliberately mismanaging her wife’s medications and then feigning concern over her “absent-mindedness”). Her own sense of security, necessary for surviving in an insular world, starts to rely on her wife remaining gaslighted into believing she’d be hopeless on her own, that she needs Tár to keep her safe from herself. But when details of Tár’s infidelity come out, Sharon finally breaks the fraying thread tethering her to the woman she loved once and escapes with the couple’s young daughter.

And in so doing, Sharon deals a fatal blow to Tár’s confidence – not only depriving her of the precious pair of good-luck charms that the conductor would have happily carried around with her from place-to-place until retirement, but forcing her to confront the dark alone for the first time in her life. Like most predatory people, Lydia Tár doesn’t know how to function without someone “weaker” alongside her to reassure her that she’s the strongest person in any room, and she doesn’t enjoy the sensation of being on equal footing with anyone (personally or professionally), yet she also becomes sick to her stomach when she is bluntly offered her choice of sex-workers in a Southeast Asian country toward the end of the film. She runs away, offended at the suggestion that what she’s been doing all her life is anything like that.

Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tar in TAR, standing in a concert hall at the conductor's podium.
Lydia Tar | thetimes.co.uk

But ultimately it doesn’t matter, because in that final scene where Tár once again takes the stage to conduct an orchestra for an enraptured audience, Field forces you to sit with the uncomfortable realization that whether or not this is all really happening, even in Tár’s worst nightmares she is still working. It may not be work she relishes, and she’s probably wincing inside as she hears her distinctive sound swallowed up by Monster Hunter‘s electronic score, but she’s still onstage, bathing in the spotlight, and conducting. Even she must surely recognize then and there that “cancel culture” was and will always be a myth as long as the “canceled” still have a platform from which to complain about it.

Film Rating: 8.9/10