I heard so much about this movie, and as a classical cellist I really wanted to see this movie, especially because it is about a female conductor and I haven’t seen many movies like that. Cate Blanchett acted the hell out of her role, and I could not help but bob my head to all of the pieces that Lydia Tar conducted. I especially loved it when Olga played the Elgar Cello Concerto in E Minor since that is one of my favorite pieces, and loved it when Tar conducted “Adagietto” from Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler. I remember playing it in high school during my last year and it was really special to play that movement because it is so powerful and gives me goosebumps. It literally tugs at my heartstrings each time I hear it.
The film brings to light a lot of the issues in the classical music world. It takes place in the present day and writer Adam Gopnik is interviewing Lydia Tar, a well-renowned conductor of a major orchestra in Berlin. She has all these accomplishments and runs a tight ship, but things get messy when allegations come out against Lydia after Krista Taylor, one of the participants in the program she runs for aspiring female conductors, commits suicide. Lydia alternates between New York City and Germany, where she lives with her wife Sharon and their daughter, Petra. Tar is a perfectionist and sets these incredibly high standards for success and this drives her to alienate the people around her, most of all her wife. When a young cellist named Olga auditions for the orchestra, Tar is immediately entranced and finds herself feeling attracted to the cellist. This puts a strain on her relationship with Sharon because Sharon sees Lydia’s growing attraction to Olga, and with the growing allegations against Lydia, Sharon and Francesca distance themselves from her.
There is a scene in the movie where Tar is giving Olga a ride back to her place, and Olga shows her a small teddy bear that she keeps with her. It is adorable, and Olga accidentally leaves it in Tar’s car. Tar finds Olga forgot the bear and she goes through the entranceway, which is really just a maze of graffitied buildings, and looks all over for Olga but cannot find her. If I were her, I would be so freaked out to be in that isolated area all by myself, especially because there is a rather vicious looking dog that is staring straight at Tar and Tar keeps running through the series of buildings looking for Olga but cannot find her. Then she finally finds her way back to her car, but on the way out of the entrance she trips on the hard concrete steps and falls flat on her face, which leaves her with some pretty nasty cuts and bruises to her body. She comes to rehearsal the next day and everyone is quietly aghast, but no one wants to be that person who says aloud, “What happened to you?” Tar sees their horrified looks and chuckles to herself in her Tar way, and tells them with a frustrated expression what happened. She doesn’t mention she was trying to find Olga, and instead afterwards gives Olga her bear. Olga probably didn’t want Lydia to find where she lived.
Another key scene occurs earlier in the movie. Francesca doesn’t want Lydia to find out that she had been corresponding via email to Krista before Krista’s suicide, and so Lydia asks Francesca to fetch her a cup of matcha tea. Francesca reluctantly goes, and when she leaves the room, Lydia sneaks over to Francesca’s laptop and looks in her email inbox and finds that Francesca never deleted her correspondence with Krista, even though she was instructed to end correspondence with her and delete the emails. When Francesca comes back, Lydia doesn’t mention she was snooping in her email inbox and asks her about whether she got rid of the emails between her and Krista.
This film also touches on the growing awareness of how white classical music canon is, and how to navigate these spaces as people of color. During a master class at Julliard, Lydia talks about the genius of Bach and one of the students, Max, says as a pangender person of color they don’t see themselves represented in the music they are working on because all of the composers are white cis-gendered men. Lydia gets offended by this, and asks the student why they are even in the master class to begin with. She humiliates the student in front of their peers, and even though Max listens to her berate them, they finally gathers their things and leaves and cusses her out. She tells Max if they wants to dance the mask, they must service the composer and also sublimate their ego and their identity. On the one hand, I understand she was trying to get the student to understand that as a conductor they is going to be subject to a lot of criticism and critics won’t care that they wants more diversity of composers, and that even though the composers are white, they can still find expression in the music. In fact, she tells they that they needs to focus on the music rather than the lack of diversity of the composers whose music they are playing.
However, I can also see it from the student’s perspective. In 2020 with the killings of George Floyd and other Black people in America and around the world, and the global reckoning with centuries of systemic racism, genocide, and colonialism, the world of classical music came under fire for its racist past. When I had an Instagram account in 2020 I followed found a lot of posts detailing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) classical musicians’ experiences with microaggressions and racist insults while working in the field of classical music. I can’t lump together everyone’s experiences with racism, but it’s fair to say that there have been quite a few instances of racism that people of color have faced in classical music. For example, historically operas have featured white singers in blackface and yellowface, and it wasn’t until I went on social media that I started hearing more people discuss how problematic this tradition has been for many years. While I saw Madame Butterfly in the tenth grade thinking it was okay that a white opera singer put on yellowface, I am more aware that this is not okay. I became especially more aware of this when I read a story in one of the newspapers about a famous European opera singer who put on blackface for her role in an opera called “Aida” and how she faced a ton of backlash because more people had become aware that blackface is not okay even if that’s how people have done the role for years. The movie doesn’t take a side in whether Max or Lydia was right in how they approached race and identity in classical music, but it did make me just think about the ongoing conversations around how orchestras are addressing diversity and race.
I’m also ambivalent about Tar’s statement that to serve the composer, one needs to sublimate their identity. On one hand, the music is there and people need to play it and go home, so there’s the job of conducting that needs to get done. But also, as the film continues, Lydia literally loses her sense of self when she achieves all this success as a conductor, and she gets to the point where her work and getting ahead of everyone else is the only thing that matters in life. She doesn’t sublimate her ego; instead, over the course of the movie, she manipulates people, puts people down and also suffers inside because she feels everyone is against her and she is also incredibly frustrated that no one is living up to her extreme expectations. As a perfectionist myself, I can relate in the sense that a lot of times when playing the music my ego would get so wrapped up in winning the audition or trying to prove the people around me wrong that I ended up suffering deeply as a result because I was so wrapped up in my own self that I couldn’t embrace anything less than failure. I think that’s why having a spiritual practice like Buddhism helped because it was a reminder that yes, working hard is important, but everyone is working hard, not just me, and that yes, I need to work hard for my dreams but I also need to appreciate the people in my life and not treat them like my personal servants to my art and ego. One time, in 2016, I auditioned for a professional orchestra. I was coming straight out of college and didn’t even have a music degree, but I thought, If I just practice, practice, practice, then I will win. But I became so focused on winning the audition that I burned out and started neglecting the things in my daily life I needed to take care of, like cleaning my room, doing dishes, vacuuming. I would practice for three hours straight and not take breaks, and I would get easily frustrated every time I made a mistake and use that as an excuse to beat myself up. So it’s no wonder that on the day of the audition, I had no energy to even get out of bed because I had just run myself ragged by cramming in so much music at one time. Wrapping up my ego in my dreams also affected how I viewed work in general. I felt that having a day job wasn’t like having a music dream job, and that if I just ran away to New York City to chase my dreams and perform with a prestigious orchestra and make lots of money I would finally be happy. But when I didn’t meet those expectations I set for myself, I literally lost it. I threw tantrums at work and at home, I got easily upset at the littlest things (I’m still working on changing that behavior to be honest), and if it didn’t have to do with my music career, I didn’t care. But I realized that in doing so, I was blocking out the people in my life who mattered, the people in my life who kept me down to earth. I had to understand over time, too, that even if I have a successful music career, in any field you work in, you have to work together with people, and some people you may get along with well, and others not so much. I can be successful but if I’m only focused on serving my own ego, I can’t expand my capacity as a musician because I have so much to learn from different perspectives. In reality, having a music career involves not just being talented at playing your instrument, but also being good at teamwork since I’m going to play music in many ensembles with people. I don’t know what it’s like for people who play in professional orchestras or conduct professionally, but it definitely seems that like anywhere else, you have to work well with other people and can’t just focus on yourself.
The Arts Are Life 