An exclusive Czech pre-premiere at Variations 2022 – variace.kviff­.com.

TÁR
(d. Todd Field, USA 2022, 158 min., 12+, in English with Czech subtitles)

This year’s Variations offers an exceptional opportunity to see one of the most distinctive films from this year’s Venice Film Festival. Tár will undoubtedly be one of the most frequently mentioned favorites for next year’s Oscars, primarily thanks to an excellent performance by Cate Blanchett. Her Lydia Tár is a renowned and feared celebrity among conductors in this masterful drama with elements of a thriller set in the rarefied world of contemporary classical music. The film is a gripping tale of obsession, phenomenal talent, the breathtaking power of music, power games, and the sometimes confusing complexity of the time we live in, swinging back and forth between freedom of expression and cancel culture. More than a few reviews have called Field’s film, which takes place in New York and Berlin, as a work of genius.

Todd Field (1964)

Field was born in Pomona, California, but grew up in Oregon, where he established himself as a jazz trombonist while still a teenager. After studying at Southern Oregon State College in Ashland for just a year, he left for New York, where he began to study acting. He was later cast in films by Woody Allen (Radio Days) and Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut), among others. But Field was drawn to directing, and after a series of short films he shone with the feature-length drama In the Bedroom (2001), one of the most successful debuts of the past several decades (among other things, it received five Oscar nominations). Five years later, he followed up with the no less well-received relationship drama Little Children (three Oscar nominations, including a Best Actress nomination for Kate Winslet). Fans of Field’s work have had to wait a whole sixteen years for Tár, the latest sophisticated and unassumingly original film in which he managed to get stunning performances from his actors.