I’m going to keep ringing this bell, I don’t care how annoying I am: Tár was my favorite film of the past year. The past several years, honestly. I loved Cate Blanchett’s performance, I love the ghost story aspect of the film, I love the evocative, moody, gothic drama of it, I loved that Todd Field created this total world of Lydia Tár. As I was reading Cate’s Awards Insider cover story, I learned that the box office for Tár was actually pretty bad? But it’s been available for streaming/rent for nearly two months, so I imagine that’s how people will find the movie, as I did. You should absolutely try to find it, it’s brilliant! Anyway, Cate has been promoting Tár for months and she found herself in the middle of a huge Oscar campaign, thus this Awards Insider cover. Her interview was charming (to me). Some highlights:
Cate doesn’t even have all the answers on Tár: “I found Tár the most all-consuming, confronting, joyous, life-affirming endeavor that I’ve ever been involved in. I don’t know what exactly it is, but I know it’s something. So I want people to tell me what it is because I’m still figuring it out for myself.”
Preparation: She had months to prepare—to learn how to conduct, to master the piano, to speak German. (The film is set in Berlin and was largely shot there.) “I was utterly terrified of it. I didn’t know where to start and so I had to just start in an incredibly practical way. But because there was so much to do, it meant that there wasn’t any time for nerves.”
What does ambition mean to Blanchett? “It’s something that traditionally is seen as being an unattractive thing for a woman to hold. It’s synonymous with being ruthless. I look at the things that I choose to take on as ambitious, and that always contains a very strong possibility of monumental, catastrophic failure… I don’t know if I’m an ambitious person or a restless person. It’s a very hard question, Dr. Freud.”
Whether she feels weird about playing a queer woman corrupted by power: “I don’t think about my gender or my sexuality. For me in school, it was David Bowie, it was Annie Lennox. There’s always been that sort of gender fluidity.” She admits to feeling perplexed by the very notion of having to think about stepping into an identity outside of her own: “I have to really listen very hard when people have an issue with it. I just don’t understand the language they’re speaking, and I need to understand it because you can’t dismiss the obsession with those labels—behind the obsession is something really important. But personally I’ve never had it.”
Playing a lesbian in Carol: “If it was made now, me not being gay—would I be given public permission to play that role?” I ask if she thinks she should be. “I don’t know the answer to that,” she says. The topic clearly weighs on Blanchett, as she understands the sensitivity around it—and the potential for saying the wrong thing. “If you and I were having a conversation [25 years ago], it would be in your publication and that was it. Now, somehow it’s like these opinions get published, and Scarlett Johansson doesn’t play a role that maybe she was the only person who could play it.” (This likely refers to Johansson, after backlash, exiting a project in which she was to play a transgender man.) She adds, “I don’t want to offend anybody. I don’t want to speak for anybody else.”
Her Hot Ones appearance: “I asked to be on Hot Ones. I’ve been wanting to go on Hot Ones for years.”
The awards season is a grind: “Part of me was really hoping that, out of the pandemic, so many things were going to be done differently. Why don’t we have a matriarchal structure, in which…all these things are in dialogue with one another rather than it being a horse race? But of course there’s a lot of vested interest in creating the drama around the drama.”
VF makes the point that Cate has been pretty eager to support Tár for months, mostly out of pride in the film. Like, Cate knows that she made one of the best films of her career and she’s promoting it accordingly. Lydia Tár is Cate’s problematic fave, and part of Cate is still living in the Tár Universe – she admits at one point that she and Todd Field are still on the phone with each other four or five times a day, and there are side projects coming out in the Tár universe, including a short film.
As for Cate playing queer characters… I don’t know, I feel like the LGBTQ community has always embraced her completely, so they don’t really have a problem with her playing someone like Lydia Tár? Maybe I’ve missed the backlash though (from what I’ve seen, the LGBTQ peeps are the ones praising Tár nonstop). As for her comments on the awards season… I also kind of hoped that the pandemic would change things, but it really hasn’t.
Cover courtesy of Vanity Fair, additional photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
Cate Blanchett in conversation with host Scott Feinberg as she is honoured with the Outstanding Performer of the Year Award tribute during the 38th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival at Arlington Theatre, Santa Barbara, California, USA, on 10 February 2023.,Image: 755301415, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: JERRY PEREZ / Avalon 
Cate Blanchett is honoured with the Outstanding Performer of the Year Award tribute during the 38th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival at Arlington Theatre, Santa Barbara, California, USA, on 10 February 2023.,Image: 755301481, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: JERRY PEREZ / Avalon 
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