TAR (15, 158 mins)
Valuation: ****
Conclusion: An acting master class
M3gan (15, 102 minutes)
Valuation: ****
Conclusion: bad fun
No one who saw TAR when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September could possibly have understood the jury’s decision to choose Cate Blanchett as the festival’s best actress. In fact, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t add an Oscar to the pair she already has. She also bagged a Golden Globe this week.
She is fascinating in TAR. In a story set in the world of classical music, she delivers a tremendous virtuoso performance that the film, while overdue by at least 20 minutes and has a few twisted notes towards the end, is mostly worthy of.
Blanchett plays Lydia Tar, world-renowned conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and beloved protégé of the late Leonard Bernstein. The film begins with this interweaving of fact and fiction.
No one who saw TAR when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September could possibly have understood the jury’s decision to choose Cate Blanchett as the festival’s best actress
We first meet Lydia in her native New York, where she is submissively interviewed onstage by New Yorker magazine’s Adam Gopnik (who plays himself convincingly), before an adoring audience who blame her for every word. She is, Gopnik reminds her fans, on a “short and glimmering list” of EGOTs, the few blessedly talented people who have won all four of America’s major showbiz awards: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
Lydia also has the ego to go with her EGOT. She treats her devoted assistant (Noemie Merlant) with haughty contempt and looks down on another conductor (Mark Strong). When she teaches a master class at the elite Juilliard School, she haughtily disdains a “pangender” student who refuses to play or even listen to Bach because the great composer was apparently a sex plague.
“Don’t be so keen on being offended,” she says, slamming social media for fomenting an abandonment culture. Coincidentally, the audience in Venice cheered this line. But the student storms out, leaving a faint feeling that perhaps this scene will have meaning beyond the demonstration of Lydia’s ferocity.
Blanchett plays Lydia Tar, world-renowned conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and beloved protégé of the late Leonard Bernstein. The film begins with this interweaving of fact and fiction
Lydia is not only wild but also gay. We follow her back to Berlin, where she lives with her wife Sharon (Nina Hoss), the orchestra’s first violinist, and their daughter.
Quite a bit of the movie is over now, but it’s still not clear where it’s taking us. Writer-director Todd Field immersed us in Lydia’s life and the orchestra’s scathing politics, and we were particularly captivated by Blanchett’s impressive performance. But there doesn’t seem to be a straight-forward linear narrative. At night Lydia seems to be haunted by noise – a ticking metronome, even the hum of the fridge. Could it be that her incredible musical ear will be her own downfall?
We’re entering spoiler territory here. As the narrative momentum finally begins to build, Lydia is indeed knocked off her podium – though not by something as subtle or sensitive as hearing. When something terrible happens to a former protégé, the news is devastating, but not for the reasons you might expect.
Meanwhile, Lydia’s intense crush on a pretty Russian cellist begins to uncover weaknesses in her that have been well hidden. As hard as she tries, she can no longer separate her public image from her personal preferences.
One by one their certainties collapse and burn. Field gets a little carried away towards the end; perhaps because he orchestrated everything so skillfully, one scene in particular feels terribly discordant. But for the most part, even at its inordinate length, this is a tremendously compelling film to which all involved should salute, the remarkable Blanchett most of all.
The week’s other big publication with a one-word title, M3gan, is also about a difficult, manipulative woman, although conspiracy theorists shouldn’t read into the decision to give her the same name as the Duchess of Sussex.
This M3gan (an acronym for Model 3 Generative Android) is a doll. A crying, talking, sleeping, walking, living doll that Cliff Richard certainly never imagined. She is the creature of Gemma (Allison Williams), a brilliant robotics engineer at a Seattle toy company who spends her life imagining what kids might enjoy, but then really has to do it when her nine-year-old niece, Cady (Violet McGraw) is orphaned in a horrific car accident.
The week’s other big publication with a one-word title, M3gan, is also about a difficult, manipulative woman, although conspiracy theorists shouldn’t read into the decision to give her the same name as the Duchess of Sussex
Despite designing toys for a living, it turns out that Gemma has no connection with children at all. But when she brings M3gan home, Cady is smitten. Gemma programs M3gan to protect Cady, and the doll brings the aunt and niece closer.
Even better for Gemma, Cady’s interaction with the amazingly humanoid M3gan helps her perfect the animatronics.
But when M3gan starts taking her job as a protector far too literally, wild chaos ensues. As it turns out, she doesn’t actually like being told what to do.
Brilliantly directed by Gerard Johnstone and wittily written by Akela Cooper, this is not quite a horror film, not quite a slasher film, and not quite a dark comedy, but an incredibly entertaining mix of all three. Perhaps it’s mostly a mischievous satire about artificial intelligence, with rumbling echoes of Frankenstein’s monster. I didn’t expect to like it, but I did a lot.
Meet the SLOWEST weapon in the west
The Old Way (15.95 mins)
Valuation:
Nicolas Cage had never starred in a western before The Old Way, and under the circumstances it’s fair to say the venerable genre hasn’t lacked much.
In a film that’s almost impressively derived, like a checklist of much better Westerns lying alongside director Brett Donowho, Cage does his best to give us a version of Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven (Tick). Only his best is far from good enough.
He’s Colton Briggs, retired gunslinger; the toughest, baddest man in the west, reformed by the love of a good woman, but still a bloke of few words. However, instead of appearing taciturn, Colton just seems somber. A heartfelt speech to his fragrant wife (Kerry Knuppe) makes him sound like Forrest Gump (random tick).
Nicolas Cage had never starred in a western before The Old Way, and under the circumstances it’s fair to say the venerable genre hasn’t lacked much
But either way, she’s not around long because a villain with a 20-year grudge against Colton shows up with his buddies and murders them, leaving Colton to saddle up with his spirited baby daughter Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and the to hunt vermin.
As all of this unfolds, there are sycophantic references to True Grit (tick), High Noon (tick) and The Searchers (tick), but also modern sensibilities, with both father and daughter appearing to have some form of autism. This shows a bit more originality, but the best thing that can be said about The Old Way is that it only lasts a little over an hour and a half.
Also displayed:
The Estate (15.96 mins)
Valuation: **
The Estate (15.96 mins), available on Sky Cinema, is also mercifully short. British writer-director Dean Craig has made a desperate comedy set in the American South about two cash-strapped sisters (Toni Collette and Anna Faris) trying to wring a legacy from their wealthy, dying aunt (Kathleen Turner) in an uncomfortable way always hated her.
A star-studded cast, led by the ever-visible Collette, adds an air of class to the film. Unfortunately it wears off very quickly.