Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay that explores the theme of time in Todd Field’s Tár.
If you thought that everyone would quit talking’ Tár just because Oscar season has come to an end, think again. We checked the rule book, and apparently, if something loses, that means campaign fever gets to persist in perpetuity. Huge news for Tár-nation.
Directed by Todd Field — you know, the jazz guy who inadvertently sends Tom Cruise to the sex cult mansion in Eyes Wide Shut — Tár follows the fall from grace of its titular fictional conductor/composer (Cate Blanchett). While Field’s masterfully tense character study has its fingers in a number of different thematic pies, both the film and Lydia share the same central concern: time.
Time is something that powerful, controlling people (like Tár herself) want to dominate but never can. And when you’re as constructed and artificial as someone like Tár, it’s only a matter of (say it with me) time before the other shoe drops. Time heals all wounds, but it also exposes all sins. This is bad news if you’re the kind of person willing to do whatever it takes to carve out a space for yourself at the top.
The video essay below doesn’t contain any major story spoilers, but it will be more edifying if you’ve already seen Field’s film (which you should, it’s great, and you should make time for it).
Watch “Tár on Time”
Who made this?
This video essay about the theme of time in Tár is by Maggie Mae Fish, a Los Angeles-based comedian, actress, and culture critic who releases short films and video essays on her YouTube account. Her work has been featured on College Humor, Screen Junkies, and JASH. And she was also a former lead actor and writer at Cracked.com. Follow Fish on Twitter here.
More videos like this
- For another sample of Maggie Mae Fish’s excellent work, here’s her excellent video essay on RoboCop’s ties to the transgressive world of exploitation cinema.
- Here’s Fish with a video essay that does a pretty convincing job divining sense out of the sense-defying Twin Peaks.
- And here’s another video essay from Fish that compares Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with David Lynch’s Lost Highway to underline the darker side of auteur theory.
- Here’s Maggie Mae Fish’s essay on that explores what makes Nicole Kidman’s performance in the supernatural horror film The Others so special.
- And, one more: what the films of Wes Anderson can teach us about the intersection of class and aesthetics.
Related Topics: Cate Blanchett, Tar, The Queue
