I had been hearing a lot about this film and to be honest I don't even have any idea how long it has been released. Because I saw some posts about it online I finally got around to watching it last night. It doesn't take very long to realize that making this film must have been a massive undertaking and perhaps it is deserving of some Oscars. That being said it is kind of obvious that it was their intention to go trolling for Oscars, and not necessarily to make a film that is actually entertaining.
I didn't find it entertaining and I thought it was waaaay to friggin long and for the most part, quite boring.
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People are already saying that Cate Blanchett give the performance of her life in this movie and since I respect her so much and think she is a fantastic actress I am going to say that I don't agree with that. She is really good in anything that she is in and this wasn't much of a departure from the quality of her normal performance.
The movie, if you haven't heard follows the life of of Lydia Tar, who I didn't realize until after seeing it is not a real person. I thought this was a bio-pic going into it but as it turns out everyone in the movie, except for famous composers and various celebrities that are mentioned, are all pure fiction. Lydia is considered one of the greatest composers of her time and is celebrated the world over as a composer and conductor. She has a team of people working under her and is very highly regarded in the upper-crust of society around the world.
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Now for the average user a lot of the dialogue is going to go right over their heads. There are technical terms thrown at us in rapid fire and I believe that this is done in a much longer than needed way. Of course when making a film that you know is going to get nominated for everything it is important to make it more than 2 hours long, right? Well, mission accomplished I guess.
Lydia seems to be above the trivial nature of much of what happens in the world especially social media. She has an assistant that reads and responds to her emails for her and she seems completely disinterested in that part of life. This was where I identified with her the most. However, it is exactly this disinterest that results in a downward spiral of her life and career.
There is a moment where she is a guest lecturer at Julliard and she is approached by a clearly nervous student who says he doesn't pay any attention to Bach because he will not have anything to do with misogynist white males or something along the lines of modern identity politics. Lydia, still believing that modern cancel culture cannot apply to her, brutally embarrasses him for this opinion in front of the class. She does so with logic though and the student storms of saying "you are a fucking bitch" which I thought was pretty emblematic of how the youth of today handle confrontation or difference of opinion. Later, footage of this instance would be crudely edited and compiled and put online in a way that drastically shifts her words from what actually happened.
A campaign of sorts starts to unravel towards her as her connections, her career, her personal life, and all she has worked for starts to unravel because of the power of "guilty until proven innocent" and cancel culture that exists in our modern world. It is truly tragic to see happen and I did enjoy this part of the entire story as it was quite powerful to see someone that was so loved by the community that she was a leader in be discarded by everyone else largely because of something that wasn't even true.
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As her downward spiral continues it becomes more and more clear to her that there is nothing she can do to reverse the course that is being done to her and I really enjoyed that they showed the helplessness that happens to someone who previously seemed universally loved and untouchable. I just wish that they had managed to accomplish this is significantly less time because honestly, it is way too long.
Should I watch it?
Honestly, this movie is going to be too artsy for the average person and like I said, most of the topic matters are drawn out entirely too long in my opinion. It is impossible to ignore the immense amount of work that went into making this whole thing happen including having actors and actresses that actually can play instruments or at the minimum very convincingly pretend to do so. This difficulty in making such a production is probably why the start credits are excessively long as is the rest of the film.
The overall story is very powerful and will make you think after you see it and in that regard it is a much better story than most of the drivel that we see come out as films these days. It is just unfortunate that so much of the runtime just drags on and on and I believe that most people will find themselves getting quite bored.
This film didn't do well in box offices and wasn't really even widely released. The amount of money they spent on it has not been made public yet but I am sure it was quite a lot considering all the places and people involved in making it.
While I can definitely see this getting nominated for a bunch of awards, and I believe that was the intent, I don't think the average viewer is going to be able to sit through all of this.
