Duncan Hume

Series of beautifully shot vignettes illustrating the life of Napoleon. Likely Oscar for best costumes.

I went to this film expecting a great things as promised by the deluge of 100/100 from so many professional critics at esteemed publications. It would be Cate Blanchett’s career defining performance. And indeed all the end credits came first in what seemed like an eternity. So even the unsung heroes who made even a small contribution to this greatness could not be overlooked. I think in time Cate’s technically accomplished performance will be subsumed by an overrated film that looks great and produces plenty of talking points for the journey home but fails to engage the emotions. I watched ‘Carol’ recently where Cate Blanchett was tremendous. I think the the film is the problem not Cate who was trying too hard at times. Maybe she was inspired by the subject matter being oh so in the moment and thought that would translate into her career defining moment. That is still to come I am afraid. What music there was in the film was good. And the politics of classical music and orchestras seemed unpleasantly authentic. However no conductor conducts so self indulgently, at times like a bad interpretive dancer. I think it would just confuse the orchestra. As film it it failed to say something meaningful about subject of sexual abuse and bullying with very serious consequences for her victim. Or about the motivation of the perpetrator. Or the media or identity politics or cancel culture anything else it touched. Other than possibly the director has an axe to grind and not on behalf of the victim(s). It seems to be saying Tar may be a bully and abuser but also her victims have an agenda and this great troubled artist is to be brought down by these jealous second rate victims and social media Trolls. Does great art become less great because of the artists abusive behaviour? Should we be sympathetic to the abuser who has herself experienced trauma? That would be a a powerful narrative-had the film had cared enough to develop the ideas. I didn’t see the point of Mark Strong in a bad wig. His character didn’t have depth or develop or add significantly to the plot in terms of the power politics. He was useful as Tar’s punch bag I suppose. There are moments when it seems the character is hallucinating or haunted by the past misdeeds. This would explain a lot of the incoherence and weird incidents and of course Tar may have a psychotic condition caused by her own past trauma. But that is left to our imagination and in I didn’t care about the characters or story enough to invest my emotions and imagination in that possibility. However Psychosis may explain the horrible stereotypes in the presentation of the anonymous South Asia country that Tar seeks artistic ‘asylum’. Oh so different from sophisticated ‘first world’ Berlin. I think it is that abuse of an entire culture will be remembered. Unfortunately the film is disjointed and a series of polished and superficially cultured scenes is no more no more than the central character who dominates every scene : Pretentious, patronising, vindictive, incoherent. And was at the end trite, condescending and prejudiced. No Ta.