An art gallery would have to turn most paintings to the wall if we insist on applying standards of good character for their artists.

Over the years we have seen many films that at least momentarily explore the dynamics of teachers and students in class sessions.  But I have never seen one that struck so many chords of recognition as happens early in Todd Field’s film, Tár (2022).  Field’s elaborate study of a complicated modern conductor pulls its audiences in many directions. Cate Blanchett’s maestra is a classical music conductor and a polymath superstar. Only later does her dishonesty toward friends and other musicians come into focus. But we first see her as a master-teacher.

We can set aside the complications of the story to the simpler example of ten minutes of a master class in conducting with a group of Juilliard students. Her pedagogical style in mostly one of interrogation. She wants her students to defemd their all-too settled choices so early in their careers.

This rigidity shows up in the character of one conducting student, Max, who she sees as using a casually applied insularity to shut off what she believes he must be exploring. And scene feels about right. Getting students to really care about the subject they are ostensibly committed to was, I found, a constant and frustrating challenge as a teacher. I applaud this woman’s full-throated repudiation of her student’s indifference.

“The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity.”

The set up is simple. Max has chosen an atonal fragment of modern music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir to conduct.  It is a real piece of new music that is outside the usual western traditions. And Tár is not a fan. She stops his conducting of it and gently interrogates Max about why he likes the dissonant piece. Among other things, it doesn’t really need a conductor. In her words, it may be a car without a motor. How about something a bit more conventional, she suggests, something like a movement from a Bach cantata. But Max frowns.  He is barely able to whisper his response that he has no interest in a “cisgender white male misogynist,” which she takes as an all-too-easy excuse for avoiding perhaps the single most important figure in western music.  It is hard to conceive of a conservatory student so easily dismissing Bach, who–to this day–has united most virtuoso musicians in total admiration for his prodigious output. That would include many rockers like The Beatles and Sting, song-writers, jazz musicians and music theorists. Put simply, Bach significantly advanced the possibilities of musical invention for most working in the western tradition.

Does his domestic arrangements have any role in whether to learn from him?  The equivalent in communication theory is getting students to try an author who upends simple the simple notion of passing information from A to B. To take the risk of discovering a more nuanced view requires reading, thinking out loud, and, yes, challenging a teacher to defend his or her enthusiasm.

Sitting next to Max at a piano, she demonstrates how the opening of a simple Bach piece turns into a series of consecutive and evocative progressions inviting resolution. She and most of the musical world think of them as essential inventions. But Max clearly isn’t interested. And, in exasperation, she turns on him as someone who may be trading on the prestige of Juilliard rather than using it as a resource for discovery.  This is bracing stuff, well outside the musical cliches in most films. But at this point she is no longer teaching effectively, but performing a dramatic character that will give let us witness Max’s humiliation. That’s not a good outcome. I love the lesson as a commentary on opening minds. But it can’t end with a student feeling like they are on the outside of the process. See the riveting scene below.

Luckily, Max is not a stand-in for every student. But Field seems to have presented the piece as a warning that being a slave to identity politics is going to leave any student with a very incomplete education. In an art gallery we would have to turn most paintings to the wall if we insist on a character test for its producers.

As I watched this clip I wondered about my own dislike of most of Richard Wagner’s music.  Like Max, I have revulsion for a composer that gave such evident pleasure Nazi leaders. Shouldn’t I also follow Tár and focus on the art?  My only defense is that the two align too closely for me. Wagner lived years before the rise of the Third Reich, but he displayed some of its worst tendencies, particularly its antisemitism; and both the Nazi’s and Wagner shared a love for homegrown white super-mythology. But I recognize the possibility that, like Max, my judgment is too narrow.