The Dark Feminism of ‘Tár’

The film’s eponymous protagonist, and her downfall, is a cautionary tale of parity with men.

The film Tár is about many things: the rarefied world of elite classical music, the behavioral allowances offered to “geniuses,” the dangers of self-mythologization, an examination of the human and emotional spoils of making art. It is also possibly—and perhaps unintentionally—one of the most feminist films that I’ve ever seen. And, to that end, it should come as no surprise that Tár’s conclusion is rather tragic.

A brief synopsis for the uninformed, one I promise is relatively spoiler-free (though, honestly, there are no spoilers for this film; nothing can ruin the experience of watching the out-of-this-stratosphere Cate Blanchett). The film is about the fictional Lydia Tár, a world-renowned figure in classical music and the current conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. It opens with her being interviewed by The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, who reads her impressive and long résumé and notes the rarity of her position. Yes, she is a woman who has reached the pinnacle of the world of classical music, but her excellence is not only because of that; she is the best conductor in the world, regardless of gender. Period.

And Lydia Tár is aware of—and basks in—this status. As we watch her being fitted for bespoke  suits, Tár explains how she is not the “woman on top,” relegated to, as the character calls it, the “show dog” role of guest-conducting. She actively rejects the honorific Maestra, likening it to the ridiculous notion of female astronauts calling themselves “astronettes.” Having started an organization to help women advance in the world of classical music, she at one point in the film suggests changing the group’s mission. I paraphrase, but “We’ve sort of proved the point haven’t we?,” Tár asks.

I perked up in my seat at that moment, because it seemed to me that the film was asking a larger question—one I’ve been writing about here for some months. From a feminist lens— feminism defined as women’s striving for gender-based parity with men—I suppose Lydia Tár did, indeed, already prove the point. She had paved, for herself and other women, a (we soon come to find) highly conditional path into the same rare, powerful positions that men who’d come before had hoarded for themselves.

Of course, we discover that she has done this not through some plucky, slogan-powered “girlbossness,” but through a steely, charismatic manipulation of the same tools of the patriarchy that all the men before her had used. For two and a half hours, we watch Tár use power to seduce, manipulate, gaslight, bully, intimidate, mock, belittle, and undermine those around her to her advantage. Then we watch her life fall apart because of all of the above. Not in a way that is unique or related to her being a woman, but in a way that has—in the five years since the #MeToo movement erupted into the mainstream—come to feel quite familiar. She is pulled apart on social media, protested at book events, shunned by her spouse, stripped of her private planes and acolytes. Her downfall, too, has parity with men.

Fairly or unfairly, when I walked out of the theater I found myself ruminating on two other recent films, that were, unlike Tár, marketed explicitly as “feminist films,” and that, for me, had fallen flat: 2020’s Promising Young Woman and the more recent Don’t Worry Darling. In Promising Young Woman, the main character’s life is thrown into tumult after her best friend is raped in college, ending with self-sacrifice and vengeance. Don’t Worry Darling involves the mass victimization of women at the hands of emasculated men and ends in … who knows? It’s been three weeks since the film’s mass-market release, and I’m still not quite sure what I was supposed to be rooting for in that film. But, in short, what both movies have in common is their notion of woman as a victim of patriarchal society who uses her pluck and intuition and feminine wonder to create some sort of change of circumstance. Theoretically, both should have left me feeling “empowered,” and instead, like a girlboss-slogan keychain, they simply left me feeling lighter in my wallet.

I think this lackluster impression was more the result of confusion about the true nature of feminism, and its implications, than the fault of the filmmakers. Mainstream feminism—despite whatever catchy memes might be saying “Fuck the Patriarchy” on social media at any given moment—is a product of patriarchy. Unlike the concepts behind womanism, which I’ve written about before, mainstream feminism’s ambition is not to dismantle societal power structures and values, but to reaffirm them equally across gender lines. If a film that focuses on a strong, independent woman achieving some “win” within a patriarchal social structure feels hollow, it’s because the victory itself is. Like feminism, these victories are individual and do little to disrupt the larger, more problematic system itself.

Which is why, perhaps for me, Tár felt somehow refreshing. It’s rare to see feminism rendered as it actually functions in real life: In a man’s world, playing like one will get you ahead, but it might also leave you with nothing.