Only seven actors have managed to bag three Oscars for acting, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep among them. Can Cate Blanchett become the eighth individual in that hallowed company? The rave reviews accompanying Blanchett's new movie TÁR would have you believe it's a yes.
The mercurial star of Elizabeth, Carol and I'm Not There has received laudatory notices for her title role as Lydia Tár. A renowned and fiercely dedicated conductor of a German symphony orchestra, Tár sees her position as less of a vocation and more of a compulsion. That's what happens when you can manipulate time with the merest swing of your conductor's baton.
However, on the inside, Tár is emotionally crumbling, and this sprawling, engrossing drama explores the fallout that occurs when her professional and private lives collide. Marshalled by writer-director Todd Field, TÁR is a clear frontrunner in the Oscars 2023 race with many declaring Blanchett's performance to be the best of her career. (She even learned to conduct an orchestra for the role – now that's dedication.)
"No one but [Cate Blanchett] has the right way of wearing a two-piece black suit with an open-necked white shirt, the way of shaking her hair loose at moments of abandon, the way of letting her face become a Tutankhamun mask of contempt," raves Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.
"She holds the screen for two and a half hours, aided by Florian Hoffmeister’s epic cinematography, a tour de force of control, effortlessly keeping us waiting and guessing for an almost tantrically deferred climax."
Check out the following clip and decide for yourselves as to whether Blanchett will bag her third Oscar. TÁR is released in the UK on January 13, 2023.
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