{"id":182184,"date":"2023-01-10T02:53:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T02:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/tar-full-script-todd-field-creates-cate-blanchetts-career-best-role\/"},"modified":"2023-01-10T02:53:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T02:53:00","slug":"tar-full-script-todd-field-creates-cate-blanchetts-career-best-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/tar-full-script-todd-field-creates-cate-blanchetts-career-best-role\/","title":{"rendered":"T\u00e1r Full Script: Todd Field Creates Cate Blanchett’s Career-Best Role"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\tSince its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and its subsequent US release on Oct. 7, Todd Field’s \u201cT\u00e1r\u201d has become a rare thing: a much-discussed art-house movie that demands your attention, if not your obsession. On repeat viewing, Cate Blanchett’s performance as the famous conductor Lydia T\u00e1r deepens and becomes more complicated, beautiful and upsetting, as the enigmatic layers of Field’s screenplay continue to unfold for the audience. Now, variety<\/em> is exclusively exhibiting the script for the first time.<\/p>\n

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\tOf variety<\/em>‘s <\/em>Jan. 5 cover story, Field and Blanchett discussed the making of \u201cT\u00e1r,\u201d why they were interested in this story, and how they created this character. They had met a decade earlier over dinner to discuss a project with Joan Didion that ended up not happening, and Field had written Lydia T\u00e1r \u2014 a character he’d been thinking about \u201cfor about 10 years,\u201d he said \u2014 for Blanchett alone. Field handed in his first draft to Focus Features in May 2020, having written it in 12 weeks during the lockdown stage of early COVID.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlexi Lubomirski for Variety<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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\tIn the film, we meet Lydia T\u00e1r during a precipitous, pivotal three-week period of her life. She’s the conductor of a renowned, unnamed Berlin orchestra, and is at the height of her career \u2014 and the pinnacle of the world of classical music. But as \u201cT\u00e1r\u201d unfolds, the abuses Lydia has perpetrated against young women she was supposed to be mentoring come to light after one of them kills herself.<\/p>\n

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\tThrough Lydia, Field wanted to explore how power works, and he knew he wanted her to fall from a towering height once her sexual predations are exposed. An orchestra is a symbol, Field said: \u201cIt’s a picture of a pyramid. She’s literally at the tip of that fulcrum.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\u201cI’ve never had such an extraordinary collaboration,\u201d Blanchett said about working with Field. \u201cWhen I read the screenplay, I thought, ‘You don’t change a syllable of this.’\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tCate Blanchett, Todd Field, Adam Gopnik in \u201cT\u00e1r.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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\tBut before any of this happened, Field needed a greenlight to make it. After years of thwarted projects \u2014 he hadn’t made a movie since \u201cLittle Children\u201d in 2006 \u2014 Field met with Focus Features’ Peter Kujawski and Kiska Higgs in fall 2019 and outlined the notion of \u201cT\u00e1r.\u201d Kujawski’s first job out of college was with Good Machine, when the independent production company \u2014 which was later bought by Universal and evolved into Focus \u2014 was filming \u201cIn the Bedroom,\u201d Field’s first feature as director (and an eventual Best Picture nominee). According to Kujawski, they wanted to work with Field on pretty much any project, and the Focus executives told him to \u201cgo do whatever you want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\tWhen Field sent in that first draft, it \u201cbasically was the shooting draft,\u201d Kujawski said. \u201cThe decision upon reading the script to say, ‘We’re obviously making this,’ was basically instantaneous.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\tIn the movie, anagrams are among the themes of \u201cT\u00e1r\u201d \u2014 one if its puzzles. And an anagram for \u201cT\u00e1r,\u201d of course, is \u201cart\u201d \u2014 which the movie is. It’s a brain-teasing Oscars-frontrunner that’s made critics swoon, while also setting the minds of internet detectives on fire.<\/p>\n

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\tAs its writer-director, Field has been conjuring the life of Lydia T\u00e1r for more than a decade now. \u201cI can tell you her street address where she grew up,\u201d Field said of Lydia’s Staten Island childhood, something she’s erased in from her official biography. \u201cI can tell you its proximity to Fresh Kills, the largest landfill on Earth where every father worked. And I could talk about the smell of the garbage coming through those windows. I know more about this character than I should ever talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\tSo what’s it like to say goodbye, now that \u201cT\u00e1r\u201d is out there in the world?<\/p>\n

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\t\u201cIt’s really hard,\u201d Field said, souding wistful. \u201cIt’s so many years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\tRead the full screenplay for \u201cT\u00e1r\u201d here.<\/p>\n

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