Martin Scorsese says TÁR will save us from safe and predictable movies

At the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Scorsese said "the clouds lifted" when he saw the film

By Sam Barsanti  |  January 5, 2023 | 5:14pm
Aux News Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese says TÁR will save us from safe and predictable movies
TÁR Photo: Focus Features

Back in October, Anne Hathaway said that seeing Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All At Once (and seeing it become a huge hit on top of that) was so much fun that it basically gave her new hope for the future. Not only was it a sign that movies can still be good and creatively refreshing, but everyone who loves movies came together to see it and talk about it as a community. For her, it was a total “maybe things will be okay” moment.

As it turns out, Martin Scorsese had a similarly reinvigorating experience after seeing Todd Field’s TÁR. He presented the Best Picture award to TÁR last night at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, and Scorsese made a speech that made it clear that he thinks TÁR and movies like it are the key to saving the art of cinema—and, before you ask, the thing he thinks cinema needs to be saved from is not superhero movies (we guarantee that he spends zero minutes of every day thinking about them), but movies that are too safe or too predictable in a way that TÁR isn’t.

Here’s part of what he had to say, via Indiewire:

For so long now, so many of us see films that pretty much let us know where they’re going. I mean, they take us by the hand, and even if it’s disturbing at times, sort of comfort us along the way that it will be all OK by the end. Now this is insidious, as one can get lulled into this, and ultimately get used to it. Leading those of us who’ve experienced cinema in the past—as much more than that—to become despairing of the future of the art form, especially for younger generations.

But that’s on dark days. The clouds lifted when I experienced Todd’s film, TÁR. What you’ve done, Todd, is that the very fabric of the movie you created doesn’t allow this. All the aspects of cinema and the film that you’ve used, attest to this.

Scorsese goes on to gush about the “shift in locations” and how it manages to “reduce space and time to what they are, which is nothing,” adding that Field’s made it so the audience has no choice but to exist solely in the head of Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár. “We experience only through her perception. The world is her. Time, chronology and space, become the music that she lives by,” he said. “And we don’t know where the film’s going. We just follow the character on her strange, upsetting road to her even stranger final destination.”

Scorsese also mentioned the film’s “masterful mise-en-scène” and “wonderful 2:3:5 aspect ratio,” so clearly he’s just over the moon about this movie.

 
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