Cate Blanchett’s latest performance as an authoritarian conductor in the film Tár has received a six-minute standing ovation and rapturous reviews following its premiere last week at the Venice Film Festival. Directed by Todd Field, the film centres around the fictionalised life of Blanchett’s character Lydia Tár, a giant of the musical world, who sits on the precipice of crisis as the skeletons of her past come back to haunt her. Impassioned cries of “bravo” rang out from the audience at the Sala Grande Theatre at the film’s conclusion, with initial reviews lauding the performance as the greatest of Blanchett’s career so far, generating heavy anticipation for an upcoming Oscar nomination.

Cate Blanchett stars as conductor Lydia Tár in director Todd Field’s new film Tár, a Focus Features release. Photo © Florian Hoffmeister/Focus Featureso

The film is a thrilling, deeply human portrait of Lydia Tár, one of the world’s greatest composers and conductors. She is an EGOT winner, a mentor at Juilliard, and holds the most prestigious orchestral position in the world as the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (an institution which in reality has never appointed...