It took me a while to get to this one, mostly because the scenario — a lengthy take on a prima maestra orchestra conductor — did not appeal. On the other hand Cate Blanchett leads and I was curious to see what she's been up to since she departed Sydney Theatre Company. I think she did as well as anyone could.
Overall I felt its take on high culture was unsubtle and unoriginal; if there's two things I learnt in my time in academia, it's that the more you have to say the less time and space it takes to say it, and that the more referential something is, the shallower that something is in itself. Here we have the same-old will to power and abuse of power as anywhere else floating on many layers of faux sophistication.
One major problem for me was that I didn't get the sense that Tár was authentically a great artist, and the whole show falls apart if there's nothing plausible to countervail her obvious flaws. Similarly what value is Oscar bait that the Academy completely fails to go for? After a languorous intro (credits, an Adam Gopnik interview, flights between western cultural axis NYC and eastern cultural axis Berlin) things speed up but it still felt overlong. The fag end gets really messy as Tár goes full juvenalia, which is lame. After a while there is too much going on for us to focus on anything beyond the character study (with Blanchett in almost every frame). Written and directed by Todd Field, it reminded me most of Aronofsky's lesser works: clunky, heavy handed, over produced, tendentious; the full horror of striving and/or achievement.
Reviews were legion. Jason Di Rosso interviewed Blanchett. A. O. Scott: monster or victim? Why choose! Glenn Kenny: meticulously researched, teach the controversy. Zadie Smith at length in the New York Review of Books. It took Peter Bradshaw two goes to get into it. Dana Stevens. Most bang on about the cancel-culture angle, and I feel the general positivity is due to how few serious movies are made these days. Dan Kois watched it far more closely than I bothered to, and suggested that horror tropes were subtly deployed. I agree that much was unexplained.