Focus Features released a new trailer for TÁR, an upcoming psychological drama starring two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett. The movie follows Blanchett as a famous conductor who starts to be deafened by the weight of high expectations.
The trailer introduces the brilliant career of fictional Lydia Tár (Blanchett), who rose to fame in just a few years after conducting some of the world’s most important orchestras. Currently, Tár is the first-ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra, a prestigious position that nevertheless puts the massive weight of expectations on her shoulders. Besides conducting the orchestra, Tár is also expected to compose new musical pieces, a task she begins to find difficult. The trailer shows how Tár fails to focus on her music writing because she gets easily distracted by any minor noise as if the whole world was working against her.
As the trailer reveals, Tár's hypersensitivity to sound does more than put her career at risk, as every waking moment is turned into a painful experience for the musician. It doesn’t matter where Tár is, if in the middle of the woods or taking a stroll in the city, the noises coming from everywhere threaten to deafen her, putting her on the brink of madness. The trailer does a beautiful job showcasing how on point the sound design of the feature is, as the ambient sound becomes more and more evident each second. So, even if we start to watch the trailer without paying much attention to the sounds around Tár, we end up sharing some of her anguish as we become overwhelmed by the stimuli.
TÁR is the first movie by three-time Academy Award nominee Todd Field in over a decade. The last movie Field released was 2006’s Little Children, which got three Oscar nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay for Field and Tom Perrotta. For TÁR, Field penned the script alone. That and the fact that TÁR has a whopping 158-minute runtime only entices our curiosity. And while two and a half hours might seem too long for a drama, the new trailer lets us know we are getting another groundbreaking performance from Blanchett, who will undoubtedly be mesmerizing enough to keep us glued to our seats.
Aside from Blanchett, the cast of TÁR also features Nina Hoss (A Most Wanted Man), Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Mark Strong (Shazam!), Julian Glover (Game of Thrones), Allan Corduner (Defiance), Sydney Lemmon (Fear the Walking Dead), and Vincent Riotta (House of Gucci).
TÁR premieres in theaters on October 7. Check out the new trailer below.