Film reviews, TÁR starring Cate Blanchett and Enys Men

****

It opens with the closing credits. Not the credits listing the cast or the major off-screen talent; but the part of the closing credits that comes about a minute or so after the film has ended, when the big screen is filled with lots of small names, when everybody has left or is leaving, unless it's a Marvel movie.

That is followed by the lead character, world-famous orchestra conductor and composer Lydia Tar (Blanchett), being interviewed on stage by the New Yorker magazine critic Adam Gopnick. In some ways, this is a very conventional way to start: it offers an easy way to literally introduce us to her.

It is also telling the audience that it is going to address its subject in as serious a way possible, that it will assume a knowledge and appreciation of classical music, and will move at its own pace and rhythm. There will be no concessions. The film is as demanding and haughty as its lead character.

After a long and varied career Tar is now at her pinnacle, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and preparing for a live recording of Mahler's 5th. She is difficult and obsessive, and in the eggbox cathedrals of concert halls she seems to be indomintable. But revelations about her past behaviour are set to challenge that.

Writer/director Todd Fields must know all about music having been Kubrick's piano player in Eyes Wide Shut. Previously, he directed a couple of films in the noughties. Into the Bedroom was a thoughtful, satisfying thriller about a father contemplating taking the law into his own hands.

Little Children was a dull story of suburban adultery; Desperate Housewives with American Beauty music and added paedophile vigilantism angle. In the sixteen years he's been failing to get projects made, he's gone from middling American Oscar pleader to grand European auteur.

With its broad sweep, enigmatic elliptic narrative, and formal rigour this could be a Michael Haneke film. It moves between character study, psychological thriller and contemporary Me-too issue drama. In the central role, Blanchet is commanding, majestic and brilliant, but in this role there isn't really much else to be.

It’s all performance. TAR is is really something. Though exactly what kind of thing it is I really wouldn't hazard to say.

Directed by Todd Field. Starring Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Julian Glover, Sophie Kauer and Mark Strong. Running time: 157 mins.

Enys Men (Image: Steve Tanner)

Enys Men (15)

**

Britain is a land constrained by its past, forever looking backwards not forwards. This extends to its cinema, especially the work of Mark Jenkin.

This cornish, DIY auteur is the Jacob Rees-Mogg of British film. His debut, Bait, was a contemporary tale made to look like it was filmed a century ago.

The follow-up is set in 1973, and never lets you forget it. Again using scratchy, grainy 16 mm Kodak film and period title cards, it is intent on suggesting that this is a film from that era; perhaps one recently rediscovered in someone's attic, and yet to receive its 4K restoration.

1973 was the year of The Wicker Man, and this is a sort of inversion of that. A woman (Woodvine) lives alone on the tiny island of Enys Men, a place marked by pagan stones, a derelict church and the remains of a tin mine. She has been tasked with making observations of flowers. It’s a repetitive life. She gets up, looks at the flowers, walks past the pagan stone, drops a stone down the old mine, and is menaced by hallucinated visions of virgin maids and dour miners.

What are these apparitions that she sees? Are they past or future? Malevolent spirits or projections of her own inner turmoil? Spoiler, the film ain't telling. Enys Men isn't committing to anything.

Jenkin certainly drums up an uncomfortable, unsettling atmosphere, but once established, he just keeps drumming. Round and round the island we go, none of us getting any the wiser.

Almost every other filmmaker wants the viewer to forget that they are watching a manufactured object. Inherent in Jenkin's method is a constant reminder that we are watching something that has been made, and made mostly by his own hands. Jenkin writes, directs, hand operates the camera, records the sound and does the music. He's a craftsman, but not always the smoothest – he has a thing for incredibly ugly, clumsily framed close-ups.

It isn't just his filmmaking that is primitive; apart from a vague celebration of ye olde days, the film seems to be a rejection of everything: technology, society, story, audiences. Only in Britain could such a backward, insular vision be celebrated as something fresh.

Directed by Mark Jenkin. Starring Mary Woodvine, Edward Rowe, Flo Crowe and John Woodvine. In Cinemas. Running time: 90 mins.