Tár: A Musical Icon’s Descent
Florian Hoffmeister, BSC, traces the downfall of a world-class composer in Todd Field’s psychodrama.
Tár is all about restraint, both in its storytelling and its visual style. Writer-director Todd Field’s narrative is largely about the abuse of power and how celebrity can create an entitled sense of immunity — and cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, BSC, notes that the film’s biggest challenge was to resist tipping it over into melodrama. “I have this phrase,” he says, “‘putting a hat on a hat.’ Todd uses the phrase ‘gilding the lily.’ In other words, we train ourselves to beautify things, which is precisely what Todd didn’t want.”
The film begins with Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) — the first woman conductor of a major German orchestra — at the pinnacle of her career. The iconic musical director is promoting the upcoming release of her book, Tár on Tár, while also preparing to conduct a live recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. Over the next three weeks, Lydia’s past missteps with female students catch up with her, jeopardizing her career and privileged lifestyle.
Tár is Todd Field’s third film as a director and his first feature in 16 years. Partly due to this long hiatus, the film generated a great deal of excitement at the major trifecta of fall festivals — Venice, Telluride, and New York — before its theatrical release last October.
Director of Photography, Florian Hoffmeister, BSC, was impressed with the script’s intimate and precise knowledge of the conducting world, and its somewhat oblique handling of Tár’s transgressions. The conductor is not a person who is self-aware and the camera sticks close by her, so only gradually does it dawn on Tár — and the audience — the damage she’s done to herself and others.
“If you start to amplify that which remains in the gray zone of a story, then it isn’t in the gray zone anymore,” says the Berlin-based cinematographer. “Todd and I spoke at length about camera movement, and it was clear that we would only move the camera when the actor was moving. When Lydia is rehearsing with the orchestra, there shouldn’t be any camera movement whatsoever. There’s nothing more tempting than, once a classical orchestra plays, to move the camera. So it was all about holding back.”
“Hoffmeister sums up Tár’s visual design in four words: appearance, being, detachment, and intimacy.”
“During production,” he adds, “we sometimes thought of moving the camera during certain shots, but when started setting up the camera and the movement got smaller and smaller. You do the first rehearsal and look at each other like ‘Just stop, just be there, be still.’ Todd is very meticulous with everything that’s in the frame.”
“Appearance” and “Being”
Field first appeared on Hoffmeister’s radar as an actor. A few years after graduating from film school in Berlin, the cinematogapher was living in a small village in France, where he occasionally paid a nighttime visit to the town’s only movie theater.
He vividly recalls seeing Eyes Wide Shut – in which Field had a key supporting part as a jazz pianist – about 20 times. “It left a real imprint.” Two years later, the cinematographer saw Field’s directorial debut, In the Bedroom, which hit him “as a reminder that there is a form of independent cinema really worth fighting for.” By the time Field approached him about Tár, he says, “Todd could have asked me to photograph the telephone book of New York and I would had said yes.”
Hoffmeister sums up Tár’s visual design in four words: appearance, being, detachment, and intimacy. “They’re big words, but those carried me through the film.”
For the cinematographer, “appearance” and “being” represent two sides of Lydia. In the concert hall and public spaces, she dons her celebrity persona: hard-edged, imperious, and highly articulate. At home in private with her partner, Sharon (Nina Hoss), or in her music studio, “she just ‘is’,” he says. “I tried very consciously to distinguish between these two elements with the lighting.”
“Lydia ‘appears’ when she’s in front of an audience,” Hoffmeister explains, “whether it’s an audience of a thousand,” as in the film’s opening scene, “or an audience of one,” as in situations like her dinner with Elliot Kaplan (Mark Strong), the financial backer for her conducting fellowships for women. “In those moments, I tried to accentuate that feeling of a constructed appearance by a strong key light,” he says. “The light had a clear ‘attitude’; even if there is shadow, the key light prevails.
Lydia shares a private moment with partner, Sharon (Nina Hoss). All photos courtesy Focus Features
“On the other hand, when Lydia is with Sharon or her daughter, Petra (Mija Bogojevic), and she just ‘is’ — fragile, doubtful, anxious — I avoided any clear key and instead tried to keep her in a soft open shadow. The orchestra rehearsal presented an interesting intersection of those two approaches, as she is standing there with a clear understanding of her role, while also bringing all of her deepest passion and emotions to the podium. Hence, she is shaped by a clear key light, but with more transparency, hence less contrast than in moments where she decidedly ‘appears’.”
Production designer Marco Bittner Rosser also distinguished between the two sides of Lydia’s character. “In her public appearance, there’s no personal detail, and even in her office, there’s no space for personal stuff. The art was hung by someone else and the furniture was chosen by other people,” he says. On the other hand, her private space “is a mix of cultures and experiences that manifest in the art and design pieces, and well as the photographs that surround her. It’s a very eclectic mix of midcentury modern furniture, but also mixed with antiques that give her character a certain texture.”
“Production designers usually try to analyze the background of the character and visualize it into architecture,” he adds. He admits, though that “for me, reading the script and trying to grasp this character of Lydia was hard, because she’s very unapproachable. It led to the choice of working with scale and with a certain coldness in her personal sets.”
As for visual references, “astonishingly, we never once watched a film in prep,” Hoffmeister says., explaining that the filmmakers just didn’t have time. However, he notes, “we had long conversations about ‘detachment,’ trying to avoid over-stylization, trying to encourage ourselves not to be precious about things, trying to establish a form of immersive observation and daring to let things just play.”
In conversations during prep, Hoffmeister was reminded of German “New Objectivity” art movement of the 1920s. He notes, “It was a very conscious movement away from expressionism and romanticism and a return to describe that which can be seen.” The cinematographer was also reminded of the “withdrawn precision” of contemporary German photographers Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky.
“At times, we would use the large format for depiction of space, sometimes for psychological depiction — two characters, maybe in a small room. ”
After months spent testing a multitude of lense, Hoffmeister recalls the director telling him, “They all have their strengths, but they’re either too clinical or they feel likea movie with a capital M.” Ultimately, the duo turned to Arri Rental Berlin’s head of camera department, Christoph Hoffsten, who created a completely custom set of glass for them built upon the architecture of Arri’s Signature primes, which were paired with all the production’s cameras.
They filmed in various formats. “We shot a bit of [Arri Rental] Alexa 65; we shot Arri Mini LF. We also shot some things more standard format, like super 35, with the Mini LF,” Hoffmeister says. “At times, we would use the large format for depiction of space, sometimes for psychological depiction — two characters, maybe in a small room. Then for portraiture or other stuff, we would often default to standard super 35.” The overall finish was 4K.
Working in Concert
Hoffmeister estimates that 90 percent of the film was either on location or sets built into locations. The filmmakers were fortunate to find a real concert hall in Dresden — along with their house orchestra — the Dresden Philharmonie, which performed live with Blanchett conducting and orchestra members acting in `supporting parts.
Olga Metkina (Sophie Kraer), the Russian cellist and Lydia’s new target
Regarding filming in the concert hall, the production designer notes, “We thought it would be a challenge, but because of the amazing efforts of the Dresden Concert Hall, we were able to take out seats to make space for the crane build and allow for a set-up of mini sets that we created in there. We used the backstage area for film logistics. [From a design perspective,] it was super easy to work there.”
Bittner Rosser does acknowledge that the hall created logistical hurdles for Hoffmeister, commenting, “It was a challenge to create the kind of lighting that was desired, because there’s limited space to hang rigs, and we also had to remove rigging for specific shots where you do see the whole space,” he says.
“It was a challenge to create the kind of lighting that was desired, because there’s limited space to hang rigs, and we also had to remove rigging for specific shots where you do see the whole space.”
Hoffmeister notes, however, that the hall’s existing acoustical panels, hung about 3 meters above the musicians, were also used to light the stage — which posed a particular dilemma for the production, as they essentially could not be moved. The cinematographer explains that the panels “have an acoustic have an acoustic function. The musicians can only hear themselves in the right intensity if these panels are at a certain height — so you cannot just walk in there and say, ‘We have to raise them and hang our own rig.’ The second thing about the panels is that the performers can read the sheet music at the pace that they’re playing.”
To avoid re-rigging, Hoffmeister and his crew tried gelling the music-stand lights. “But if you went too thick on a gel, it was like, Movie Time! It was almost like cooking. The smallest ingredients would change the overall appearance.” Ultimately, Hoffmeister says, “inventive gaffer Florian Kronenberger came up with a magnet system and just clipped pieces of black duvetyne into the light.”
Class Act
One tricky scene was Lydia’s masterclass at Juilliard, where she relentlessly vivisects one student’s opinion. The filmmakers sought to inject the sequence with energy and movement, which also helped to counterpoint two relatively static scenes that precede it: Lydia’s interview with New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik (playing himself) and lunch with Kaplan.
The filmmakers decided to capture the Juilliard scene in a single shot. Says Hoffmeister, “It was a long scene of more than 10 pages. Originally, Todd and I discussed 35 camera set-ups. We kept talking about the driving force of this scene of Lydia being herself – and how important it was at this point in the film, the audience is squarely in her POV. These discussions led to the natural conclusion of shooting in one take while still utilizing those 35 set-ups. The only difference would be that there would be no cut. It wasn’t designed as a bravura piece of cinematography, and our hope was that viewers wouldn’t notice – or if that they did, it would be at the point in the scene where they’re so involved that it wouldn’t become a distraction. Todd’s guiding principle for this scene, and all others, was to make sure we didn’t ‘get caught.’
“At first, we wanted to do it with a crane, because Todd and I really loved the precision of movement,” Hoffmeister continues. “For a moment, we thought about hanging a camera from the ceiling, which would have been a complete nightmare.” In the end, key grip Bernd Mayer built his own rig, which allowed him and three of his grips to carry DJI’s Ronin 2 three-axle head as they were followed by 1st AC Alexis Kostudis and boom operators Thomas Wallis and Tim Müller.
“There was no place to hide in that room,” says Hoffmeister, “so Todd, camera operator Danny Bishop, and I were tucked away in a tiny backstage hallway where Danny operated from a remote gear head. I still remember the first take because it ran more than ten minutes and it was almost perfect. The performance was breathtaking, but there was a slight technical issue on our end. So, unfortunately, that take was unusable.”
Hoffmeister gives credit to Field and Blanchett for their esprit de corps. “It was nobody’s fault — it just happened, and we did it again,” he says. “It was clear we were all part of this adventure.” Over the next two days, they did 12 more takes. “It was a huge commitment for all of us, but in the end, we got precisely what Todd wanted.”
The Little Things
Asked about demanding shots, the cinematographer replies, “Sometimes it’s the little things that are the most challenging.” He explains that while “we can talk for hours about the crane shot when Lydia kicks [her replacement conductor] off the stage or about the10-minute single-shot sequence,” the film’s sparseness and subtlety are its defining qualities.
Hoffmeister paraphrases a quote from Russian writer Isaac Babel, author of the famous short-story collection The Red Cavalry, who once said about his own work, “‘A story is finished when you can’t cut a single word out of it anymore.’ That compression is the way that Todd made the film.”
Published in the January 2023 issue of American Cinematographer
