BSO does not have a female music director.
In the first scene of the film, The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik interviews Lydia Tarr.She is her EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony Award winner) and former I am the mentee of Leonard Bernstein, founder of the Fellowship Program for Young Women Conductors. She has both her book publication and the live recording of Mahler’s magnificent 5th Symphony on the horizon, and is principal conductor of her Philharmonic Orchestra in Berlin. (Another orchestra that has never been led by a woman.) Her interactions are dense with references to the real-life inhabitants of the classical music world, past and present. For example, Marin Alsop, the conductor breaking the glass ceiling. We’re not just talking about rehearsals in German without subtitles.
How she says it matters more than what she says. “Can’t start without me. I start the clock,” she says, referring to her command During a gopnik interview. “Sometimes the second hand stops, which means the time stops.”
When we first met Lydia, she was as much of a star as the modern classical world would allow, garnering public acclaim as easily as donning a bespoke pantsuit. rotates in a fixed orbit. She has a long-term romantic relationship with the fragile and resilient Berlin Philharmonic concertmaster Sharon (Nina Hoss), with whom she is raising her adopted daughter. Then there’s Francesca (Noemie Merlant), her protégé, personal assistant, and emotional dumpster. Francesca herself is an aspiring conductor who spends her time attending to Lydia’s needs throughout her waking hours. Representing the old guard is Lydia’s own mentor and her predecessor, Andris Davis (Julian Glover). And a bubbly, charming young Russian is eyeing a permanent spot in her cello section (Sophie Her Cauer makes her astounding feature film debut, all doing her own solo). playing). Blanchett herself learned to speak German, conduct, and play the piano for her central role. She’s amazing and it’s impossible to look away from her – and you don’t have to.
Lydia is only comfortable when she has control over her conversations, her surroundings, her future, and even time itself. “You must surround yourself… obliterate yourself before the masses and God,” she advises a class of Juilliard students. When expressing disgust at , she refers to the class as a gathering of “millennial robots.” In that subtle and sharp detail, we can see that she hasn’t touched the world at large. Those students look too young to be anything but Generation Z.
The film’s conflict arises and escalates when she is faced with a situation in which she cannot yield to her will, and Lydia’s star gradually collapses into a black hole. A neighbor knocks on the door and the car vent rattles. Nature and Machine conspire to haunt Lydia and dodge past reminders that she wants to remain buried. It turns out she had an inappropriate intimate relationship with a young woman, Christa (Sylvia Float), who was a fellow in a program she founded. Her conductor then blacklisted her and sent her emails to her orchestral contacts around the world to ensure she would never get her job, saying, “I want her to there was a problem.”
Even in the real world, the power given to certain people based on their artistic ability or professional status contributes to the Code of Silence. They have been accused of physical assault and harassment, and their accusers fear that their careers will be affected if they go against the wishes of their alleged abusers or publicly report misconduct.
Unlike them, Lydia is a woman. But the movie’s problem isn’t gender, it’s power. Placing a charismatic and tyrannical queer female character at the center of the film allows for nuanced conversations about power, fame, sexism, and how deeply marginalized people can hurt each other. Lydia as a guardian, lover, mentor, “U-Haul lesbian”, villain, or someone needed to get others to do what they want, regardless of who gets hurt along the way. Present yourself. “Solidarity” may be a four-letter word.
Except for Krista, the movie never confirms what Lydia’s experts are It was a bad deed. But do we really need to know? It is clear that she abused her power, and when confronted directly about the allegations against her, she lies and gets caught. It was just a diversion.
She returns to her suburban childhood bedroom, sports medals draped around her neck, tearfully watching tapes of her former mentor Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s concert. Her brother arrives and calls her by her birth name, Linda, which is clearly not Eurochic. Lydia always knew where she was going, but now she’s drifting and she’s effectively homeless. She’s convinced she’ll never do anything but become a maestro again, and no one around her has ever suggested she had to.The planked wall looms. The movie should have ended there.
I tried to find a way to write about the ending issues while minimizing the spoilers, but one of the problems with the ending is its ambiguity. In the film Coda, Lydia has a conductor’s job in an unnamed Southeast Asian country. She is out of her element, lacking the sense of place and attention to detail that characterize the American and European scenes, and neither does the audience. Avoided all pitfalls. but it plummets To some of the laziest metaphors about Southeast Asia. I gritted my teeth when I saw Lydia ask a local man where to get a massage and was disappointed when I correctly guessed that the man would refer her to a spa with sex workers.
this all makes sense Every frame of the film belongs to her, and even in her moments of greatest humiliation, she still controls what we see and hear. You never know what will happen. In the film’s final shot, she is on the podium with a new orchestra (performed by Siam Her Sinfonietta) and projected onto the stage while her screen descends from the ceiling while her manager hands her a headset. The house is filled with attentive young people in elaborate cosplay. Her new job includes leading concerts of video game music (Fear of Fear).
Upon exiting the theater, I realized that Lydia may have been conducting a click track, a live orchestra to a metronome that synchronized it with existing footage. In other words, she no longer has the ability to turn the clock on and off, nor to control the time. It would also cleverly call that shot back to her opening speech. Audiences can’t hear the click track, so the punch line is like she’s directing her music to her teens in Southeast Asian costumes. It’s a dream job for some, but many of her old admirers might consider it extreme punishment.
Yet, her whiteness gives her power, and the people around her become props.
AZ Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. follow her on her twitter @knitandlisten.
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