Tár, Nick Cave and the instinct to flee the culture wars | Opinion

I arrived at the cinema thinking that tarTodd Field’s film featuring Cate Blanchett’s latest miracle performance, was “a film about contemporary culture wars that refuses to participate in them”, as Ross Douthat had defined it in his column on New York Times. But the tape is so illustrative of these combats that I left convinced that it was impossible for the spectator not to project his opinions on the subject onto it. In that sense, the film participates in the culture wars through those who see it, because, like it or not, it offers arguments to an audience eager for conflict and validation.