Finally! Oh I’ve been sorely wanting for masterpieces so far this year, and Tar has delivered. There’s something fascinating in the idea of how implicitly this film feels like a biopic for a fictional person in a way which most films, I suppose, are but never feel like it. There’s a masterful bit of exposition at the beginning, almost lampshade-hanging itself, but it totally works. There are any number of set pieces throughout the film for Cate Blanchett to just own the thing, delivering a fully rounded 3D character who is… good? Bad? Importantly, not 100% either. “Complicated” feels like a cop-out, or a pejorative, but I don’t mean it as such. She makes right decisions, she makes incorrect decisions, she has internal agony over which are which. Other characters are drawn into her orbit and affected by this for better or worse. The merciless pursuit of brilliance takes its toll. And as the tension is ramped up and then released, the straitjacket of the first two acts is shed as it becomes increasingly freewheeling in the third, echoing Tar’s fall. An ambiguous ending - a redemption, or an indictment? - neatly caps it all off. It’s not easy work - a couple walked out of my screening about 30 minutes in. Good. Cull the herd. You have to earn good cinema.