Cate Blanchett attends special screening of TÁR in Sydney

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Cate Blanchett is in Sydney today for the special screening of TÁR co-presented by Sydney Film Festival. Check out the site for more updates later.

Cate Blanchett hits Sydney for preview of Oscar-tipped film Tár

Cate Blanchett made a rare appearance on home soil on Sunday, to introduce a sold-out preview screening of the movie Tár at Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace in Cremorne.

Critics have already dubbed the three-hour-long drama one of the year’s best films and Blanchett’s most impressive performances, although Aussies will have to wait three months longer than US audiences to actually see it.

“I personally haven’t processed the experience of making this film and I couldn’t possibly tell what it’s ‘about’. Nor would I want to,” Blanchett told the Sydney audience.

“It’s a film that has a conductor at its centre, but it’s not about the classical music world. You don’t need to know any terminology at all, just allow it to wash over you. Don’t try and make sense of it, I didn’t. Still can’t,” she joked.

Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár, the groundbreaking conductor of a major German orchestra at the height of her career. Over the ensuing weeks her life begins to unravel, in what critics have called a standout #MeToo movie, and the best film on cancel culture yet.

She also called working with the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra “a life changing experience.”

“Something Todd said to me, which I still think about, it’s a meditation on power in a lot of ways,” Blanchett, 53, continued.

“He said that no one’s innocent. No one’s entirely guilty, and absolutes are nonsense unless it is a sporting event. So Australia, it’s not the footy.”

“It’s very difficult to find spaces where you can have nuanced discussions about the big questions that we need to ask ourselves as a species,” she said.

“And this film, without wanting to be grand about it, asks a few of them.”