00:00 - I can't tell you how badly I want to read Tar on Tar.
00:03 I assume that that book is mine.
00:04 (laughing)
00:06 - I've written it.
00:07 I've written it.
00:08 (laughing)
00:10 - I've read it.
00:11 (laughing)
00:11 - Yeah, you've lived it.
00:12 You've lived it.
00:13 (gentle music)
00:16 - I'm wondering if your opinion of Lydia changed at all
00:27 from the moment you started reading the script
00:30 to the last day that you played her.
00:31 And if it did, how?
00:33 - I think it changed minute by minute.
00:36 But in a way, I don't think we have opinions
00:39 about ourselves.
00:41 We're always the heroes or the heroines
00:43 of our own narratives, aren't we?
00:44 We always think we're misunderstood,
00:46 that our actions are noble, that we're good people.
00:49 And I think Lydia thinks that she's in the pursuit
00:51 of excellence.
00:52 She's got a very powerful inner critic.
00:55 And I think great artists, people who achieve great things
00:59 in society are very robust and restless
01:02 and exacting on themselves.
01:05 And I think the interesting thing I got to grapple with
01:08 was how do you push the people that you're working
01:11 with creatively beyond their comfort zone
01:15 and be as kind of exacting on them, but do it respectfully?
01:18 You know, and I think that the film doesn't allow
01:21 an easy judgment of any of the characters.
01:24 It was really important to me as I filmed it,
01:27 and even from the first reading,
01:30 I thought the world was so complicated.
01:31 The world is as complicated as the character is.
01:34 And it was really important to me
01:35 that I never made a judgment on her
01:38 because otherwise it's telling the audience what to think.
01:42 And because it's a lot about time and misspent time
01:46 and institutional power, there's so few places
01:49 where one can have a nuanced discussion about those things.
01:53 And it was really important to Todd and to all of us
01:55 that we allow the audience to have that nuance.
01:57 So my judgment, my opinion was utterly irrelevant.
02:00 - Very interesting.
02:02 Miss Os, I'm curious, how do you feel about the fact
02:03 that people are leaving this movie
02:05 and Googling for more information about these characters
02:08 as if they were real people?
02:10 - Yeah, it's fascinating. - That's great.
02:12 - I've only heard about it
02:14 because I'm not so much on social media, I must admit.
02:17 But I hear about it sometimes,
02:19 and I'm like, really, that's something?
02:21 They have big articles about Lydia Tarr
02:24 doing her next concert and all of this.
02:27 I think it's fabulous.
02:30 I love it, I love it.
02:33 Because it means that it evokes fantasy.
02:38 It's like you want them in your life, so it's great.
02:42 - I can't tell you how badly I want to read "Tarr on Tarr."
02:45 I assume that that book is mine.
02:46 (laughing)
02:48 - I've written it.
02:49 I've written it.
02:50 (laughing)
02:51 - It's all up here.
02:52 - I've read it.
02:53 (laughing)
02:53 - Yeah, you've lived it, you've lived it.
02:55 - Miss Blanchett, there's this unforgettable moment
02:57 where Lydia goes home and she has these VCR tapes
03:00 of conductors that inspired her when she was younger.
03:03 And I'm just curious, if you had VHS tapes of performances
03:07 from actors or actresses that you adored,
03:09 and if so, which one did you wear out, do you think?
03:12 - Gosh, I think a film that really changed my life
03:17 was watching Jane Fonda in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"
03:21 And watching her in "Clute."
03:22 And also the life that she has lived.
03:25 I mean, she has had so many lives.
03:28 If I could, so I constantly refer to her,
03:32 and also Liv Ullman.
03:34 And I suppose the filmmaker that I'd constantly refer
03:37 to would be Krzysztof Kieślowski,
03:39 so his work is on constant rotation.
03:43 But yeah, I found that scene,
03:45 it was a real surprise, actually, when it happened.
03:49 And it comes quite late in the piece,
03:52 when the audience has decided they felt
03:56 whatever they felt about Lydia,
03:58 and then you realize that she is a human being
04:00 and makes mistakes and has regrets
04:03 and feels longing and yearning like everybody.
04:06 It was a very well-positioned sort of moment, I think.
04:10 - I'm just curious if you could compare
04:12 the relationship between a musician and conductor
04:16 with actor and director, is it even a fair comparison?
04:19 - Well, there are some similarities, I guess,
04:23 because you're working on an interpretation, you know?
04:27 But I do have the feeling, especially in this work
04:31 with someone like Todd, that it was very much also
04:35 in his interest to see what we're gonna do with it, you know?
04:40 And so the freedom of interpretation was very much there.
04:45 And in the whole body of an orchestra,
04:50 that is maybe probably what's difficult about it,
04:54 but also the incredible thing that they do
04:57 and the beauty that they do, you have to submerge, you know?
05:01 You can, if you do chamber music and so on,
05:04 then you can be more like an actor, maybe,
05:08 and interpret it the way you see things a bit more.
05:12 But there you just, you go, I mean, it's a similarity.
05:16 I love the vision of Todd, and I wanna play towards
05:21 that vision that the director has.
05:24 But how we get there is very much in the open,
05:27 and maybe surprisingly, we find other things
05:30 along the way that even he didn't expect, you know?
05:33 But that, I think, is a bit different
05:36 to the relationship between a conductor
05:39 who has a certain sound in mind,
05:42 and the whole body of an orchestra
05:44 is really trying everything to create that.
05:49 - That was the shocking thing to me
05:50 about our rehearsal process, us thinking,
05:52 "God, we've got so little time to rehearse
05:54 with the orchestra, and Nina has to play the violin,
05:56 and I've gotta conduct them."
05:57 But that is like imitating art.
06:00 Often a guest conductor will come in,
06:02 they will have eight hours, if they're lucky,
06:04 to rehearse this symphonic work,
06:07 and to put their interpretation on it
06:10 and try and elicit a particular sound from an orchestra,
06:13 whereas we had eight weeks.
06:16 So we chip away at it a little bit at a time.
06:18 (airplane engine roaring)
06:20 (man shouting)
06:23 (man shouting)
06:25 (dramatic music)
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