00:00I can't tell you how badly I want to read Tar on Tar.
00:03I assume that that book is 900 pages long.
00:06I've written it.
00:07I've written it.
00:10I've read it.
00:11Yeah, you've lived it.
00:12You've lived it.
00:13I'm wondering if your opinion of Lydia changed at all
00:27from the moment you started reading the script
00:30to the last day that you played her?
00:31And if it did, how?
00:33I think it changed minute by minute.
00:35But in a way, I don't think we have opinions about ourselves.
00:41We're always the heroes or the heroines of our own narratives,
00:44aren't we?
00:44We always think we're misunderstood,
00:46that our actions are noble, that we're good people.
00:49And I think Lydia thinks that she's
00:50in the pursuit of excellence.
00:52She's got a very powerful inner critic.
00:55And I think great artists, people
00:58who achieve great things in society,
01:00are very robust and restless and exacting on themselves.
01:05And I think the interesting thing I got to grapple with
01:08was, how do you push the people that you're
01:11working with creatively beyond their comfort zone
01:15and be as kind of exacting on them, but do it respectfully?
01:19And I think that the film doesn't
01:20allow an easy judgment of any of the characters.
01:24It was really important to me as I filmed it,
01:27and even from the first reading, I
01:30thought the world was so complicated.
01:31The world is as complicated as the character is.
01:34And it was really important to me
01:35that I never made a judgment on her,
01:38because otherwise, it's telling the audience what to think.
01:41And because it's a lot about time and misspent time
01:46and institutional power, there's so few places
01:49where one can have a nuanced discussion about those things.
01:53And it was really important to Todd and to all of us
01:55that we allow the audience to have that nuance.
01:57So my judgment, my opinion was utterly irrelevant.
02:00Very interesting.
02:02Miss Os, I'm curious, how do you feel about the fact
02:03that people are leaving this movie
02:05and Googling for more information
02:07about these characters as if they were real people?
02:10Yeah, it's fascinating.
02:11That's great.
02:12I've only heard about it, because I'm not
02:14so much on social media, I must admit.
02:17But I hear about it, and I'm like, really?
02:20That's something?
02:21They have big articles about Lydia Tarr
02:24doing her next concert and all of this.
02:27I think it's fabulous, you know?
02:30I love it.
02:32I love it.
02:33Because it means that it, you know, it evokes fantasy.
02:38It's like you want them in your life, you know?
02:40So it's great.
02:42I can't tell you how badly I want to read Tarr on Tarr.
02:45I assume that that book is going to be my number one.
02:48I've written it.
02:49I've written it.
02:52I've read it.
02:54Yeah, you've lived it.
02:54You've lived it.
02:55Miss Blanchett, there's this unforgettable moment
02:57where Lydia goes home and she has these VCR tapes
03:00of conductors that inspired her when she was younger.
03:03And I'm just curious, if you had VHS tapes of performances
03:07from actors or actresses that you adored,
03:09and if so, which one did you wear out, do you think?
03:12Gosh, I think a film that really changed my life
03:17was watching Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
03:21And watching her include,
03:22and also the life that she has lived.
03:25I mean, she has had so many lives.
03:28If I could, so I constantly refer to her
03:32and also Liv Ullman.
03:34And I suppose the filmmaker that I'd constantly referred
03:37to would be Krzysztof Kieślowski.
03:39So his work is on constant rotation.
03:44But yeah, I found that scene,
03:45it was a real surprise actually when it happened.
03:49It comes quite late in the piece,
03:52when the audience has decided they felt
03:56whatever they felt about Lydia.
03:58And then you realize that she is a human being
04:00and makes mistakes and has regrets
04:03and feels longing and yearning like everybody.
04:06It was a very well positioned sort of moment, I think.
04:10I'm just curious if you could compare the relationship
04:12between a musician and conductor with actor and director.
04:17Is it even a fair comparison?
04:19Well, there are some similarities, I guess,
04:23because you're working on an interpretation, you know.
04:27But I do have the feeling,
04:29especially in this work with someone like Todd,
04:33that it was very much also in his interest
04:36to see what we're gonna do with it, you know.
04:41So the freedom of interpretation was very much there.
04:47And in the whole body of an orchestra,
04:50that is maybe probably what's difficult about it,
04:54but also the incredible thing that they do
04:57and the beauty that they do.
04:58You have to submerge, you know.
05:01You can, if you do chamber music and so on,
05:04then you can be more like an actor maybe
05:08and interpret it the way you see things a bit more.
05:12But then you just, you go, I mean, it's a similarity.
05:17I love the vision of Todd
05:19and I wanna play towards that vision
05:22that the director has.
05:24But how we get there is very much in the open
05:28and maybe surprisingly, we find other things
05:31along the way that even he didn't expect, you know.
05:34But that, I think, is a bit different
05:37to the relationship between a conductor
05:40who has a certain sound in mind
05:42and the whole body of an orchestra
05:45trying everything to create that.
05:49That was the shocking thing to me
05:50about our rehearsal process.
05:52Us thinking, gosh, we've got so little time
05:53to rehearse with the orchestra
05:54and Nina has to play the violin
05:56and I've got to conduct them.
05:57But that is life imitating art.
06:00They, often a guest conductor will come in,
06:02they will have eight hours, if they're lucky,
06:04to play this, rehearse this symphonic work
06:07and then they, and to put their interpretation on it
06:10and try and elicit a particular sound from an orchestra.
06:13Whereas we had eight weeks.
06:16So we chip away at it a little bit at a time.
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