Joining the party at Tao Downtown on a screen, Martin Scorsese looked genuinely bewildered as he presented the Best Picture award to the movie Tar, noting the extraordinary performance of its star Cate Blanchett. As Lydia Tar, a genius orchestra conductor, Blanchett rages and purrs, at times in impeccable German. Scorsese has indeed worked with an actor or two but seemed awed over Blanchett: given she can do anything, and is, perhaps the actress of her generation: how far is she willing to go? Tar is on many “best” lists as it turns the cliché of the toxic male around, but the question is not how far Lydia Tar can go, but, for me, how far she has come.
The standout scene is when she returns home to Staten Island, as Linda. Here was the modest provincial place she had to flee to self-invent, to flourish in her music, and, horrifically, to nurture a monstrously warped ego. Discussing the film with its director Todd Field, I mention this resonant film moment. In writing it, he said, he was exploring, how does a talented person break into the elite cultural world of orchestras. He was thinking of Billy Strayhorn and how he fixed himself up to see Duke Ellington, into his idea of the cool Manhattan jazz society, and how everyone then looked to copy his style, his idea of how to be cool.
Actors ruled at this yearly event, a stop on their way to L. A. for more awards. The NYFCC named
Keke Palmer Best Supporting Actress for her role as the character Em in
Jordan Peele’s Nope. Accepting her award from the director, Palmer, an actress since age 11, said, “I respect the art of acting in a way I can’t explain.”
Ke Huy Quan who dazzles as Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once, was in Indiana Jones back in the day, and then didn’t work for a few decades until directors
Dan Kwan and
Dan Scheinert put him in their multi-universe hopping mega-film. And
Jim Jarmusch in presenting Best International Film to Polish director
Jerzy Skolimowski for Eo, made sure to praise its stars, six donkeys.
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