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Todd Field’s drama TÁR is built on a tour-de-force performance by Cate Blanchett as fictional renowned classical music conductor and composer Lydia Tar, the head of the prestigious Berlin Symphony Orchestra and an accomplished woman who is an EGOT, winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.

Lydia Tar is truly a rare bird, one of a handful of female conductors who hold the position of musical director of a major symphony orchestra, in a field that remains dominated by men and in the past has been hostile to women conductors. Achieving and holding such a position takes more than musical talent, but takes charm, intelligence, and social skills in navigating a minefield of professional situations. We first meet Lydia Tar as she is being interviewed in front of an audience by New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik (played by the real writer himself). The interview unfolds in real time, serving to give the audience the backstory on this accomplished character at the peak of her career and poised for more accomplishments as she prepares for the release of her autobiography and the performance of the last of a performance cycle of Mahler symphonies. The conductor/composer is charming, attractive, smart, and wins our admiration immediately.

Cate Blanchett’s striking performance is the major reason to see this film. Her Lydia Tar is elegant, with a restless, feline energy, and supremely confident and supremely accomplished. She has done big things in her career and has an out-sized ego to match. Wearing little makeup, Blanchett sinks so completely into this role that she seems barely recognizable. At the start, Lydia Tar seems admirable for her accomplishments but egotistical and manipulative as a person. Lydia has it all – professional success, public acclaim, wealth and a happy home life with her wife Sharon (Nina Hoss) and young daughter, and her loyal assistant Francesca (Noemie Merlant) helps Lydia keep on top of everything in her busy complicated life. On the surface, Lydia Tar looks totally in control as an accomplished woman at the top of her field but Blanchett reveals a more complicated, layered portrait of a person who isn’t quite what she seems at first, whose life is filled with dark secrets.

After Blanchett’s electrifying performance, the second reason to see TÁR is for it’s immersive dive into the world of classical music, an aspect sure to draw in fans of serious music. The film immerses us into a world that looks gracious and contemplative on the surface but is fiercely competitive and fraught with traps for the ambitious. Lydia Tar is a fictional character but some of her personal story is drawn from actual women conductors, some of whom are named-dropped in that opening interview.

Cate Blanchett plays Lydia as nervous and driven, with little quirks and some obsessive-compulsive behaviors, possibly with a little medication problem. After charming her public, we see Lydia going about her day – lunching with a powerful figure with the symphony, a dilettante composer named Eliot (Mark Strong) and smoothly sidestepping his pressure, returning home to soothe her headache-plagued wife. and dealing with a schoolyard bully bothering her shy daughter. A scene where Tar is teaching a master class at Julliard is particularly telling, with Blanchett just starting to peel back the onion layers of her character.

As perfect as Lydia;s life appears at the start of the film, both her interactions with the school bully, her actions in the master class, and some remarks in the interview reveals cracks in her own polished facade. In the interview, she expresses gratitude to her mentor Leonard Bernstein, basks in praise for the institute she founded to mentor young women conductors, and acknowledges her rarefied position as one of the few women to head up a major symphony orchestra, But then she surprises us by downplaying the idea that women conductors still need help and continue to struggle for recognition and opportunities in the still male-dominated, famously-traditional classical music field. She seems to be saying the battle for equality for women conductors has been won, although that is clearly not the case. It is an odd comment, and reveals a loose thread the film eventually will pull on as Lydia’s life starts to unravel.

Just as the famous conductor/composer is poised from even more greatness, a scandal breaks that threatens both her professional and personal life, a scandal based on Harvey Weinstein-like accusations.

Throughout his film, writer/director Todd Field repeatedly has his central character tells the musicians with whom she is working to asking themselves what the composer is saying with his/her music. It seems a hint that the audience should be asking itself what Field is saying with this film, beyond how the mighty can fall from grace. So what exactly is Field saying with this film? Ego can bring you down? Power leads to abuse? Women can be as evil as men? A condemnation of celebrity? It feels like there may be a more specific message underlying this character study but exactly what is the central puzzle for viewers, as we watch the unraveling of this character’s life, brought on by her own flaws.

While TÁR is an in-depth character study of someone tumbling from heights in spectacular fashion, it is also a film about hubris. Lydia is her own worse enemy, not only in her own shady behavior, exploiting a string of female proteges, that leads to that scandal, but in how she handles that and other mistakes that make things worse. She seems to have little insight on what she is doing and has done, and seems to lose her grip as things spiral.

It is fascinating to watch Cate Blanchett take her character through this but it is not an enjoyable experience. The film is long at 158 minutes running time and a number of puzzling scenes add to the time, including several in which Tar is running, one where she hears a woman screaming in the park but can’t locate her, several ones in which an odd neighbor caring for her elderly mother knocks on Tar’s door looking for her newspaper and several disturbing and puzzling ones. What is Todd Field’s saying here? Plus there is the uncomfortable situation of watching a woman who had accomplished something remarkably difficult, overcoming entrenched patriarchy and prejudice in a male-dominated field, but brought down by the kind of misbehavior men with power have often indulged in. It is unsettling to say the least.

TÁR gives us a stunning performance by Cate Blanchett as complicated woman whose actions destroy her life. While the drama might spark discussions and thought, it does not seem like the kind of film audiences will embrace. The classical music theme will bring out those music fans but the almost horror-film implosion of a career has little enjoyment, while those with little interest in serious music will not be drawn to it either. That leaves fans of tour-de-force performance as the major audience.

TÁR is already winning well-deserved high praise from critics for Cate Blanchett’s remarkable work but for most audiences this is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of film, depending on how much an audience member is a fan of acting.

TÁR opens Friday, Oct. 21, in theaters.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars