(Bloomberg) -- The new film TÁR introduces protagonist Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), a composer and conductor, as she sits onstage during an interview with the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik.

Her resume gushes. Tár has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony (EGOT), mentored under Leonard Bernstein, and done ethnographic research in the Amazon Basin. She’s the principal conductor at the Berlin Philharmonic and has just written a book with the self-aggrandizing title Tár on Tár. Next on the horizon is to record a wildly ambitious interpretation of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. 

Lydia commands attention with a precise alchemy of name drops and juicy anecdotes. Her voice—low, confident and seductive—commands attention, even amid a lingering sense that this icon might be faking it, if just a tiny bit.

TÁR marks the first movie in 16 years from director Todd Field, who made his mark with 2001’s Oscar-nominated domestic thriller In the Bedroom. He followed that five years later with his adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s novel Little Children, starring Kate Winslet. Given the decade-plus wait since Field's last feature, TÁR has a lot riding on it, with potential to reestablish Field as a major voice in American cinema. This it does: It’s a jagged, uncomfortable masterpiece.

After setting up the extent of Lydia's influence, Field dives into the routines of her life. She’s waited on by an admiring assistant and protégé (Noémie Merlant), who manages her boss’ schedule of schmoozing patrons, such as wannabe Elliot Kaplan (Mark Strong, in a purposefully heinous wig). When Lydia departs New York for Berlin, she returns to an expansive but austere apartment where her anxiety-ridden wife Sharon (Nina Hoss), also the orchestra's concertmaster, waits with their daughter, who dutifully calls Lydia by her first name, instead of "mom." 

Broadly, the plot follows preparations for the aforementioned performance of Mahler's 5th, but there's an undercurrent of dread supplied by contextless images that suggest Lydia is being watched. Field films a faceless woman from behind, observing the conductor from afar. He sprinkles in cuts to a phone that’s live streaming from inside Lydia’s private plane and luxurious hotel room. Meanwhile, Lydia is plagued by unsettling occurrences; a metronome, for example, starts ticking in the middle of the night. She hears screams when she is jogging. Is she under siege? Is it her nagging psyche? Maybe both? 

Field eventually reveals the source of her torment, but he's more than content to let it linger in the background as he grips you with prickly orchestral and domestic politics.

Looming over everything is Lydia's “cancellation” after relationships with young women under her tutelage are called into question. Even then, Field is content to leave key details ambiguous, instead packing the dialogue with erudite chatter about classical music, relishing the dissonance between high culture and low behavior.

Another performer might struggle with Field's intentional lack of exposition, but Blanchett thrives. The Australian actress has excelled at playing commanding figures, from Katharine Hepburn to Queen Elizabeth I; Lydia, the audience is led to believe, is another Great Woman. Blanchett’s trick is to make it clear just how self-styled that “greatness” is. Lydia is someone who believes her own hype to detrimental effect. We eventually get to see her crumble, but the thrill of watching TÁR is seeing how long she can stave off disaster.

On paper, TÁR’s subject matter—a famously stodgy art form and themes that involve cancel culture—might seem ponderous, but Field's screenplay and Blanchett's performance are brutally amusing. Both writer and actor are aware of how pretentious Lydia can sound, and they relish the absurd specificity of her references—she says a piece of music "sounds like René Redzepi's recipe for reindeer"—as well as how much posturing they contain. 

When Lydia quite literally executes a pratfall, the physical comedy is both whiplash-inducing and in keeping with a tone that has viewers on their toes until the final frame.

TÁR is not a film that provides concrete conclusions about "cancel culture," and who is (or is not) worthy of redemption. It would rather dive deep into Lydia's all-consuming ego—an uncomfortable, if eminently watchable, place to be.

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