Tár: The Character is the Message

Warning: the following review contains spoilers for the movie ​Tár. 

It's no surprise that "cancel culture" (which might be more accurately termed a culture of accountability) has appeared, either implicitly or explicitly, in many recent American films across various genres. Barbarian, for example, starts off as a taut thriller that throws two strangers, a man and a woman, in a threatening and confined space but soon changes its focus entirely to an actor who's been cancelled after rape allegations. That brawniest of action directors, Ridley Scott, had his #MeToo moment with The Last Duel, which mimics the structure of Rashomon to depict the rape culture of 14th century France (implying that not much has changed since then). Promising Young Woman hammered home its rhetorical points with sledgehammer obviousness, manipulating genre and narrative style to deliver its hot-button moralizing. Last Night in Soho was hardly more subtle in showing how the sins of the past fester into the present and the future. Whether horror, historical epic, or revenge fantasy, these movies and others grapple with one of Hollywood's greatest foundational sins (which dates back at least as far back as 1920, when Fatty Arbuckle was acquitted of raping and accidentally killing actress Virginia Rappe).  

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