Is Tár Based on a True Story? The “Real” Lydia Tar Is Film Twitter’s Favorite Joke

This week, Cate Blanchett’s gut-wrenching drama about a problematic composer, Tár, was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay for writer/director Todd Field. This led to some confusion on the internet because how could Tár possibly be nominated for original screenplay, when the entire movie is based on the life of Lydia Tár, one of the greatest living composers of our time?

If you haven’t heard of Lydia Tár, you need to educate yourself on art and culture. She’s one of the most important musical figures of our era. She’s a piano
performance graduate of the Curtis Institute, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard, and a Musicology Ph.D. graduate of the University of Vienna, where she specialized in indigenous music from the Ucayali valley in Eastern Peru. (She even spent five years amongst the Shipibo-Konibo there.) As a conductor—a maestro, if you will—she started at the Cleveland Orchestra, then moved to the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and finally, was elected as the principal conductor to Berlin. She was mentored by Leonard Bernstein, and she’s one of the few people in the world to have an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony). Not even Lin-Manuel Miranda can claim that!

If Lydia Tár isn’t real, then how did she compose the score for Martin Scorsese’s beloved 1973 homoerotic mafia film, Goncharov, starring Robert DeNiro? If Lydia Tár isn’t real, why does she ? (Humble brag, I know.) If Lydia Tár isn’t real, then who the heck did I see in conversation with The New Yorker at Lincoln Center last year?

But seriously: Is Tar based on a true story? Is Lydia Tar a real person?

As much as it pains me to admit it: no. Lydia Tár is not real, and Tár is not based on a true story. Everything I said above is taken from the Tár script, which is, again, fictional, and not based on true story. Lydia Tár is a made-up character that a lot of people on the internet are having fun a lot of fun with. It’s simply a joke that Film Twitter is, maybe, enjoying a bit too much. Tár may have been inspired by the many artistic men who were accused of sexual misconduct in the last decade, but there is no one person, and certainly, no female composer, on whom Tár is based.

But Lydia Tár will always be real to me. And she can be real to you, too, if you want to watch this very much fictional, not-based-on-a-true-story movie, which is now streaming free on Peacock Premium and is available to rent and buy on digital platforms.