All Too Human

Blanchett plays the eponymous (and fictional) Lydia Tár, a woman at the top of the orchestra-conducting profession by every conceivable measure. A female maestro (she prefers the traditional male honorific to “maestra”) in a field once dominated by men, Lydia has held positions with the Cleveland Orchestra and Boston Symphony before rising to helm both the New York Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. At the start of the film, she is preparing a trip to Berlin to record the final installment of her complete Mahler symphony cycle for the Deutsche Grammophon record label.