The Fundraiser

The Fundraiser

Florian Hoffmeister / Focus Features

VERDICT: Todd Field's 'Tár' supplement provides compelling extra notes to his masterfully composed film.

The Tár-niverse expands with the short The Fundraiser, presented as a surprise at Berlinale Talents and which, at the moment, director Todd Field insists will never be seen again. And while this new dip into the mind of Lydia Tár isn’t essential, it’s nonetheless utterly fascinating.

Framed by Field as something designed to further explore the character of Lydia Tár during the creative process, but never intended for the finished film, the sequence was shot only because there was space in the production schedule. Once Tár hit post, the filmmaking team couldn’t stop thinking about the extra material, so it was finished along with the rest of the picture, but still had nowhere to live until the opportunity arrived to screen it in Berlin.

Taking place shortly after Lydia (Cate Blanchett) falls and injures her face in Tár, she’s reluctantly pulled by Sharon (Nina Hoss) to a fundraiser for their daughter Petra’s school only to discover it’s a surprise party for her 50th birthday. However, the celebration slowly warps into a fever dream, as the flashes of surreality and spectrality seen in Tár are pushed to their furthest point here. With strong echoes of Eyes Wide Shut, in which Field not only had a small role but became close with Stanley Kubrick, the party degenerates into something if not orgiastic, then certainly animalistic. Olga (Sophie Kauer) appears, continuing to haunt Lydia, while most intriguingly, Ravel’s one-movement piece “Bolero” scores the bulk of the short, with its insistent, repeated phrase adding to the off-kilter mood.

Also featuring a dance sequence described by Field as influenced by 1930s MGM musicals, and moving to a rhythm distinctly different than the rest of Tár, it’s easy to understand why The Fundraiser was always considered extraneous to a picture built around a very specific cinematic language. And particularly at that juncture of the film, when the scenes and editing start moving more quickly as Lydia’s fall accelerates, the short would’ve interrupted the pacing. For now, The Fundraiser exists as marginalia to a greater work, that in probing the recesses of Lydia’s eroding psyche, proves more of a psychological curiosity than a narrative enhancement.

Director, screenplay: Todd Field
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer
Producers: Todd Field, Alexandra Milchan, Scott Lambert
Cinematography: Florian Hoffmeister
Production design: Marco Bittner Rosser
Costume design: Bina Daigeler
Editing: Monika Willi
Music: Hildur Gunnarsdóttir
Sound: Roland Winke
Production companies: Standard Film Company (United States), EMJAG (United States)
World sales: Universal
Venue: Berlinale (Berlinale Talents)
In English
10 minutes