listen | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “TÁR” as a Gothic Ghost Story About Cancel Culture…

Posted on January 25, 2023 by Darren

We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every second Wednesday, and the plan is to use it to look at some film and television that would maybe fall outside the remit of In the Frame, more marginal titles or objects of cult interest. This week, we took a look at Todd Field’s TÁR.

TÁR is an interesting film, and one that embraces an unsettling ambiguity in its exploration of its subject, classical conductor Lydia Tár. Field constructs a fascinating study of a woman literally and metaphorically haunted by the sins of her past, a movie that is very modern in its language but classical in its themes and tones. Tár is a gothic horror story for the digital age, a ghost story about cancel culture, and a nightmare about how conscience is often just the voices of the past refusing to be silenced.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: accountability culture, ambiguity, cancel culture, compassion, Darkness, empathy, ghosts, gothic horror, Guilt, haunted, listen, out of focus, Shame, tár, todd field | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: Listen (Review)

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Darren

Are you making conversation?

I thought I might give it a try.

Listen is an episode important in its unimportance.

It is the first non “event” episode credited to Moffat as a solo writer since The Beast Below. Every episode credited exclusively to Moffat since The Beast Below has been a premiere or a finalé or two-parter or a special of some description. Listen is the fourth episode of Peter Capaldi’s first season, following a celebrity pseudo-historical written by Mark Gatiss. It is an episode that is about very little. There is a lot of talking, and a lot of sitting, and – as the title implies – a lot of listening. It is utterly unlike any other episode of Doctor Who ever produced.

Midnight in the TARDIS…

Listen has a central mystery that it refuses to resolve, a wealth of lovely character moments, and just the faintest trace of Moffat’s “timey-wimey” stuff. As with a lot of Moffat’s writing for the show, Listen is packed with little details that seem to exist to drive fans wild, but which make a lot of sense for those willing to relax and go with it. It is fascinated with negative space, with the characters ruminating on how questions are more important than answers, and how nothing can be more defining or revealing than something.

It is an episode that feels very much in touch with the mood and themes Moffat era. In keeping with Moffat’s style since he took over the show, Listen is a lesson in the art of misdirection.