Not likeable

The new film Tár, about the (fictitious) downfall of Lydia Tár, a feted female conductor, has attracted some very odd criticism. In particular that such a predatory and abusive character should have been portrayed as a man and not a woman, and that the character "isn't likeable".

Good grief. When did characters in movies (or TV dramas or books) have to be likeable? If that was the case, hundreds of movies and books would have to be pulped immediately. Mean and nasty characters are commonplace, from Hannibal Lecter to Lord Voldemort to Humbert Humbert.

Fictional characters aren't meant to be likeable. Crazy or mysterious or plain horrible but not necessarily likeable. In children's books perhaps but not in adult reading.

The other gripe some people have about fictional characters is that they're not "realistic". Heaven help us. If you want realistic, you should be heading for the mass media, not books or movies. In any case, one person's realistic is another's totally incredible, so you can't win on that one.

One criticism I would share is the objection to gratuitous violence. People recoiled from Bonnie and Clyde because of its graphic savagery. The New York Times complained that the movie's brutal killings were "pointless and lacking in taste". The suggestion of violence, or simply a powerful sense of menace, can be just as effective as explicit violence.

But I guess daft criticism, like poverty, is always with us.

Pic: Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár