Todd Field, man-orchestra with rare films

After two noted feature films, “in the Bedroom” and “Little Children”, the American director had disappeared from the screens. He returns in force with “Tár” carried by Cate Blanchett.

by Laurent Carpentier

At the beginning of the millennium, he appeared as the new promise of American cinema. Two films: in the Bedroom, with Sissy Spacek (2001, five Oscar nominations), and Little Children, with Kate Winslet (2006, three Oscar nominations). And then, nothing. Todd Field had disappeared. Therefore inscribed in the mysterious pantheon of the erratic directors, such as Terrence Malick and others, he will have taken seventeen years to reappear with Tár.

“I miss my family, it’s a snow day today, and my son, at the time it is, returned from school …” Behind his computer, Todd Field sips his coffee in the morning. He is in Los Angeles, we are in Paris, and his real life is in Rockland, in the state of Maine. Mystery of erasure: depression, agoraphobia, bankruptcy? He laughs, none of that. Seventeen years ago, when he was on tour for the release of Little Children, his wife announces to him to be pregnant. “We already had three children. And we had spent our youth running right and on the left to try to keep the lights on. I thought it would be a good idea to stay at home to see this one grow up and Have a slightly more active part in its development. “

The voice – young, joyful, detached – does not stick with the image that is found on the internet. A 58-year-old man with a half-moon face, circumflex accent mustache, thick black hair under a felt hat or a baseball cap. Todd Field apologizes: his computer is blind, the camera no longer works, it will be a “visio” without a visu … We do not hang up on the nose of a ghost, especially if it is sympathetic.

“Tár is a film that comes from afar, I have been thinking of this character for over ten years. But, to be able to write a script, you need four or five months without having to think about something else or to work for Earning money. I have a fairly large family and not such a big bank account, “explains the director, who, for seventeen years, lives by performing advertisements or working for others on scenarios. Now, here is that at the beginning of confinement the Focus studios (a subsidiary of Universal) offered to write a film without imposing on it. “They gave me a blank page. It’s very rare.”

a freezer

Todd Field is only 19 years old when he landed in New York to become an actor. In Portland, Oregon, where he grew up, he who benefited from a scholarship to study music branches off to the theater option to follow a girlfriend, then, pushed by a teacher, decides to try his luck on the East Coast. We could have seen him in Radio Days (1987), by Woody Allen, as a pianist in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), by Stanley Kubrick … But it was still, he explains, to “get closer to a camera “. The same reason that pushed him, student, to play in one of these educational films that we show in high schools. The title: Self Esteem: It’s up to you! (“Self -esteem is your business”). Todd Field laughs: “I don’t know if it was prophetic, or pathetic!”

You have 46.86% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.

/Media reports cited above.