Cate Blanchett’s fictional character Lydia Tár belongs in Berlin. It’s something the great conductor and composer determined not just about, but for herself long ago. She cut her teeth in a major Berlin orchestra, conspiring with concertmaster and future wife Sharon (the great German actor Nina Hoss) to rise through the company’s ranks and take the podium.
The film, which starts in New York City and occasionally traipses back that way, was filmed almost exclusively in Berlin. Production designer Marco Bittner Rosser utilised plating, where shots of a location (in this case, Manhattan haunts such as Lincoln Centre’s Alice Tully Hall) are layered behind a scene otherwise shot elsewhere in post-production. We sat down with Rosser to talk about Berlin's brutalism, finding a free concert hall, and all things Tár.
Tár takes place in a few locales – it feels like a very international film. Where did you shoot?
Filming mostly took place in Germany. Naturally, we were trying to get as much of New York and other abroad locations in Berlin as possible, which was the biggest challenge. It was a mix of set construction and end locations that we then added on to make believe that it would be the United States.
The film opens in New York City. Did you get to shoot there at all?
Yes, we did. We had a very short plate shoot, which is basically when you take a picture of a location and then reuse it later as a background or as a part of the composition of the image – you’re essentially layering. It’s like Photoshop, you’re filming a person in front of a green screen in Berlin and then layering in the plate behind it as a background. The film starts in New York, at the very iconic Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Centre for a The New Yorker festival conversation. So, to shoot that, we had to create this feeling that there was lots of space around [Blanchett and moderator Adam Gopnik] using lots of wooden surfaces like they have there.
And then the film screened at the actual Alice Tully Hall during New York Film Festival!
Yes: that was very special. The New York audience is so reactive. It's very fun to go to NYFF. Because everyone is gasping and laughing but also because it's quite an intellectual film. And I don't think in any other locations they got as many of the underlying jokes, especially on the first talk on stage. It works in New York.
I would be remiss not to ask about the hotel that Lydia stays in when she’s in New York – what were you trying to emulate?
We very specifically used The Carlyle as a reference. We wanted to shoot there but couldn’t, we had to shoot in Berlin, but it’s certainly where Lydia Tár would have been staying. We recreated The Carlyle in the Savoy Berlin which used to be where all the authors and artists would stay in the city. They closed down for a period to renovate, and they let us in. We got to take down walls and build things and just reconfigure the whole space. We brought in the feeling of The Carlyle, and really Americanised it. Lydia stays in this corner piano suite so that she can play, of course. There’s this sense that it’s this much older room, it’s not the prettiest place in the world, and it has so much history because it’s part of the hotel that’s less redone.
Now to Berlin: what was your approach?
Being a resident helped a lot because I already knew a lot of the textures of the city – the architecture and layout, but also because I'm so comfortable there. You can easily get caught up when you come to a new city, and you get excited about all the things that everybody gets excited about. These characters live in Berlin, it’s an advantage to know the city as well as they would. But it was difficult to find domestic spaces.
Why’s that?
Just because you’re finding someone to basically give you their house for a few weeks. Lydia has two apartments in the city. The East Germans introduced the Socialist style to Berlin, and this is where Lydia lives with her family in Mitte which is the city centre, surrounded by museums and theatres, and there’s a real sense of the old and the new. This brings contrast to her town studio apartment, which she keeps from when she first moved here and where she now works and keeps personal stuff from her past. And we can see everything that she mentions from the conversation with Gopnik at the top – we filled it with artefacts. It was built in 1903 with Art Deco elements, and it’s softer and more floral than most of the rest of the film. That apartment is in Charlottenburg in West Germany, a very well-established neighbourhood with grand apartments. It’s relatively wealthy and full of people who have been there for a long time.
And the big Brutalist apartment?
Yeah, that’s a one-off in Berlin. We were super lucky – it’s owned by this art collector couple, and they built it for themselves to display their art. We spent almost a month in that apartment. But the locations themselves in Berlin were less deciding factors for us because we wanted to create very introverted spaces and not relate very much to the outside. We rarely see her going from point A to point B with a mappable outside world.
Yes, there are only a few moments where you’re really seeing the city – when they’re driving and when Lydia goes to Petra’s, her daughter’s, striking and huge school. Can you talk about those locations?
They were driving for real! We chose Karl-Marx-Allee because it is sort of graphic. There are a lot of grey and natural stones that make it all feel very cold. Petra’s school was in this middle-class, nice neighbourhood, a very Germa middle school that we played as an elementary school. We wanted it to be a little bit overwhelming for a first grader, a place where you wouldn’t want to send your kid.
Last but not least, there’s the concert hall that houses Tár's orchestra.
Which is not in Berlin. This was the biggest challenge, finding the orchestra hall. The movie is a rehearsal film, and we spend most of the time there seeing her rehearse. It’s substantial. No concert hall in the world has a stretch of nine days – which is what we needed – available to just give to us. We wanted a mid-century look and lots of light. We found the space in Dresden, Germany, an old 1960s concert hall that was recently redone. They hosted us and their musicians and management were incredibly open. Her office, this beautiful long sort of room, and places outside of the hall were set builds.
A version of this article originally featured on Condé Nast Traveler.