The dramatic omnibus Tar, based on the life and poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, C. K. Williams, premiered at the Rome Film Festival last year. At long last, we’ve finally got our first look at the compilation of twelve short films each directed by a newbie director — NYU film students all.
Tar features a star-studded cast that includes Jessica Chastain, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Zach Braff, Bruce Campbell and Henry Hopper.
Franco plays the main version of Williams in the film, while Kunis plays his wife Catherine; Chastain plays William’s mother and Hopper plays a younger version of Williams.
While there’s no mention of U.S. release date, we guess it’s coming out somewhere in the world as the first trailer for the movie has arrived.
A 2012 drama film is written and directed by Edna Luise Biesold, Sarah-Violet Bliss, Gabrielle Demeestere, Alexis Gambis, Shruti Ganguly, Brooke Goldfinch, Shripriya Mahesh, Pamela Romanowsky, Bruce Thierry Cheung, Tine Thomasen, Virginia Urreiztieta and Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo.
You can also check out the official synopsis which gives a better idea of the scope of the film that acts as both biopic for Williams and an exploration of his work.
Synopsis:
TAR is based on Pulitzer prize-winning poet CK Williams’ collection of the same name. Collectively written and directed by twelve filmmakers, the film blends together adaptations of twelve of the poems to create a poetic road trip through CK William’s life. The film takes us on a journey through several decades of American life from CK’s childhood and adolescence in Detroit in the 1940s and 50s to the early 1980s: CK (James Franco) and his wife Catherine (Mila Kunis) are married with their son Jed (name of actor). CK prepares for a reading of Tar in New York City, and spends his nights struggling to write new poems, haunted by memories of his past. As CK drives to his reading in New York City, he remembers central moments of his life: we come to experience and understand both his relationship to love and loss, and how he found his calling as a poet through the women in his life. The film takes us back and forth between past and present, punctuated by voice-over from CK Williams’ poems, recreating the experience of memory and exploring how the fragments of one’s man life can be turned into poetic expression: his loving relationship to his mother (Jessica Chastain), his first sexual experiences as a teenager (Henry Hopper), his first love (Nina Ljeti) and the struggle to preserve a form of innocence and wonder, the illness and loss of a close friend (Zach Braff), and finally his life together with Catherine.
