"Seven Veils" is the latest film to reconsider how much value we put into an artist's pain

A few years ago, it was reported that one of the world’s most influential faces in music, Lydia Tár — a pupil of the great composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein — faced a particularly troubling group of students at New York’s Juilliard School of Music. During a session of her masterclass, Tár told students that their worries about performing a piece written by Johann Sebastian Bach were unfounded. They were concerned about performing a piece written by another white male, and according to Tár, brought external concerns to the conversation that had nothing to do with the music itself. “If you want to dance the mask, you must service the composer,” Tár said, referring to cultural performances where dancers strive to lose their identity by taking on the visage of someone or something else. “You’ve got to sublimate yourself, your ego, and yes, your identity. You must stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.” 

Of course, all of that is only half-true. Tár is not a real person, but rather an amalgamation of egos from the world of fine arts, played by Cate Blanchett and masterfully captured in Todd Field’s 2022 film “Tár.” And the title character's belief that one must destroy one's own identity and autonomy to perform a piece successfully isn’t exactly correct, either — though many within the arts would disagree. In Field’s film, the writer-director slyly lampoons the pretension of figures high up in the worlds of ballet, opera, theater and symphony, as well as more recognizable personas in public-facing industries like film and music. His fictional conductor is a cipher for all of the ways that power and influence can taint an artist, and how many believe that great art is born not only by suffering, but by creating a vacuum in which suffering can persist. “Tár” takes place inside that vacuum, where the conductor propagates this great myth to maintain her control.

Cate Blanchett in "Tár" (Focus Features)But unlike other films of its ilk, such as John Cassavetes’ 1977 drama “Opening Night” and Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 thriller “Black Swan,” Field pulls the rug from beneath his fictional artist. We watch as Tár’s life and career, built so carefully by the composer over decades, fall apart by her same hand. Field turns the long-held belief that artists must suffer for their work on its head, setting the stage for Atom Egoyan’s new film “Seven Veils” to explore these themes on a more granular level. Though “Seven Veils” isn’t as undeniable and scathing as something like “Tár,” it’s a compelling study of the shifting belief about how great art is made, upended by contemporary mores. Instead of depicting another woman crushed by her ambition — fighting to be seen as equal to her prolific male peers and losing her identity to the art in the process — Egoyan bucks the trend. “Seven Veils” allows its virtuoso lead character to process her traumas through art instead of being ruined by them. Egoyan’s film takes a different approach to an oft-told story, becoming a defiant model for a forward-thinking world where great art can exist by acknowledging suffering rather than forcing an artist to endure it.

In “Seven Veils,” a young but promising regional theater director, Jeanine (Amanda Seyfried), remounts a beloved production of the opera “Salome” originally directed by her recently deceased mentor, Charles. A revival directed by Jeanine was Charles’ specific dying wish, and beginning with Charles’ posthumous request, Egoyan slowly unspools a wicked yarn that runs through the film’s final moments. As it turns out, Jeanine has an unnerving connection to the story of “Salome,” particularly Charles’ high-concept, multimedia production, a staging involving video footage and dancers’ shadow movements projected on a large, white sheet. Jeanine sets out to make “small but meaningful” changes to the show, but is met with pushback from the theater company, who wish to honor Charles’ request by remounting the show exactly as it once was. 

But things are different now than they were then. Jeanine, a teenager when Charles’ production of “Salome” initially ran, is no longer under her mentor’s spell. With a fresh perspective, Jeanine can identify the parts of her life that converge with Charles’ version of “Salome,” which speculates abuse between the titular character and her father. Egoyan intersperses scenes set in the present with home video footage of Jeanine as a child, shot by her own father, blindfolded and doing strange dances in the woods. Egoyan puts all the pieces of his puzzle on display from the very start of “Seven Veils,” but the thrill comes from watching as he gently moves them into place. One such riveting revelation comes when we realize the videos in Charles’ “Salome” are recreations of Jeanine’s home movies. In this moment, Egoyan asks us to consider all the nauseating possibilities surrounding that truth.

Amanda Seyfried in "Seven Veils" (Courtesy of XYZ Films and Variance)

Jeanine, however, is undeterred. One wonders why she would agree to remount a production that's seemingly the vile extension of a lifelong trauma, and that’s one question Egoyan refuses to answer explicitly. But his cold ambiguity enables the mind to wander. Viewers watch as Jeanine intellectualizes each character’s motivations and inner thoughts, dictating them to the performers onstage and their understudies. She projects her own experience into the remounted show to create something that looks similar to Charles’ dark vision but is just different enough to be her own. Though she gets dangerously close to falling into the abyss of her pain, she catches herself before it’s too late. Jeanine doesn’t succumb to her trauma, but challenges its hold over her. Where Charles and her father rose to greatness by abusing their authority in the name of art, Jeanine aims for glory by reclaiming the power those men took from her. She does not obliterate herself, as Tár would demand — she frees herself.

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There’s a reason why that narrative is so uncommon in a film like this: The “tortured artist” archetype remains one of the most fascinating thematic models in storytelling, partly because its narrative is so widely believed in real life. From the technicolor tragedy of “The Red Shoes” to “Black Swan,” we’ve seen films depict the anguish that artists often suffer in the name of creating great art. These films pose questions that spring forward into our reality when Heath Ledger is posthumously nominated for an Oscar for his role as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” or when Jeremy Strong practices “identity diffusion” just to make a few good episodes of “Succession.” The question of how much the public values art over humanity is an enduring one, only further complicated by the fact that men dominate the world of fine arts. Because men primarily have the platform to question whether losing your identity for the work is of any value, they’ll also be the ones who promote that false ideal using patriarchal systems of power that exist within subsections of culture.

That’s not to say that films like “Seven Veils” and “Tár,” both written and directed by men, are advancing this outdated notion that artists must suffer to make great work. Rather, they’re two recent examples of how bogus that idea is. Tár wants so much to be like the men who control her industry and abuse their power that she loses all sense of herself as a woman in the arts. By the time she’s clawed her way to the top, she’s left her personhood behind. As soon as she settles into that space in the upper echelon, finally earning recognition from the public and from the men who now consider her a peer, she abandons her identity to assume theirs, inheriting all of their most predatory and narcissistic traits. It’s a biting take on sacrificing perspective for art, ultimately becoming the enemy you spent years warring against.

Other notable characters who walk this same path haven’t even had the privilege of staying at the top as long as Tár does before they fall back into the pits of their artistic torment. In “Black Swan,” Natalie Portman’s character Nina is pushed to the brink by the psychosexual demands of her ballet director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel). She starves herself and practices until she aches and bleeds, but nothing is ever quite enough, especially when a new foe transfers to Nina’s company and threatens her spot. And in “Opening Night,” Gena Rowlands’ fabulous yet tortured stage actress Myrtle descends into addiction, tormented by ghostly visions and crippling doubt. Similarly to “Black Swan,” Myrtle’s director presses her to continue with a new play despite knowing she’s unwell, and Myrtle’s lowest moment becomes her most grand artistic victory. 

I was reminded of all of these works while listening to a recent interview that Lady Gaga gave The New York Times, both in print and recorded in an emotional companion podcast episode. David Marchese asked Gaga about the feeling of contentment evident on her fantastic new album “Mayhem,” and whether that feeling has resulted in any doubt, given the pervasive idea that great art is born from suffering. “I think that romanticizing sick artists perpetuates this thing that’s super negative, especially for women,” Gaga said. “At a certain point, I completely lost touch with reality. I was falling so deeply into the fantasy of my artwork and my stage persona . . . I wouldn’t say that falling deeper into a life of being a tortured character was good for anything.”

And yet, despite the knowledge that comes from years of experience, resisting the inclination to go deeper into your work will always be innately difficult. Art demands so much of its creators and performers. Even the mediocre stuff can produce a great internal struggle, where artists toil over how to make an average piece of work better. It’s why we as spectators are so drawn to it. Something is compelling and distinctly human about how much artists care about wanting to be great — it’s why the tortured artist archetype will always exist alongside the art, because the process can be just as interesting as the work itself, even if it’s macabre. But losing touch with reality won’t serve the art any more than a clear head will. Even more than an internal feeling, truly great art produces new conversations, and this one about how to create without forsaking yourself in the process is only just beginning.