Starring Franco, Zach Braff, Mila Kunis, Jessica Chastain, Bruce Campbell, and Henry Hopper, the omnibus effort uses Williams' poetry to explore his life at various stages. Each filmmaker brings a different visual touch, and it looks like a film that relies more on atmosphere and mood than any particular narrative.
Here's the full synopsis for Tar: 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.
