Towards the end of TAR, Kate Blanchett has delivered a monstrous feat and the fictional conductor she plays, Lydia Tár, finds herself at the opposite end of where her story begins. Like Icarus after flying too close to the sun, her fall from grace is as poetic as it is sad and fitting. The once-great has now been relegated to the spaces she used to look down on with contempt, from the bright lights of Berlin and New York to tiny theaters in Southeast Asia. How did this happen?
TAR follows one of the world’s most renowned classical music conductors as she prepares to record Mahler’s 5th Symphony with the Berliner Philharmoniker. As the film progresses, director Todd Field slowly unfolds Lydia’s complicated psychology and behavior through several episodes. These include embarrassing a student at Juilliard for his lack of interest in classical composers due to identity politics, Lydia’s inability to sleep, and her growing paranoia. In particular, the film shows her tense relationship with her assistant Francesca and wife Sharon in favor of the orchestra’s new cellist Olga (before a blind audition, Lydia sees her in the bathroom and changes the scorecard to choose her as the orchestra’s new cellist). Philharmonic Orchestra). ).
After her former student commits suicide and leaves a note with very serious accusations against Lydia, she orders Francesca to delete all emails. Francesca, visibly affected, does not follow Lydia’s orders, which results in her not filling the assistant conductor’s vacancy. She then leaks all the emails, leaving Lydia to face the world’s scrutiny as her history of abuse is now exposed.
How does TÁR end?
After Lydia’s abuse of power comes to light, her life falls apart. After nursing, maltreating, and scarring former protégés of her fellowship, she is stripped of her place as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, her adopted daughter is stripped of custody, and to top it off, she falls for her former boyfriend Eliot, who has been hired to conduct the Philharmonic. Advised by her management agency to keep a low profile, Lydia goes back to her lower-middle-class home in Staten Island (where her real name is revealed to be Linda Tarr) before moving to an undisclosed location in Southeast Asia sometime later .
Here she found a job, even after her well-known resignation; Lydia Tár still conducts, only now it’s a small orchestra five thousand miles from the world she used to know. The images are a shocking contrast, as the spaces she visits in the closing minutes of the film are vastly different from the lavish spaces she had become accustomed to. Dimly lit hotel corridors, driving through densely populated narrow streets and discovering that she can’t escape her way of being no matter what.
Lydia asks the concierge at the hotel she is staying at for a massage parlor recommendation, which leads her to a parlor that is also a brothel. As she finds herself asking for sexual favors and being stared at by a masseuse, she rushes out to throw up. It’s unclear what happened between these two moments – is Lydia a changed person at all or is she still the same? Maybe somewhere in between.
The final scene can be confusing for those unfamiliar with video games, as Lydia now enters a theater full of cosplayers, ready to conduct the score with her new orchestra. Monster Hunter, like a screen shows the game. Despite this new environment, Lydia Tár still shows the same expressions as when she was in the world’s spotlight: deadly serious and dedicated to her craft.
What does TAR mean?
Several dream sequences in the film refer to Lydia as a sexual predator. Her growing paranoia, constant back pain, and her obvious attraction and preference for Olga are hints of things to come. So it’s no surprise that it’s all exposed, but there’s more detail than what’s explicitly portrayed.
The revelation of Lydia’s real name hints at her construction of this new self, a constant reinvention through lies and affectation. There doesn’t seem to be any moral change or regret; she never admits anything wrong, and there are no excuses or signs of conscious shame. But the body can’t escape, just as her abuse was directly on bodies (psyche too, but the body is the first barrier where the predator attacks), Lydia can’t run away from herself. The pain, auditory hallucinations and visual cues of her life haunt her. When she arrives at the massage parlour/brothel, the masseuses are gathered, as is her orchestra, and the one staring at her is the one sitting in the pose that Olga used to assume. As mentioned earlier, it’s unclear if Lydia had sex with her before rushing out to vomit, which could be quite plausible since she shows no remorse for her actions.
As someone who praises the Western canon and looks down on art forms inferior to her eyes, it’s deeply poetic that Lydia ends up directing a video game score (and one with a title that could be meaningful in relation to the movie). There’s a good chance that no one in the audience knows who she is, a huge contrast to the first scenes where the audience at the New Yorker Festival is there just for her.
TÁR and cancel culture
There’s also a point to be made about how the film tackles cancellation culture in a very mature and nuanced way. In a world where Andrew Tate isn’t in jail, Louis CK is starting to do shows again, and lots of other celebrities who were supposedly “canceled” are doing just fine, it makes sense that Lydia Tár still finds a place in the world where they don’t care about her monstrous past. TAR doesn’t argue for or against the protagonist, but rather takes her perspective to see through the eyes of the person being canceled.
The film does not shy away from the horrific acts committed, nor does it sympathize with the perpetrator; it just shows a deeply distorted psychological profile as it navigates with little to no empathy towards the destruction it has caused. It’s a hugely original take on the subject, because there are times when this monstrous human being makes very valid points, like when Lydia pleads for Bach despite his misogynistic lifestyle, and tells Max, the student she’s ridiculing, that he ready to be judged for their identity, as they judge others in that same regard. Here cancellation is understood and validated, but also points to discursive flaws in the culture it permeates.
The last and most interesting thing the film evokes is the concept of reinvention. Although Lydia’s lies, deceit and abuse have caught up with her, she has decided to keep going. Just as she went from Linda Tarr of a very humble home on Staten Island to Lydia Tár, one of the world’s most respected artists (EGOT!), she doesn’t let her story end by just being someone who has been canceled. In her mind, performing in front of a theater full of cosplayers is just another step towards transformation, becoming something else.
Yes, at the end she is (rightly) stripped of everything she once held dear, but she pays no attention to this (even though her subconscious and her bones and muscles seem to be). Her only focus is what it always has been, to ascend in the world and use every opportunity as a transactional relationship that works to her advantage. You cannot cancel that ideology.