Last night I watched a movie, Tár, Todd Field’s 2022 film starring Cate Blanchett (fabulous performance) as a famous female conductor whose life unravels, seemingly, when her past actions catch up with her. Honestly, I cannot describe what I saw with anything amounting to a rational interpretation. It is a labyrinth, proud of its plethora of cues and hints dropped all over that allow for multiple readings of what the whole thing is about.

A story about the evils of cancel culture? A story about the need for calling out perpetrators who then deserve a fitting fate, or an exploration of how rumors and innuendo destroy a life? Is it a ghost story, or a horror story or a warning tale of what happens when you pop too many pills that were not meant for you in the first place? A psychological profile about addiction to pills that might induce hallucinations, or lead to physical falls that in turn might give you concussive brain damage leading to hallucinations? Is it a tale about how lies, ambition, greed and taking no hostages along the way eventually lead to someone’s downfall, greek mythology for the modern consumer in a Me-Too era? Perhaps.

Reviews ranged from drooling (in the NYT,) to scathing (in The New Yorker,) to at least helpful (in Slate) with every single one I read, including the adoring ones from the British media, written by a man. The protagonist, Lydia Tár, originally Linda Tarnowsky, who grew up in a working-class, immigrant household that she has long obscured, is a woman of major talent and equally large appetites, for the good life and young flesh, respectively. There is clear evidence of some seductions of proteges, and more that are insinuated. Conveniently she is depicted as a lesbian, in a relationship with another woman who served her originally to get to her goal to conduct a major symphony orchestra in Berlin, and whose medications (for heart problems or anxiety, unclear) she hoards for herself. Her role as “father” in that couple’s family is enough of a male attribute to allow the viewer to buy into the me-too scenario that unfolds, as if being a cis woman would not suffice to make accusations swallowable.

We see her genuinely passionate about music, interpreting composers, getting the best performance out of her players. We also see her as being transactional in every relationship on the scene, and full of contempt, coldness or scathing for those who stand in her way or won’t do her bidding.

One of her former proteges and lovers who she actively undermined in the professional music field, commits suicide. Weird events start to intrude into Tár’s days that might or might not be auditory and visual hallucinations, or skillfully placed signs by revenging entities that slowly drive her into some form of madness.

Eventually, the chickens come home to roost; not only is she rejected by her newest paramour, but there seems to be an organized movement by many of the victims, competitors or offended people that lead to her down fall. She loses everything, her child, her marriage, her professional standing.

In the last part of the movie she is en route to the only new job she could find, in some unnamed place in Asia. She travels down a river, which might as well be the river Styx, in a tourist boat, and crouches, submerged, in a cave behind a waterfall, cut off from humanity, in what might as well be the entrance to Hades.

In the final scene we see her conducting a mediocre orchestra in front of an audience of fans dressed up and masked in the bizarre costumes of Manga conventions, with a movie about to be screened that seems to be a super-hero or science fiction tale. Whether it is all a dream or the reality remains unclear, but the unraveling is clearly linked in time to when she took a bad fall while fleeing a seeming monster, imaginary or not.

Death is Scandalous. Philosophizing at the Cemetery. (Lecture announcement.)

Is she a monster? Is she a victim? Both? Are there ghosts lurking out there bringing about revenge? Can you tell that I have been thinking out loud, trying to grasp something when I didn’t? Any suggestions are welcome, as is your opinion whether a director of Field’s caliber (and gender) should have devoted his first film in 16 years to exposing a woman in a me-too scenario, without ever committing to a clear differentiation between perpetrators and victims. I don’t know what to make of that.

What I do know is that there went a lot of care into the visuals, with admirable success in creating a gothic, grey, white and black ambience that colored everything in the upper strata of social life: from white private jets to dark-grey tailor-made suits; dark lecture halls for interviews, or restaurants that might have served the mafia dons or members of the House of Lords; cold concrete wall of Brutalist architecture in a cold marital home.

And finally white pants of those who’ll rise as avengers of the oppressed and abused, white blouses for a betrayed spouse.

Red comes in sparingly, and always associated with outrageous action. The hair of the suicidal protege, glimpsed like a ghost from behind, or with her face covered up by Tár’s body, is red.

The luxury bag of one of Tár’s admirers, coveted and snatched as a prize by Tár for a one-night-stand with the groupie, is red. The jacket of a child bullying Tár’s daughter, a child she accosts with unimaginable cruelty and threat, is red. A forgotten toy that leads to the accident at the turning point of Tár’s life, is brownish red. And the number 5, which plays a crucial part in the narrative of Tár’s ascent to stardom in her ruthless pursuit of conducting Mahler’s Fifth as her masterpiece, appears in red late in the film, leading her to be violently, physically ill.

Fiasco

Not a bad choice for a film that scatters clues in countless other ways. After all, red is the color in the visible spectrum that scatters least due to its long wave length (620-750 nm). Scattering refers to light getting deviated from its straight path upon striking an obstacle, such as dust, gas molecules or water vapor. The light is redirected in different directions (said scattering) after hitting the particles present in the medium. Red, then, makes for a good choice when you want a signal that catches attention even when visibility is compromised by obstacles, like fog or smoke (I guess literally as much as metaphorically.) In real life, of course, it serves as a warning signal: think brake lights, traffic lights, red warning flags, flags in bull fights or the ones of old that were wave at the commence of action on the battle field.

Red might also elicit emotions like anger or fear, given that it is often associated with dangerous stimuli, like fire, poisonous snakes, insects or berries, wounds and blood. “Seeing red” is a term that in fact correlates with an individual’s personal traits: people who rate high in hostility see far more red in ambiguous stimuli (colors that are faded and could be either red or blue) and also prefer the color red ( which might bias them towards the interpretation above.) They also engage in more interpersonal hostility, if they prefer the color red over blue. And of course, their anger raises the blood to their face, looking red. (Ref.)

I guess Field (who grew up in Portland, by the way,) has done his homework in the psychological literature or was just intuitively spot on, when he designed his color markers for the film. Alas, despite all visual signals, the meaning still feels scattered. Maybe I simply don’t run on the same wave length….

Music today is another composition that plays a major role in the film: Elgar’s Cello Concerto, here performed by a very young Jaqueline du Pré. It is a sad, contemplative work written directly after WW I, in 1919, echoing a world full of anguish. Elgar was ill, depressed and disillusioned. Fits entirely well with the unfolding of Tár’s drama.