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Its always the question that involves the listener.
Its never the answer, right?
famed conductor Lydia Tar asks a student at Juilliard in Todd Fields magisterial new film.
Critics and commentators disagree not only about its meaning but about the rudiments of its plot.
Is her downfall even real, or is ithallucinated?
Is Tar an artist or anart monster?
Whats clear enough is that Tar is a member of the cultural elect.
The wife and child who greet her there take a back seat to her endless flurry of professional commitments.
Yet Tar has not taken her own judicious remarks to heart.
She is not asking.
She is asserting, even grandstanding.
She pauses long enough to shout after him that he is a robot before forging ahead with her monologue.
Both of them have a point, though neither appears to have learned much from their exchange.
After the master class, Tar flies back to Berlin in a private jet.
Perhaps she is neither an art monster nor an artist but a monster of a different kind.
At one point, Tars beleaguered assistant warns her that she has received another weird email from Krista.
Now the pace of the film accelerates like a broken metronome clacking ever faster.
Hermeneutic entanglements proliferate, and patterns emerge as possible clues.
And, for that matter, is everything else?
Even the hum of the refrigerator is enough to wake her up at night.
In garbled snatches, we discover that Krista was a promising student in a fellowship program that Tar spearheaded.
Perhaps Tar seduced Krista, or perhaps their relationship was consensual (albeit dubiously asymmetrical).
Maybe their romance went sour for no particular reason, or maybe Tar dropped her protege maliciously.
Perhaps Tar destroyed the ingenues career without cause, or maybe Krista really was as disturbed as Tar claims.
She ascends the podium with her usual rigid dignity and turns toward the musicians.
Tar is conducting a video-game soundtrack.
On the face of it, her humiliation looks to be complete.
You gotta sublimate yourself, your ego, and, yes, your identity.
She is right, but once again, she fails to follow her own advice.
Instead of obliterating herself, she is off posing for photo shoots and writing a memoir calledTar on Tar.
The ending of the film, then, may be perversely redemptive.
At last, fate affords Tar the chance to annihilate herself in the service of her art.
For the first time, we witness her working.
Lets talk about the composers intent with this piece, she tells her orchestra in rehearsal.
