This review contains major spoilers.
A modern day tragedy set after the disruption of Covid, the world of Tár is one the audience is at once familiar with and disturbed by. The downfall of our protagonist, the great EGOT-winning composer Lydia Tár, carries a sense of inevitability from the very first moments of the film where she is hailed as a versatile, era-defining talent. In accordance with Tár’s profession she exists as this almost godlike figure controlling time—the timings of music. Analogously, she seeks to direct the narrative—doing so literally through the publication of her memoir, ‘Tár on Tár’—not only with the creation of a seemingly perfect image but also through regulating the actions of those around her.
She controls her wife’s use of medication. She controls her daughter’s social life by intimidating even children. She controls the smallest sounds and movements in the world around her.
These exertions of power can only hold for so long. As the film slowly builds to its crescendo the flaws in her persona come into focus. Todd Field, the director, is not interested in an objective, chronological reality. Instead, he chooses to shock the audience with gaps in understanding—cuts in time—that reveal themselves dramatically. For example, Tár’s desperate run and attempt to meet her daughter outside school suddenly collapses as the girl is whisked away, the audience understands she has lost custody—losing the only relationship in her life that was not, as her wife puts it, ‘transactional’.
There is always an uncomfortable sense of violence running throughout the film, often presented through dreamlike, though really nightmarish, sequences. She attacks a fellow composer who threatens to entirely replace her role in this sphere of utter admiration and respect she occupies in the first half of the film. Perhaps most horrifying of all is her literal fall that leads to severe facial injuries and nerve damage. Some have noted this as a turning point in the film where the following, surreal events may be mere projections of Tár’s imagination. Furthermore, Tár’s sensitivity to sound puts us on edge: the low hum of a fridge manages to wake her and becomes just as powerful as the more shocking noises of bone hitting concrete in terms of the portrayal of a tortured psyche. Ultimately, the violence in the film serves as a reference to the protagonist’s greatest fear: the sins of her past that just can’t be shut away. The film successfully explores abusive relationships resulting from extreme power dynamics as well as the heavy role of social media in cancel culture and #MeToo-like movements.
The composer shapes the music, the time, the roles of the chairs below them in the orchestra, hence, as Field confirms in an almost comically anticlimactic, final shot, they have the furthest to fall.
Please be warned that the film discusses themes of suicide and sexual assault.
Written and illustrated by Julietta Gramigni
