Content Warnings: sexual assault, spoilers for the film Tár

Wildly successful orchestra conductor Lydia Tár (played by Cate Blanchett)’s life falls apart when a woman she presumably had a romantic relationship with—then blacklisted from the industry—commits suicide, and abuse of power accusations cascade. Tár (2023), directed by Todd Field, is a character study that morphs into a psychological thriller, exploring what happens to a woman defined by her art form when the industry turns its back on her.

The film touches on the age-old question of separating the art from the artist: can a bad person make good art, and can both be recognised independently? In one of the first scenes, Lydia makes her own opinion clear: yes, of course they can. She argues this Ben Shapiro-style against a self-professed “BIPOC pangender” student who denounces Bach’s music because of his misogyny with no clear argument, little confidence and even less authority—the universal representation of young, “woke” people that runs rampant on the screen nowadays (because Boomers and Gen-Xers seem to believe they exist everywhere, but that’s for another day). 

Despite what she argues, however, Lydia doesn’t actually believe that an artist’s personal life is wholly separate from their work. In the opening scene of the film, in which she’s detailing her upcoming recording with the Berlin Philharmonic on Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, she insists that to understand Mahler’s music, one must understand his marriage at the time he composed it. There are countless other moments in which Lydia references understanding the composer in order to interpret the music. 

The argument she has with the student exposes Lydia as someone who abuses her power to push others down and elevate herself. She takes the argument too far and reveals herself as who she is: “a fucking bitch,” which is what the student calls her before walking out of the class. Nevertheless, Lydia continues:

“You want to dance the masque? You must service the composer. You’ve got to sublimate yourself, your ego, and yes, your identity. You must, in fact, stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.”

Here she trips herself up, as the next two and a half hours prove that the last thing Lydia Tár can do is sublimate her ego and identity (although she does of course obliterate herself). Lydia has achieved her status, and gained the power that comes with it, by meticulously constructing her identity to embody the “genius maestra”. The first scene of her conducting isn’t until the film has passed the 30-minute mark. All we have as proof of her artistry before then is the story she has built around herself: an EGOT-winning, accolade-boasting, world-renowned maestra at the peak of her career. Blanchett herself has said “she’s profoundly estranged from herself and her gift… obsessed with legacy”. As perfectly demonstrated in the opening scene of the film, which stretches on with a narration of her achievements, Lydia is defined by her Wikipedia page first, her art second.

Once she’s toppled, the psychological thriller commences: her identity crisis. Who is Tár if not the admired conductor? What happens when the artist is separated from her art, and the woman left behind is laid bare? This, in my opinion, is what makes the film a refreshing alternative to rehashing the “art from artist” argument, which almost always descends into a Right versus Left snoozefest.

Tár without her power is no longer Tár, so we watch the chaos as the woman left behind is haunted by the void within herself. Rather than provide an answer to this crisis, the film takes us through several stages before dropping us into the unknown. 

The first stage is Lydia as inhuman. Those we place in the upper echelons of society tend to be perceived as something more-than-human to justify why we’ve put them there. Inordinate amounts of money and praise must be due to someone possessing qualities the rest of us do not. Perhaps that’s why they can get away with acting immorally. For Lydia this is no different—her distance from humanity is evident in the way she disregards social rules (and legal ones) and acts according to her own compass. But without her status to prop up her inhumanity, she devolves into the animal. In one scene, Lydia faces off with a wolf-like hound in a basement. This parallels a later scene in which she storms her orchestra’s stage now being conducted by her replacement and attacks him in a growling outburst of carnal violence. The distance between Lydia Tár and the rest of humanity, which once highlighted her grandeur and talent, now highlights her isolation. 

The second stage is Lydia as a child. She returns to her family home in working class suburbia and cries in her childhood bedroom, watching an old videotape of an orchestra, wearing a high school hockey medal. We learn from her brother that her real name is Linda Tarr, further exposing her false identity as the great artist and repositioning her as a charlatan. 

The last is Lydia as a caricature of who she once was. She returns to her art form, conducting an orchestra in the Philippines which is slowly shown to be low-brow and undemanding work. Lydia regurgitates her spiel on seeking to understand the composer when interpreting music to this new, uninterested orchestra. The final scene of the film shows Lydia returning to the stage as conductor, and the camera pans to the audience to reveal the punchline: the orchestra is playing the score of a video game series for a crowd of comically-dressed cosplayers. Tár has made efforts to reacquaint herself with her art, but only succeeds in becoming a joke. No adulation, no acknowledgment, no power.

With her self-induced downfall, Tár is separated from her art form and the power it gave her. She has obliterated herself. She is laid bare. As what? Field leaves that for us to decide.