Explaining the ending of Todd Field’s Tár
Amid the noise of superhero movies and Disneyfied blockbusters, it’s rare to see a movie so directly geared towards adults and no one else. Addressing the complex difficulties of traversing the contemporary world of cancel culture from the perspective of an egotistical narcissist, the Best-Picture nominee Tár, by director Todd Field, is recognised as one of the strongest movies at the 2023 Academy Awards.
Taking place in the smart apartments and grand beige concert halls of Berlin, Field’s story follows the fictional pianist and composer Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), the first female chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Stressed with self-made pressure, we are introduced to Tár while preparing for her live recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, promoting her latest book, Tár on Tár, on the side.
Often woken in the night by the slightest of ticks, Tár’s life abides by rhythm and control as she manipulates those around her to fit in with her tempo, tinkering and shaping them as if they were mere sounds in her orchestra. A cunning and calculated icon of authority, the complexity of Field’s protagonist is where the answer to the ambiguous movie lies. Indeed, Blanchett’s title character is an enigma to be unlocked, even if Field never provides a definitive resolution to her fate.
A character study about power and consequences, Tár touches on conversations regarding cancel culture and the societal effects of the #MeToo movement, with the title character being accused of continued sexual misconduct and general abuse of power. Though, Field never makes her character black or white, good or bad, instead allowing the audience to provide their own projected answers.
The ending of Tár explained
As you might have already gathered, the ending of Tár can’t be explained with a simple sentence. Layered with complexity, Field’s film is up to personal interpretation, with one person’s impression of the ‘Best Picture’ nominee being different from the next. These subtle differences in opinion are widened by one’s own political stance, with the cancel culture debate taking centre stage in Field’s film.
If you align yourself with the right side of politics, you may see Tár, not as a personal tragedy, but as a societal one, with Field contextualising his story within a modern culture which will not allow a genuine artistic talent to thrive, despite her flaws. On the other hand, those on the left side of politics might see the film as a personal tragedy, where the title character fails to adapt to contemporary values and deflates in value under the weight of her own hubris.
Keeping objective throughout, the ending of Field’s film sees Tár leaving Berlin for the far different landscape of the rural Philippines, eventually ending up conducting a live performance of the score for the video game Monster Hunter. Herself a monster of contemporary culture who has been hunted down for accountability, this scene works as a direct juxtaposition to her career at the start of the film, where she’s working on a recording of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and not performing a video game soundtrack to a crowdy of cosplaying fans.
Embodying her fall from grace whilst acting as quite the effective cinematic punchline, the final scene demonstrates just how far the composer has fallen. Is this the end of her career? Maybe. But, then again, it could also be her rejuvenation, accepting that she must rediscover her passion for music within the sphere of contemporary entertainment. Is her fate a punishment? Or is it a chance for change?
Field purposefully makes it all very ambiguous, revealing nothing, even when speaking directly to the press about the meaning of the film’s ending. “I always knew where it would end – I always knew where I’d start it and where it would end and I wanted to take a person and make them a vessel for having to hold power,” he told RadioTimes, explaining: “And when does that vessel start to crack? You know, and in what manner does that vessel go from being something on a pedestal and sort of literally worshipped to being stuck in the garage?”.
Is it all a dream?
Could the third act of Tár abide by the biggest cliché there is? In short, probably not, but it’s nice to entertain the idea.
Considering that Field establishes throughout the movie that his title character is not entirely mentally stable, it’s certainly not outside the realms of possibility that the events of the film’s final act occur within the mind of Tár herself. Thinking back, the scene in which Lydia enters an abandoned building after driving Olga home is rather bizarre. Seeing a sinister dog shrouded in shadow, she runs away through the wet, dilapidated building, falls over and smacks her head, with the dog never to be seen again.
From this moment on, the film could be seen as one elongated dream sequence in which the title character experiences the consequences of her actions. Quizzed about this theory in an interview with Vanity Fair, the director gave nothing away, stating: “My intent is completely irrelevant. The dream is that there’s going to be enough room for anyone to come in and be the final filmmaker. I’d love to hear when people attack the film for their own reasons. That interests me too”.
Continuing, he adds: “There’s no wrong way to read the film. The film is meant to inspire as ferocious or as superfluous speculation as possible, or opinions as possible because that is the only intent behind it”.
Recalling such iconic filmmakers as Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, the filmmaking of Todd Field is attempting to tap into a lost art of ambiguous cinema.
