Explanation of the ending of the film Tár: Was Lydia hallucinating?

It May Have Gained Big Awards Attention, But What Exactly Does It Mean Tarof final really mean? Directed by Todd Field, the film tells the story of Lydia Tár, a fictional conductor whose incredibly fulfilled life comes crashing down around her after a series of scandals come to light. TarThe complex narrative of is matched by its rich and varied themes, with the film demanding further analysis.

Tar was released in October 2022, and Cate Blanchett’s musical drama was a major player in the 2022-2023 awards season. As the leader of Tár’s cast Blanchett won the award for Best Actress in a Drama Film at the Golden Globes, and Tar It was in the top 10 of the year at the AFI Awards. Tar was also nominated for six Oscarsincluding Best Film. There’s a lot to break Tár’s ending, including the story’s biggest moments, themes, and unanswered questions.

What happens at the end of Tár

Lydia’s choices catch up with her

Tar follows several different aspects of Lydia Tár’s life as they disintegrate simultaneously, uniting them in a tragic crescendo. At the end, Lydia Tár is the target of protests and controversy, causing her to lose her job at Julliard and her prestigious position as conductor of a live recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.. This makes Lydia even worse, with her wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss), preventing her from seeing her daughter. At the height of her depression, Lydia attacks her substitute conductor, which gets her blacklisted.

TarThe success of the Golden Globe and Oscar is due to the balance he achieves with Lydia at the end of the film. At the end of TarLydia finds work in the Philippines, signaling that the maestro may have a second chance. However, a scene in a brothel implies that Lydia goes forever carry the guilt for how she sexually abused her students. As Lydia conducts her final orchestra in the film, the camera pans to reveal that she is giving a live performance of the video game series’ soundtrack. Monster Hunter.

Was the end of Tár a hallucination?

Lydia’s world becomes dramatically absurd

An interpretation of Tarof this is the end the events are a hallucination. If this interpretation is correct, Tar could be one of the strangest and most abstract films Cate Blanchett has ever starred in. Starting with Lydia leaving her car at the abandoned building, TarThe cinematography and editing change drastically, as floating camerawork and intentional continuity errors make it clear that something isn’t quite right. Subsequent scenes show the protests against Lydia escalating drastically in a way that doesn’t seem logical.

This reading seems to hold, and Tar it makes more sense if the final scenes are a guilt-induced hallucination, with the film’s ending taking place entirely inside Lydia’s head. The scenes where she attacks the conductor and sees the woman who looks like Olga (Sophie Kauer) in the brothel don’t make much sense if everything on screen is intended to happen literally. Tar constantly hints that Lydia’s struggle with her depression is getting worse throughout the filmand this fits with this reading of Lydia’s disconnection from the real world at the end of Tar.

More evidence that Tár’s end was a hallucination

Lydia’s final scene is shot differently

TarThe ending shows a major fall from grace for Lydia Tár. She goes from working as a renowned composer influencing the next generation of musicians to someone conducting a video game soundtrack for a group of cosplayers in Southeast Asia. Her idea of ​​composing the Monster Hunter the score is pointed out by itself, asking if she is a monster or if she now sees herself as a monster. The idea is that Tár continues making music and no one stops her, It doesn’t matter what the music is for.

However, the idea of ​​the “monster” composing music for the Monster Hunter cosplayers really shine a light on what the hallucination of this specific scene might be. The reason so many people see this as a hallucination or a dream is because of how strange the whole scene plays out. It’s shot with such heightened realism that it simply doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film. Yet the sounds she hears, the paranoia she faces, the pendulum itself are as much a gothic horror as anything else.

In a gothic horror reading, Lydia Tár is haunted by a ghost and in this case it would be Krista Taylor, her former protégé who she denied. This led to Krista’s suicide, and everything Lydia goes through after that almost feels like she’s punishing herself mentally and psychologically. Everything that happens to her, she truly believes she deserves, even if she doesn’t say it openly. From the metronome to the screams in the forest, Tár is haunted. The “monsters” at the end contribute to this.

Why Tár ends with Cate Blanchett’s Lydia leading Monster Hunter

The video game title is incredibly apt

For such a serious and dark film, Tar has a peculiarly light ending, with Lydia conducting before a live audience of Monster Hunter fans in cosplay. Tar goes into detail about Lydia’s past accomplishments, explaining that she has written books and is attached to several prestigious projects at the beginning of the film. Lydia also won an Emmy, a Golden Globe, an Oscar and a Tony, highlighting her successful career. This is juxtaposed with TarThe ending of, in which Lydia conducts the last piece anyone would expect.

Lydia’s character is presented as pretentious about music, dismissive of what she sees as inferior mediums such as video games. So, having Lydia drive the Monster Hunter game series and films are a joke that shows how your life has been turned upside down. On that stage, in front of all the cosplayers, Lydia was clearly humiliated. However, the end it also shows that her obsession with perfecting her music will never end, with the scene seemingly kicking off Lydia’s attempts to get back to the top of the music world.

The choice for Monster Hunter specifically for Tarthe ending of is also probably deliberate. After all, any video game music could have been chosen, and some might wonder why it wasn’t a more recognizable soundtrack like Super Mario or The Legend of Zelda. Monster Hunter was chosen for Lydia’s final symphony because of its titlealthough this is not implicitly stated during the ending itself.

Monster Hunter is a thematically perfect choice, given Lydia’s perception of both herself and others as a “monster.” The “hunter” aspect can be read both as the guilt that always haunts her and as metaphorically appropriate to Lydia’s public and media persecution throughout the entire process. Tar.

Does the ending of Tár confirm that Lydia Tár is a villain?

Your actions are certainly villainous

There are two sides to whether Tár is really a villain. Judged solely on her actions, Lydia Tár should, without a doubt, be seen as a bad actress. She is incredibly harsh with her students, going on a racist rant that causes one of her students to leave class. Worse still, Lydia prepares some of her students for sexual relations.

After a student named Krista tried to leave, Lydia blacklisted her from the industry, causing Krista to commit suicide. The repeated pattern of grooming makes Lydia Tár a villain, with the film showing her finally being held accountable for her actions.

The film itself, however, does not directly call Lydia a villain. Tar is told from Lydia’s perspective, with Cate Blanchett’s character constantly trying to justify her actions to herself. Lydia is a villain, but the film leaves it up to the audience to determine that rather than explain it. This did Tar controversial, but the choice also makes the story much more complex and engaging.

The true meaning of Tár explained

The film is an exploration of patterns of abuse

Tar’and the ending presents the consequences of Lydia’s abuse. The film is about how abusive power dynamics are created, maintained, and eventually destroyed. Throughout the film, Lydia begins new abusive relationships with her students while covering up previous ones, continuing her cycle of sexual exploitation. The complexity of Tar it undoubtedly helped her earn her place at the 2023 Oscars, and it’s important that it highlights the way that Lydia’s position of power and influence requires that any relationships she has with her students be abusive.

However, Tar it’s about exploring the lies that abusers tell themselves in constant attempts to justify their actions. During the recorded discussion between Lydia and her student, the two talk about the idea of ​​cancel culture. The film then spends the rest of its running time setting up a situation where canceling someone is justified, showing that if people speak out, these abuses of power can be remedied. While these are the biggest themes, there is a lot to learn Taraddressing complex ideas that are unique to this story.

Tár’s ending helps ensure its acclaim

The film was received with much praise

Although the public may want Tar’With the ending explained in a way that answers everything, the film feels comfortable leaving things open-ended. This may contribute to the public’s mixed reaction to Tarbut it’s probably another reason why the film was one of the awards season favorites.

The film could have had more satisfying endings, whether Lydia was completely destroyed by her mistakes or on some path to redemption. However, the film isn’t interested in playing it too safe and instead delivers an ending that continues the complexities of the story and takes a more realistic approach.

Lydia loses everything she holds dear as a way of showing the consequences of her actions, however, the ending also shows that her passion for art remains. And yet, the final scene cements the humiliating position Lydia now finds herself in. It constitutes a complete story that has been embraced so strongly, even leading to Tár’s six Oscar nominations and Cate Blanchett’s Golden Globe win.

A deleted scene helps explain Tár’s ending

Some cut dialogue exposed a lot about the central character

The end of Tar is cleverly ambiguous and leaves the viewer with many questions, both about the complex and nuanced morality of its plot and whether the final moments happened at all. However, there is one excluded Tar scene that brings greater clarity to both the plot and Lydia’s eventual fate. The information was revealed by editor Monika Willi. Talking to Variety, Willi explained that an important scene exposed all the effects of Tár’and insomnia, and went a long way toward explaining his mental state:

“Despite everything [Tár’s] talents, she is a recluse from the world and is thrown back to [her] insomnia. She’s in her apartment. She plays sounds, but she also hears things, Lydia plays the sounds she hears and tries to get rid of them. We set up those scenes where she is very alone and then we cut to Mahler V. Movement I. Trauermarsch. Bar 20, which reaches the public and we see his completely professional attitude.”

While this scene doesn’t completely explain everything in the film, it does show that Tár is an incredibly troubled character. Its omissions added to the film’s ambiguity because, had it been included, it could have been seen as a story about a woman losing her grip on reality rather than the morality behind her choices, as Tar eventually it was in the final version.

How the ending of Tár was received

With six Oscar nominations and a score of 91% on Rotten tomatoes, Tar It was certainly a critical success. However, even with such an acclaimed film, the unexpected ending caused some division. While TarThe ending of was seen as a fitting conclusion to the story and a bit of dark humor that caps off the story. Many critics disagree about what the ending actually means. Some felt the film was dooming Lydia in her final moments and even framed her arrogance as her downfall at the beginning.

Clarisse Loughrey, film critic from The Independentpointed out the film’s decision to begin with the credits of the forgotten members of the production, rather than the actors, producers and director, which is normally seen in the opening credits. At the end of the film, this decision seems to comment on Lydia’s selfish view of others and forgetfulness that she is part of something bigger than herself:

It’s impressive that Field chooses to share credits for his film. Tár starts with all those who work behind the scenes, who rarely receive a taste of fervent adulation – the henchmen, the assistants, the location scouts – and ends with the actors and musicians at the top of the pyramid. Lydia may refuse to see this, but Tár reminds us that genius never lives alone.

However, there were other critics who felt that the film was more complicated in Lydia’s vision, and that the ending questioned the validity of an artist with such talents no longer being able to share those talents with the world. RogertEbert.comGlenn Kenny suggested that the ending poses difficult questions for the audience:

In the end, “TÁR” is not a diatribe or parable, but an interrogation, which seeks to draw viewers in and force them to consider their own place in the issue.

Interestingly, some see the end of Tar not as Lydia’s humiliating defeat, but rather as the beginning of her return. Conductor Somtow Sucharitkul shared his view of the ending this way and felt that it suggests that Lydia will not be held back (through THR):

Before her departure to the former “nameless Asian country,” we learn that she has already reinvented herself once, exchanging her decidedly “white trash” past for the exotic mystique of her funny-accented name. I’m not sure she won’t have the last laugh in this story.