There are a lot of enticing questions that haunt “Tár,” Todd Field’s rapturously fascinating, dread-fueled, immersive drama about a symphony orchestra conductor, Lydia Tár (Cate Blanche…
), who is living an above-the-clouds existence of art and fame and sensuality…until she isn’t. The movie, which feels like a documentary directed by Kubrick, is a kind of reality-based hifalutin humanistic tabloid puzzle thriller, one that deliberately withholds pieces of information, a tactic some viewers have a problem with, though I think it’s integral to the movie’s mind-game greatness.
We know this much: that Lydia carries on romantic-erotic flings with the awestruck young women in her orbit, and that she had an intense version of one of those liaisons with Krista. We know that the relationship didn’t end well, and that Krista was troubled and “unstable.” We know that Lydia, after the fling was over, sent a series of messages out to the orchestra executives in her circle warning them not to hire Krista. And we know that Krista is stalking her.
There’s a seductive tradition of that in pop culture: in Kubrick’s films , in noirs like “Double Indemnity,” where we’re asked to identify with the sordid temptations of sex and murder, and in a series like “Mad Men,” which asks us to be the silent partners of Don Draper’s intricate duplicities. To echo what Flaubert said about Madame Bovary, watching “Tár” you feel:And that’s what invests her downfall, which is swift and terrifying, with such hauntingly ambiguous meaning.