Notes From Tár

TÁR.  I cannot write what one would call a review.  No time.  Where to begijn?  Instead, I am posting my notes, fucked up as they are . . . incoherent ramblings to anyone who's not seen the movie - maybe even those who have .  I do believe it may be one of the greatest movies to have been released in the past half dozen years.  Others I've discussed this with have hated it, with perhaps a passion equal to my love of it.  I don't know.  I shouldn't care, but maybe I do.  Perhaps like the title character, I'm losing my mind . . . my way . . . my grip on reality?  Again . . . don't care.  So here we go. The Notes, such as they are.

* * * * * * * 

Wow.  Just minutes in:  touching, profound.  Surprisingly funny.  The conducting class showed how clever, self-satisfied but brilliant she could be . . . knowing . . .  mean . . . there is just a touch of that teacher who shames you hopefully into seeing the bigger picture. Toxic to some children . .. college kids and grownups too. Unfortunately, her bipolar, pansexual student . . . the one who finds Bach so misogynistic with his 20 kids, etc., that it's literally impossible for him to take Bach's music seriously.  He actually says this!  Fighting words right there for me.  And Tar.  Then . . . Earlier in their exchange we see a preview of what' to come: 

"You're a violinist?  Then I can see why you would choose to conduct a piece like this. There must be a familiar pleasure in presiding over a bed of strings that behave as if they’re tuning. This piece is very au courant. Here the composer tells us to begin with back and forth tremolo strokes with wire brush & slowly sliding crotales over skin. Sounds like René Redzepi’s recipe for reindeer."  

She crucifies the kid, who's knees and body are visibly shaking . . . Uh oh.  I smell trouble down the road with this one.  (LATER NOTE INSERTED HERE;  boy was I right!)  

Jesus.  Tar is me.  Insomniac, bothered by noises, obsessed by putting everything into rhythm, seeing it everything in time signatures . . . as time, rhythm: the punching bag, the running, all of it!  Oh, shit . . . the anagrams with people's names.  This is so me!  

Krista's suicide.  Uh oh. What happened.  Really.  Suddenly now Krista is everywhere.  This has become a ghost story . . . A GHOST STORY!  Wow.  We're now in an elegantly wrapped horror and art film.  Nothing is real anymore.  Nothing.  FUCK.  A GHOST STORY!  

The whole movie has gone in a different direction now. Ms. Taylor is everywhere . . . seen and unseen. WTF happened to these two women?  Between them.  Really.  I mean what really happened?????    

And now the cellist chick . . . with the Elgar Concerto.  Of course.  She's Russian . . . hahahaha . . .  of course she is!  Just who is seducing who here?  

Again we're no longer the real world. It's one of my dreams right now . . . right down to the sparkling clean parking garage . . . the fucked up warehouse like spaces:  squallor living for the cellist  (really?) The word FAG writ large in graffiti on the wall of her . . . home?  Tar is parked outside.  Empty rooms, stagnant water, . . . is that her composition the cellist is singing from . .  where? the roof?  Where is she?  Barking dog unseen and air . .

Tar has sacrificed relationships - all but the child.  Trusts no one.  Lying ... Shit . Lydia Tar has entered into and is starring in her own horror film . . . I see Dario Argento disciple Michel Soavi's brillilant Cemetery Man stamped all over the place here . . . in several ways.

  Again, her Insomnia . . . like mine - hallucinations ... what is real?  There's a beauty - like a disturbing vision of Bergman . . . and other filmmakers . . . a bit of the Russian - Sokurov and YES ... KUBRICK as well . . . big empty spaces feeling claustrophic at the same time . . . distance, lighting.  Marvelous. It's a ghost story borrowed from masters we don't think of as ghost story tellers.  Bloody marvelous!

This deposition  is not a deposition . . . a court . . . a trial of private/public opinion ... fake evidence, doctored video, all against her.  Of course it is . . . Lydia has made herself a victim . . . Now protesters . . . protests in the streets.  What a bad, bad dream.  Chilling. This is the opposite of reality.  A dream . . . BUT SHE CAN'T WAKE UP.  

The fight at the Mahler 5.  SHIT!  New Movie:  LydiaTár Unhinged.  

FIVE:  Fuck me. The number 5 - why am I just realizing this now?  The Big 5 Orchestras, Mahler 5, Massage Parlour Girl No. 5 . . . how many plagues is she having?  5? . . . it's probably more:  1 Metronome, neighbor's beeping monitor, 2  woman screaming in park, 3 barking dog, . .. Oh, the book she tosses (research this) in the airplane toilet trash (4?) . . . . the fancy handbag . . . all kinds of things blowing past me . . . none of this is random. Can't be . . . Symbolist shit everywhere.  Everywhere.  I love this. 

Returns to her old home.  Bernstein VHS of young people's concert . . . "music makes us feel what there aren't words for."  YES! Lydia cries - tears?  Lydia?  First time?  Brother is so cold. Want to feel bad for her.  I KNOW she did something to him. What?  Not important. Maye later?  Brother: "mom said you'd be here.  Hiding out?  None of my business.  You don't know where you're from and don't know where you're going."  Exactly. Yikes.

OMG . .  . this Asian premiere concert . . . it's NOT a concert . . . it's a video game cosplay convention?  A fucking video game?  Jesus Christ . . . these are my nightmares.

What an experience.  What a movie (speaking of Bernstein Hahahaha . . . Dinah won't ya blow? LOL) All I'm thinking of now - exhausted, drained and insane . . . all I can think of is some lines from Shelly . . . Prometheus Unbound:

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent . . .