Confession: for as unremitting a film fiend as I am—someone who advocates strongly for the theatre-going experience—I am rarely one to see a film on the big screen more than once. Of course, there have been exceptions. The other night, I made one of those exceptions—I returned to see Todd Field's TÁR in theatres for a second time.

Blanchett's Lydia Tár is an artist who also proceeds by revisiting the works that stir her. As a towering figure in the world of classical music ("the greatest conductor of our time”), and the music director for the perennially revered Berlin Philharmonic, how could she not? Like other conductors, she made her name by interpreting and reinterpreting the masterworks of long-dead composers such as Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler. When Field's film begins, we learn that Tár is in the midst of taking on Mahler's nine symphonies, only having his "Fifth" yet to conquer, and this shapes much of her narrative.

In her extended panel discussion with real-life New Yorker journalist Adam Gopnik, Tár elucidates her intentions with Mahler's Fifth and how they relate to the word "teshuvah," "the Talmudic power to reach back into time and transform the significance of one's past deeds." This word was passed down to her by her mentor, Leonard Bernstein, but while Bernstein looked back into time and saw in Mahler's Fifth suggestions of the Austro-Bohemian composer's fraught relationship with his then-wife, Tár insists that she looks back and sees only love.

A dedicated spouse and "father" (her words), Tár has love in her life for Sharon (Nina Hoss), her ailing partner and concertmaster at the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as young Petra (Mila Bogojevic), her adopted daughter. But Tár is also prone to a wandering eye, and prone to hearing phantom tones, rhythms, and melodies—sounds that may or may not have diegetic basis. These proclivities lead her astray, down rabbit holes and on flights of fancy, in search of love in the wrong places (or love in its transgressive forms). For example, Tár was formerly involved in an illicit affair with a young, prospective conductor, Krista Taylor, who haunts Field's film like a spectre. Taylor becomes more of a concern for Tár as the film progresses, and Tár experiences increasingly troubling aural diversions as a result. Some have basis in her surroundings, such as the two-tone medical alert that sounds out from her elderly neighbour's apartment, whereas others are surreal and ghostly, an unseen woman's screams of terror that echo from out of a forest.

When Lydia Tár and her colleagues at the Berlin Philharmonic are tasked with choosing a new orchestra cellist, Tár becomes infatuated with a young prospective by the name of Olga Metkina (Sophie Kauer), whom Tár first associates with the sound made by her distinctive boots as she walks. Olga is the metronome in Tár's home that inexplicably starts its steady ticking in the middle of the night—a mysterious beat that compels Tár to explore alluring new melodies (even those that spook her). But the feelings that Olga inspires in Tár are not simple melodies that can be reduced to standalone words like "love." As Bernstein so eloquently states, some emotions don’t fit the labels of mere words; some emotions are so complex and nuanced that only music can help us understand what they feel like.

Tár wrestles with her attraction to Olga like she wrestles with her own original song writing. What she feels for Olga—what is titillating but forbidden—is difficult to define, and so she finds herself mired in a state of writer's block, which is itself compounded by her increasing sensitivity to strange, unplaceable sounds. It is not until Olga visits Tár's Berlin apartment that Tár's new composition begins to "snap" into place, Olga's playing and her minor edit—the changing of an A chord to a B flat—imbuing the music with that dimension of ineffable emotion that Tár has been pursuing. But soon, Blanchett’s character will also begin to grasp the implications of these pursuits. When she drops off Olga after her visit to the apartment, we see that Olga lives in a derelict, graffiti-covered apartment complex. Later, when Tár pursues Olga into the complex to return her stuffed bear, Tár discovers that the complex is in ruin and virtually abandoned. (Is Olga just as ephemeral as some of the sounds Tár is hearing?) Instead of finding Olga, Tár happens upon only a menacing-looking dog that growls at her in the distance—a reminder that danger awaits her if she continues to chase her secret liaisons.

But is Lydia Tár's fascination with Olga all that secret? Remember, Tár is married to Sharon, who is herself an accomplished musician also capable of reading between the lines of the sheet music, so when Tár begins to demonstrate a favouritism towards Olga, it is not as if it goes unnoticed. Sharon, along with Tár's assistant conductor, Sebastian (Allan Corduner), and her personal assistant, Francesca (Noémie Merlant), all see exactly what Tár is doing, and all call her out on her insensitiveness, her selfishness, her tendencies to lie and manipulate, and her instances of her grooming and abuse.

But the "cancelling" of Tár does not start and end with just her partner and her colleagues; the public sees through her put-together and progressive façade as well. People talk, people record, and people exchange messages. Gifted composers can read between the lines of music to unearth hidden meanings, but in the modern, hyper-connected era of smartphones and social media, anyone with an inquisitive mind can examine videos, articles, emails, and photos in order to bring to the fore buried narratives. Tár scoffs at the edited video that captures and contorts her tirade against the Juilliard student (Zethphan Smith-Gneist), and though it is a clear “hatchet job,” as she points out, she understands deep down that it hearkens at hidden character truths.

The edited Juilliard video also parallels Tár's own artistic process of re-envisioning the artistic intents of the white, cis male composers that she studies. Field makes this evident to us with clever framing that positions the video on the phone she holds over paper containing her sheet music, thus overlapping the two forms of reinterpretation. Tár is not inherently against social media, but it is clear in Field's film that she underestimates its transformative abilities, its abilities to shape minds just like powerful music can. When she scrolls through Twitter and comes across a video of her leading Olga through a crowd whilst caressing her back, she realizes that the public can read between the lines—just like she can.

This realization proceeds Lydia’s ultimate unraveling. It collapses her ego, her relationships, and her artistic identity. She says it best when she is ridiculing the Julliard student: "If Bach's talent can be reduced to his gender/birth/country/religion/sexuality and so on, then so can yours." And so can Lydia Tár's. And considering that "Lydia Tár" is actually Linda Tarr, a once lower-class woman from Staten Island, being "reduced," to her, must come as the most damning indictment possible. She has done so much to build herself up, to elevate herself in the eyes of the public and her peers—Adam Gopnik's introduction of her at the film's opening makes sure to touch on just how much she has accomplished and just how "varied" those accomplishments are—but, like any human, she is still prone to lapses of judgment, especially when it is a deluded infatuation that takes hold.

Tár's downfall is the result of her seeking out new romantic and sexual ingénues like she seeks out the secret motifs in revered classical works like Mahler's Fifth. Her method of working when it comes to both is well known—even if her air of self-importance blinds her to this fact—so when news of Krista Taylor's suicide breaks and when evidence of her collusions with Olga come to light, the public can't help but put the puzzle pieces together and compose their own negative image of Lydia Tár. It is at this stage that Tár begins to fear that everyone else knows just as much as she does, and that she is not remarkable or exemplary—she is “Tarr.” She is definable. She can be reduced down from her very illustrious and variegated career and land in bland personhood.

Is Tár “reducing” Mahler's Fifth by approaching it as a treatise on love? Can what Tár intends with Krista, Olga, or any of the women she has pursued be considered love?

Tár feels compelled towards Olga because the feelings of "love" that Olga forges in her are unnamable, chimeric melodies in her mind. Like the patterns Tár finds scrawled on her various belongings—the Kené art she recognizes from her time spent with the Shipibo-Conibo peoples—these melodies lead her down strange, spellbinding avenues of discovery. But we can't forget that the first appearance of such patterns is in the book that Krista Taylor gifts to Lydia. This is Field associating the Kené art with Tár's guilt over her abusive treatment of Taylor. When Tár reacts to the gift by hastily disposing the book in an airplane garbage, she makes the decision to further bury her misdemeanours that eat away at her. This is one of many instances of Tár withholding information in order to protect herself, and not her loved ones.

Sharon, like before, understands more than she lets on. She knows that all of Lydia's relationships—excluding the one she has with her adopted daughter—have been transactional, Lydia using them to forward only her name and her image. Throughout the course of TÁR, Blanchett's character comes to understand this about herself as well. Therefor, it is not rogue melodies or unexplainable emotions that Tár is pursuing, but the damning truths about her own self.

One truth is that she is not unlike the long-dead composers that she stands and faces. She is not unlike Mahler, who forbid his own musically talented wife from conducting because he reasoned that there can only be "one asshole in the house" (when Tár discovers Petra equipping all the members of her stuffed animal orchestra, Tár quips, “They can’t all be conductors. This isn’t a democracy.”) Yes, Tár stands and “faces” these men when she conducts, but she also services them to her own detriment and to the detriment of others. "You must in fact stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself," she says while extolling the virtues of conducting at Julliard. She does not know just how prescient she is being with regards to her own story.

At its core, the story of TÁR is a story of obliteration—specifically, obliteration of the ego. As someone who spent five years with the Shipibo-Conibo peoples of Peru, at times taking ayahuasca whilst participating in their ceremonies (Blanchett has confirmed this about her character in interviews), Lydia Tár is someone who should have experienced a modicum of ego death—such is an intended outcome of the practices. But all you have to consider is the title of Lydia’s autobiography, “Tár on Tár,” and it becomes glaringly apparent just how egocentric she is. Tár is a three-letter word synonymous with ego, to the point where the woman behind it is being haunted by the watery apparitions of the Shipibo-Conibo—those glimpsed at in Tár’s nightmares, those reminders of the ego death she evaded.

Tellingly, Field bookends TÁR with two of the most brilliant dismantling’s of ego that I’ve seen in recent film history. At the film’s opening, for instance, he gives us over three minutes of what would normally be considered “closing” credits, first highlighting craft services and actor’s assistants before acknowledging the names on his film’s poster. Tár and, indeed, Blanchett must be sublimated. They are “two sides of the same cosmic coin,” just like the singer we hear during the credits (the Peruvian shaman, Maestra Eliza Vargas Fernandez) is on the same side of cosmic coin as the spirit that created the “icaru” she sings. And so, Field dissolves the two names simultaneously, laying out the credits of his film before the narrative begins (like a maestro setting up his sheet music before conducting), then astounding us with a virtuoso display of meticulous filmmaking—the kind that we, like Tár, will be deciphering for years to come. The kind that we will diligently return to, because we know it is that deciphering that will turn us ever so impressively insane.

Conductor, We Have a Problem: Between the Lines and in the Devilish Details of "TÁR"