Tár’s delirious Monster Hunter ending, explained

2022’s most unexpected setup for a movie joke comes in the credits for TárThe credits scroll down at the start of the movie. It’s an innocuous detail — a song credit reading “©Capcom.” That’s an intriguing name to see in a mainstream, prestige-style drama about a world-famous conductor navigating fame, a sexual scandal, and a fall from grace. Fictional celebrity Lydia Tár (played by Cate Blanchett) is a serious, even self-important intellectual, who’s seen early in the movie teaching at Juilliard, and being interviewed by The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik in front of a large, rapt audience. She doesn’t seem like the kind of movie character who’d sit down to play a video game, or even know much about them.

Video game enthusiasts will be especially surprised by the final minutes.

[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for Todd Field’s Tár.]

Foto by Focus Features

In the movie’s final scenes, Lydia steps onstage in what appears to be a low-rent concert hall in an unnamed Southeast Asian country. The lights go down over the orchestra she’s conducting. Below the musicians are a number of video screens. The familiar voice-over continues to play:

“Sisters and brothers of the Fifth Fleet, it’s time. I’ll keep my farewell brief — never was much with words. Once you board This ship, there’s no turning back. The next ground your feet will touch will be that of the New World.” The camera pans through an audience dressed in elaborate cosplay outfits, revealing that the famed Lydia Tár — one of the most famous conductors in this fictional world — has been reduced to conducting a Monster Hunter live event concert.

It’s an extremely funny moment. The opening credit is a small Chekhov’s gun that’s easy to miss, and as Lydia navigates the fallout of her sexual exploitation of her students, there’s no indication that thisThis is the direction of the film. In the lead-up to the event, as Lydia consults with the organizers and explores the venue, the audience is led to believe this is just a normal symphonic concert, just one with less of the glitz and glamour she’s been accustomed to with her conducting work in Berlin and New York.

And so on. Monster Hunter: World’s opening cutscene starts playing, and viewers see this silent, serious audience in their elaborate costumes, it’s hard not to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all, especially given the high stakes and grim story that precedes it. The audience’s first instinct is probably to view Lydia’s latest job as a humiliating downgrade. There’s the location: Lydia Tár is so toxic that she’s been exiled to a place where her name means nothing. And she’s conducting the music for Monster Hunter, a series where players hack dragons and dinosaurs to death, harvest them for parts and meat, and give the proceeds to an anthropomorphic cat assistant to make weapons with.

It is, to put it lightly, a sharp veer away from Lydia’s previous project, conducting a series of Gustav Mahler pieces with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. An initial reading of that ending suggests that she’s been reduced to conducting corporate background music for an audience that’s never going to fawn over her like the attendees at that New Yorker panel in the film’s opening scene.

It is tempting to look at the Monster Hunter: World concert as a humiliation for her, though, that interpretation doesn’t show the full story. Writer-director Todd Field doesn’t pick any clear sides: Lydia is clearly a talented, capable conductor, but she apparently grooms young students for transactional sexual relationships, and is willing to ruin their careers if they offend her. It’s worth noting that she treats the Monster Hunter: WorldConcert is like every other assignment. She analyzes the music and rehearses carefully with intent and focus. Then she discusses her work with other musicians. She doesn’t think it is a worthy subject, but she still gives it the same attention she gave Mahler.

For an audience however, how do you describe it? It isWhat is the difference between wearing your best for Mahler or cosplaying? Monster Hunter show? People tend to see movie and video scores as distinct from symphonic musical music culturally. Games like Bloodborne,Travel, Final Fantasy 14 Many classical techniques and styles can be used, including waltzes and choral chanting. Lydia has been a EGOT Winner, which means that she is able to work in television and film. Both are expensive experiences that the audience will enjoy, even though Monster Hunter is a great show. The lower limit.

Foto by Focus Features

One classical fan may say that the difference lies in the music. But, at the end, how much is John Williams or Gustav Mahler really different? The key figure connecting this all is Lydia’s inspiration, famed composer Leonard Bernstein. As The Daily Beast points out, the impetus for her decision to keep working seems to come after she views a favorite old VHS tape of one of Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts” made to help introduce the great composers to children. Bernstein was an advocate for classical music being brought to all people. What exactly is a Monster HunterConcert is a great way to bring joy and share it with others.

Interpretations have been challenged by many critics Tár as a movie decrying “cancel culture,” but reducing Field’s movie to a screed does him and the character of Lydia Tár a great disservice. Yes, Lydia has been “canceled” by the end, removed from her prestigious Berlin position, and told by her publicity team to lay low until the scandal passes over. Field cares more about her as someone who cultivates power and exploring the relationship between that myth and the myth of the great artists.

The film suggests that Lydia isn’t really in her career for the music anymore, and it’s become a tool to feed her ego. Her face and name are prominently displayed on the cover of the Mahler recording she’s working on throughout the film. In an advertisement for that concert later on, she’s placed directly opposite Mahler as the headliner for the event. When she starts advocating for a young cellist to take a prominent place in her orchestra, it’s more out of infatuation than for her talent. She is obviously talented. Lydia’s opening speech during that New Yorker interview has her proclaiming that when she conducts, she’s in control of time itself.

Music, especially orchestral music, is an expression of this power for her: The musicians must follow what is on the sheet music, and while the conductor must too, it’s ultimately her decision whether they repeat a segment or “get rid of it all together,” as well as whether they speed up the tempo. In order to achieve that perfect distant, echoing sound she desires, she even moves a trumpet player to another location. For her, music has been a way to control the characters and a demonstration of her strength. After all, what’s more powerful than controlling time? Although she clearly loves music, she also loves that she has the ability to control the way the audience hears the music.

The entire film is filled with the fear of losing control. Lydia continuously experiences sounds she cannot fully control: a hidden metronome ticking in her apartment, a neighbor’s irritating doorbell, an unseen woman screaming in what sounds like terror or pain while Lydia is out for a run. Fear of losing control — over her artistry, over her reputation, over her life — dominates her character, and ultimately leads to her downfall. It’s what spurs her to delete the incriminating evidence that she blacklisted her deceased former student, even going as far as to demand her assistant’s laptop so she can surreptitiously search her emails.

Lydia’s ultimate triumph is in conquering this fear, and getting the chance to regain her status by loosening her grip on both the music and the people under her.

It doesn’t matter if she deserves that chance — exactly which of the accusations against her are true — is left ambiguous. There’s another world in which she hits the cancel-culture circuit, becoming another in the long line of celebrities and artists bemoaning the fact that their actions have consequences. She could either double down or only compose behind closed doors. But that would just be an extension of her ego trip, a way to re-create the bubble in which she’s the most important person in the world.

Field is the ultimate winner. isn’t concerned with whether what happens to her is justified. He did something extraordinary and unimaginable. Monster Hunter: WorldThe ending refers to a woman quitting all other things than her art and audience. She gives up her desire for complete control. Only once she’s rededicated herself to the music can Lydia return to being the master she once was. It’s possible that being that master is the problem itself, and that’s an issue she may still need to navigate. But ultimately, conducting a video game concert isn’t the humiliation viewers have suggested it is. It’s a way to reclaim what she loves about music, without the parts of it that poisoned her.

Tár This film is currently in cinemas.