Rat on Rat: The Offensive Art of Todd Field’s Tár (2022)

Tár creates an infinity mirror effect visually and in its textual content. As I argue, the many reflections or repetitions of words and images throughout the film highlight Tár’s postmodern anxiety regarding pastiche, or, the fear that everything one creates, including one’s self, is a copy of something else. Indeed, Tár and Field, as the film’s maestro, possess this fear as much as Tár the character.