Healing Cinema Tar

Transcript

Judith:
[0:00] We're very excited to be back after some small hiatus of doing another podcast for Healing Cinema and Applying Jung's Theories to Film.
We're today talking about TAR, written, produced and directed by Todd Field.
For those of our listeners who don't already know, We are spoiler city here.
We spoil. We don't mind spoiling to get to the deeper levels of the psychological meaning. So just to be aware of that. And as Dan has said on previous podcasts, you might want to see the film and then come back and listen.
As we've just noted, we've seen the film multiple times because this film in particular, I'm not sure other films are like this, but it takes multiple meanings, or multiple viewings rather, to get at the multiple meanings.
It's so, it's so rich.
Much like an important dream, it just keeps giving from a very deep level.
It doesn't try to answer questions.

Dan:
[1:15] And I, you know, I've listened to interviews with Todd Fields, and he doesn't talk much.
But when he does, I have this sense that he really wanted to bring out discussion and dialogue and thinking and kind of open things up.
Just all of his choices. And this thing was, he hasn't, you know, done a film in what, 13, 14 years or something like that. So a lot went into this, clearly.
But it's It's interesting, he said he had the character before he decided the.
The venue for it, the setting for it, which is so interesting.

Judith:
[1:58] It is. It is. Yeah, I agree.
There's so many ambiguities that he leaves open, open questions that make it, I think, very, very attractive to people.
It's, you know, as much as everybody wants black and white certainty, this film is not going to give it to us, even though we can walk away thinking, this is what I think, this is, you know, we can justify some of it and hopefully we'll get into some of that, but it still leaves, it is like he wants to trigger conversations and questions and discussion about these issues.

[2:38] So I have a summary, should I, should I read my summary?
Lydia Tarr, played by Cate Blanchett, is a fictional, I stress that, world-renowned classical music conductor with the world-famous Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
She is at the height of her career as she's preparing both a book launch and a much-anticipated live performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, which would complete the cycle of recordings of all Mahler's symphonies.
Her life begins to unravel like a Greek tragedy, but in a singularly modern way with social media betrayal regarding sexual exploitation and misconduct and Me Too allegations.
The result is a searing examination of power and its impact and durability in today's society and in the human psyche.
Like a Greek tragedy, it unfolds and chronicles her spectacular.
And I think we could agree inevitable consequential downfall.

Dan:
[3:47] Yes.

Judith:
[3:51] Can I just quote, have a quote from Jung that set us off? Please.
I was thinking of it this way, that the film embodies Jung's counterposing of love and power.
And I think it seems to be an allegory for our times right now.
Jung says in a couple of places, these quotes, where love stops, power begins, and violence and terror. That's from volume 10.
And from volume seven, I think the more famous quote, where love rules, there is no will to power.
And when power predominates, love is lacking.
The one is the shadow of the other.

Dan:
[4:36] Yeah, those are very good quotes. Thank you for that.

Judith:
[4:42] Yeah, it's a bit of a broad stroke, but I think it can apply.

Dan:
[4:48] There is a sense that with this film that there's, um, there's no love, in it. There's no tenderness, there's intimations of it, or there's suggestions of it, that it appeared, it happened in the past, but there's no evidence of lovemaking, there's no evidence of tenderness.
This is a very power-dominated film.

Judith:
[5:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no, and I would add, yeah, I agree, fully. There's no vulnerability.
Yeah, there's no vulnerability, or there's some affection, there's some gestures of affection, but I think once you see the whole thing, they're with the content, with the way they're contextualized, and you start to, it almost starts to annoy.
I was put off by some of her gestures of affection and seeming tenderness, once you know the full story behind her, behind the character.

Dan:
[5:58] It all seemed robotic.
And you know, the whole image of a robot, right? She's accusing everybody being robotic, right?

Judith:
[6:07] She does. She does accuse people of being robotic, which is so ironic.
There's so much hypocrisy and irony in her projections.
Right, she does seem very mechanical in her bodily movements.
It says a lot about what's inside her.
And Dan and I agreed in a prior conversation that we were gonna, what seems to be the best way to proceed with this podcast is to try to do it chronologically, which may necessitate a follow-up podcast.
But we'll see how we go today and see if we can manage to do that, to stay chronologic. I know. I'm the culprit.

Dan:
[7:03] I'm the culprit.

Judith:
[7:06] This is much to blame. Don't take it all on.

Dan:
[7:10] It's funny how, yeah, we tried it.
We tried to stay with it. But then there's this intuitive trying to pull the whole film together. Because it is a whole, there's a wholeness to it.
And the more I see it, the more I can hold it, the whole thing, right? And so all these pieces start to relate to each other.

Judith:
[7:36] Yeah, yeah, they start to click in and then it makes more sense. Absolutely.
I think the fact that I wanted to emphasize that she was a fictional character is because that was a whole meme apparently online that people began questioning whether she was real because so many of the name dropping in the film all and I googled like crazy because I there's some of these composers especially the more or conductors some of the more recent modern ones I've not heard of And so every name that they mention is a real conductor, a real composer, a real person, down to the interviewer, one of the beginning scenes, Adam Gopnik, he's a New Yorker writer, to even to this agency, here I go getting out of chronology, the agency that she goes to toward the end of the film, that's a real agency, C-A-M-I-N-G.
It's, and that's a real Peruvian tribe that she studies with.

[8:44] It's, I guess we could do a whole discussion about, it feels like a docudrama or something.
It feels like not like a biopic, you know, of a real person.
So I'm not surprised that people started thinking, wait a minute, is this woman a real conductor?
Because she's, it feels, the director surrounds her with reality, with real persons, which makes it all, I think, more grounded in the dynamics of the power that she's using.
It just makes it, it just hits you in the face of how grounded and real that is.

Dan:
[9:23] Well, and it speaks to this general feeling I have that she is so.
One sided in her investment in the collective, right?
So if we take the collective as contemporary as real as, you know, made up of this, this business of music making of symphonies of history, tradition.
And the kind of what, that's out there, right? That's out there and it's real and it's documented.
And so feels, knows that, right?
Knows that, well-researched for this film and then invents this fictional character and places it in there. And it's a character that's so invested in this collective business, right?
That there's no personhood to her.
There's no individuality to her. She's all of this, this world that Fields constructs, right?

Judith:
[10:35] That's a great point, because I hope we get into talking about that more, just the cult, almost like a cult, certainly the culture of celebrity and fame and artistry.
I mean, the shadow side of that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And how Field seems to want to expose both sides of that.
How the artist gets caught, like Tar, and in the investment, that's a good word, total investment in that, of her image and her association with this world.
And maybe even how the audience partakes of elevating that whole culture.
So yeah, hopefully we'll get into that more because it's an important point.

Dan:
[11:35] You want to talk about the opening sequence?

Judith:
[11:37] Yeah, the opening sequence is of a close-up of a text message exchange that we don't know it's anonymous when it opens.
But it's so fascinating, I think, that we learn, I think, that it's a foreshadowing, just the role of social media, how that's going to foreshadow Intar's downfall.
But given that we're not about, the role about spoilers. I think that later we can guess that it's between Tar's assistant Francesca and this young woman mentee that Tar was associated with whose name is Krista who ends up committing suicide.
So there's this email social media exchange where they're so focused on when did she get up this morning.

Dan:
[12:33] Yeah.

Judith:
[12:35] They're just so personalizing everything.

Dan:
[12:37] They're obsessive, right? Obsessive.

Judith:
[12:40] Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that sets the stage for this blurring of boundaries in their relationships, in that there's a personal component to the professional relationship, even even the bringing up conscious, her conscience, which will that that's going to be a major thing.
And then you still love her that that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so.

Dan:
[13:16] There's just some ambiguity about the nature of the relationship.
Did she have an affair with Francesca?
And then Krista, before that perhaps, or is there something going on between the three of them?
You know, just that statement, what time did you get up this morning?
I wasn't with her. Our girl is an early riser.

Judith:
[13:38] Or haunted. Our girl.

Dan:
[13:40] Our girl. Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't with her.
I mean, what, she didn't sleep with her? And is that, you know, there's all these intimations of something very intimate, but there's nothing in the film that can convince, tell us definitively, definitively, that there are sexual relationships going on. You know what I mean?

Judith:
[14:05] Right, right, right. Yeah, I I would, you know, I think that there's enough hints in the aggregate to make it, I am of the mind that there was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, you're right, it is so ambiguous.
The fact that they even use the word haunted, I think Todd Field, the director, drops these hints in beautifully, because being haunted is such a theme of the film, Lydia Tarr is haunted.

Dan:
[14:32] Haunted.

Judith:
[14:33] And we're going to get to, I think. In the various ways that you can.
In various ways, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, in first viewing, you don't know what that's about.
You don't even want to take it in, like what's being said, or it's just so quick and confusing.
But that's okay. And then, The credits, a lot of the production credits are at the beginning of the film, which Field has said in an interview that he wants to, he's interested in the lines of power and what enables it and what benefits, what benefits do they get from the people in power.
But it's almost like he's acknowledging that this is a group effort.
He wrote the script, he produced it, directed it.
However, there's a whole boatload of people that have contributed.
And so it's almost like he's warding off the myth of the lone artist, putting the credits all at the beginning instead of at the end, which is more typical.
So that's an interesting piece.

Dan:
[15:47] Yeah, there's a humility in that. Yes. He's deliberately aware of the power dynamics the potential power at play here that the movie's about, and that he's kind of setting up this interesting dynamic where he wants to make sure that the film itself speaks to how to relate to power in a way that we don't identify with it, right?
Which is the pitfalls of producers and the Me Too movement and how Powers is identified with and then abused and creating the trauma that we've all been hearing about and experiencing.

Judith:
[16:37] Well, yeah. Well, that says it all. I think we're done.
I mean, to identify it and then see how it's abused. That is the major, that is a theme of the movie. So that's a great way of putting it, yeah. Yeah, so then we go to this opening shot, which I think is like a minute long. Yeah, We see Tar backstage waiting to go on what we'll know is this interview at the New Yorker Festival with the New Yorker writer Adam Gupnik and she is seen there like psycho murder tics.
Yeah. I mean, a whole slew of them.

Dan:
[17:20] Yeah.

Judith:
[17:21] Her wrinkling her eyes, her sniffing, her jerky movements, her twitches.
It's almost like she has Tourette's, you know?
And they're so bizarre. They're really bizarre. They're bizarre.
And then Francesca approaches her and she has this hand wave, like Francesca's the slave, you know, like not a word is spoken between them.
No, thank you. No, nothing. Give me what I'm demanding from you.
So Francesca approaches and sprays her hands and gives her a pill, but the anxiety is palpable.

Dan:
[18:09] It's palpable. You know, and I want to throw out here, this is the first, um, Here it's a suggestion, we don't know what the pill is, but later on we find out that throughout this film, the medication metoprolol is not only being used by her wife, Sharon, and there's something going on between her taking her pills with her, but how often she's taking this, and it's a beta blocker. And so it's for anxiety.
But it's an interesting choice of a pill to use for film if it's just an anxiety.
You know what I mean? I was thinking about what is this beta blocker about?
Because he's inserted it in the film. And it's become now part of it's not just a one time thing. It's throughout.
And it's just interesting. And when you talk about the tics, which I think are more an indication of her anxiety, right?
And perhaps an indication of her anxious relationship to the world, right? Oh, for sure.
Which is in contrast to this polished persona that she presents with Adam Gopnik in this interview, right? It's like, wow, what a contrast, right?

Judith:
[19:39] Right, right, right. And, you know, these tics are, they're almost like she's warding off some superstitious fears.
Is she some kind of, there's a perfectionism there, or is she battling imposter syndrome?
Is that what the anxiety's about? But yeah, in complete contrast to her persona.
So already we're thinking, as Jungians, right? Persona versus shadow. What is in her shadow?
That she can't let out in any way. She can't show, she's got to control it.
She's got to contain it by medications, by these movements, but so tightly wound up.

Dan:
[20:24] Yes, yes, that's a good way of describing her.

Judith:
[20:27] She's in control and she can't let down her guard.

Dan:
[20:32] And during this interview, I think I told you my experience was, and it's very uncomfortable.
And I was uncomfortable because she was so controlled.
And Adam got quite, you know, quite a foil for her because he was quite natural and he's not an actor.
It was like, boy, he's acting better than she is. No, no, he's just being himself.
And she's acting right because she was so controlled.
I was uncomfortable. I don't know if you experienced that.

Judith:
[21:07] No, not the first time. The first time I was wowed.
You used the word seductive when we talked about this. I was seduced.
I was thinking, oh my gosh, she is freaking amazing.
She's rolling, she's just spouting all these concepts.
She's using Hebrew words and mentioning Bernstein and that I was just wowed. So I didn't get it.

Dan:
[21:36] I may have been wowed too. And it's been a long time ago that I first saw this and then I forgot the fact that I was wowed. But I hear what you're saying.
There's a seduction in that, right?

Judith:
[21:47] Oh, definitely, definitely. She was so, you know, on first viewing, completely self-possessed without even thinking how contained and controlled, over-controlled she is.
In fact, on re-watching it again, Gupnil starts off and says, I couldn't help, the first thing he says is, I couldn't help but think, see you flinch.

Dan:
[22:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Judith:
[22:09] Is it because I left something out of your resume? Or is it so very, so then that sets her off on the whole intellectual thing. But that was an interesting comment.

Dan:
[22:22] It was, it was.

Judith:
[22:23] It's almost like he's acknowledging her over control.
And he saw a flicker of a tick and he wanted to bring it in to the conversation.

Dan:
[22:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But did you see, you know, and when you told me the last time we talked about it, He said, yeah, when he kind of breaks the...
Oh, the illusion there for a second. And then I watched her face and she was like momentarily out of sorts, right?
Like, like, oh, like, I'm gonna be exposed here or like, right?
Like, just for a second. It was just in her eyes. And it's so interesting that it got composed again.

Judith:
[23:10] That she did. She did. She bottled it all up. She was able to, yeah, yeah.
So this interview is, it's about 20 minutes long or so, 15 minutes, and it is amazing.
Over Gopnik's voiceover, There are these series of images of Tar getting measured for a suit.
But watching it again, I think you had brought this scene up in our earlier discussion, which I saw, but I missed the meaning of.
I think it's so important. One of the first scenes that we see as he's giving all of her achievements Thank you for your attention.
And resume is she's throwing LP covers on the floor and we find out later she's going to be photographed for this set of records that are going to be produced of her recordings and she's throwing them on the floor.
She's barefooted and she puts her bare foot on one of the covers.
And suddenly there appears another bare foot out of the like upper left.
And then I think Tar puts her foot or seemingly Tar because we don't know whose foot it is over that other foot.

Dan:
[24:37] Yeah, very intimate.

Judith:
[24:39] Yeah, very intimate. And so already, Again, another boundary crossing.
Why would any professional relationship have that kind of intimate connection?
So these are slipped in so almost subliminally. You hardly even know what you're seeing, which makes it so brilliant.

Dan:
[25:04] But it kind of creates this wonder, a sense of, well, what's going on and who are these people?
And I'm still not sure who they are because I had wondered, is this something that's happening at the same time she's in the interview or is this, which is impossible, or is it a flashback?
And then who, is that her with Francesca?
Is that her with Christa? You know what I mean?

Judith:
[25:31] Is it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We don't know. We're confused. It's almost like he wants us, Field wants us to be off kilter.

Dan:
[25:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Judith:
[25:39] Just because that's what power and the abuse of power feels like. Yeah.
I don't know, but we're off kilter a lot in this film. We don't know what's happening yet.

Dan:
[25:51] Yeah, in, so that whole sequence that you remarked was, you know, everything's in that, right?
And so you have this contrast between the sculpted interview on stage with hundreds of of people.
And then you have slipped in here, these, these, these images that are creating, are causing us to be off kilter, right? It's like, what a contrast.
We have this perfectly constructed persona and legacy and, and all of that.
And then you have these things that are thrown in there that to kind of throw us, like, put us off kilter. I think that's a good way to describe.

Judith:
[26:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what's noted, what was after subsequent, many subsequent viewings, what I began to sense of is how she is very intentionally, I think, wanting to embody some kind of masculine image of power in the culture.
Her dress, her comportment, her intellectual, I mean, this is a broad stroke generalization, right, what masculinity is, but in the culture, maybe we could say that or agree that that it's this kind of intellectualized, no feeling, nothing in terms of feeling.
Not even, she seems shut down almost. I mean, all her feelings are not available at all.

Dan:
[27:27] Yeah, I would even say, again, watching it again, I realized she is almost, she almost completely denied the feminine because she can't even acknowledge, you know, when, I'm jumping ahead, Olga talks about the, she was interested because the day was the International Women's Day and what that meant to her.
And it's like, Tara is completely oblivious to that.
This is a woman in a position, high position of power that seems to not even be interested in women's rights or women's struggle in society, or there doesn't seem to be a connection to that.

Judith:
[28:17] Absolutely, because it's confirmed by what she says to Gopnik about achieving what she did as a woman.
She renounces that she hadn't experienced no discrimination.
Gender is not an issue for her.
And doesn't even open that discussion up as just a possible way to discuss how women have been overlooked or sidelined in this field.

Dan:
[28:44] Yeah, and I think I've shared with you before, my experience of that is so, it's startling to me because, I was a nurse, right?
I've been a nurse all of my, I worked side by side with women, a profession dominated women.
I experienced the patriarchy. I experienced through them what the patriarchy did.
I could, I, you know, going into analytic training, I realized, wow, I have this sense of what the patriarchy is and its effects on women because I work with them.
And I was almost invisible in that system. You know what I'm saying?
There's like an invisibility there when doctors related to me versus doctors relating to the nurses I worked with.
So it's very striking to me that this woman is just oblivious.
And it's like she cast her femininity into shadow completely.

Judith:
[29:50] Yes. Yes. I think it is all in shadow. And that includes all the feelings and vulnerabilities like we were saying earlier, any tenderness, emotion.
Yeah, they're all in the shadow. In fact, it's almost like she has a phobic reaction to them. Yes.
And I mean, that's what that's what being in the shadow means, I guess. So we're afraid of it, we become afraid of it, we revile it.
And so we become afraid of it.
It's got so much power that because we are repressing it and rejecting it.

Dan:
[30:27] And I think that comes out in the Julia experience.
Because she can't, I think this whole scene is very important.
And, and, and so what happens is Did I skip something? I didn't want to go to there until we were ready.

Judith:
[30:46] Well, Dan, there's so much to talk about in the interview.
We have just a few more points, maybe. And then we'll go ahead. So important.
Well, this thing, you know, he brings up the whole idea of the metronome.

Dan:
[31:00] Yeah.

Judith:
[31:02] And that's right. That's an important piece, because then And she gets to say that she isn't, that is about time and interpreting time.
And she makes this very God-like pronunciation that she can stop time.
And it's almost laughable of her.

Dan:
[31:23] I mean, I feel- But she's so serious about it when she says it.

Judith:
[31:29] She is, she is. We can talk later hopefully about whether we have sympathy for her or not, but she thinks she can control time.
And of course, as a conductor, I guess she can in a way, she is setting the pace, which comes out later in this interview of how she's gonna do the Mahler's fifth difference and Bernstein and for what reasons. but still, But I ended up thinking pretty quickly, at least on my like maybe third or fourth viewing of the film, that she's like this human metronome because she is so controlled.
So there's, so maybe I'll bring this point in now because this is a late to this film interpretation that just kind of blew me away. I was reading yet another article, you know, review.
Actually, the writer, the British writer, Sadie Smith, she reviewed the film and she made this point that completely blindsided me.
I just hadn't put this together and I think maybe you haven't, you in our subsequent previous discussions have brought this in.
Tar is having a midlife crisis. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan:
[32:51] Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Judith:
[32:53] It's a midlife crisis. she's going to be attracted to the whole idea of time and stopping time.
And she's also, the point you made earlier in an earlier discussion was about all the synchronicity, we're jumping ahead of course, but all the synchronicities that happen in the film are about death.
And that fits right in, Dan, with this, she's having a midlife crisis.
We know when she was born, because I think it was part of the Wikipedia shot in one of the subsequent shots.
So we know she's like in her 50s or turning 50.
So she needs to stop time because that's what she's faced with.
And I think that her attraction to yet another young woman is about her, it's not just about, well, it is about the youth, maybe of these younger women that she's attracted to.
But also, and maybe you will, I'm getting ahead of myself to but maybe that enviousness of their talent, because she's getting old.
And she's, she's got a, she sees them as threats to her career.

Dan:
[34:08] Yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's great. This idea that what we're witnessing is a midlife crisis, and that, all these synchronicities. The last time I viewed it, because you referenced the first scene with all her tics, it occurred to me, all these synchronicities are like tics, only the tics aren't in her.
Now the tics are out there, right?
And trying to get in to her. It's like the whole world is switching on her.
Now all this stuff is coming out, trying to get her attention.

Judith:
[34:48] Right. I wish I could remember, I'm sorry, but I was listening to another podcast about this and one of the really cool reviewers labeled those sounds as auditory thorns.

Dan:
[35:01] Auditory thorns, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Judith:
[35:03] It's brilliant. Yeah, yeah.
So there's so much foreshadowing in this conversation she has with Gupnik that I just, I think we need to a reference because I think that, again, they act unconsciously, subliminally, but they stir up something in the viewer and the listener.
She references the first violinist that led to having there be a conductor separate from the first violinist.

[35:40] The first violinist as conductor ended when he in the 1800s or something she said this is music history when he stabbed himself in the foot and died.
Yeah. And the audience laughs and you know I think it's a foreshadowing of Tar shooting herself in the foot with her flaws.
That's great. And then at some point with Bernstein they reference how Gupnick says to her was Bernstein over egging and that you know means and overdoing or exaggeration, which I think is what she does. Yeah. And then, Oh, this whole issue with how she conducts is so important.
Govnik asks her, what's the one defining thing she learned from Leonard Bernstein?
And she goes into this long, rather long explanation about using Hebrew words, and she contrasts what she starts off saying, well, Bernstein gave her this, the Hebrew word is kavanah, which is Hebrew for attention or meaning or intent.

[36:50] And then she references another Hebrew word later in the talk, which is going to be how how Leonard Bernstein conducts the piece Mahler's Fifth that she's looking to conduct.
She brings in the whole concept of Teshuvah, which is an important word for the atonement, the day of atonement for Jews, Yom Kippur.
That means a reaching back in time, transforming the past.
And she likens these concepts to, well, she likens this concept to Schubert, of how Bernstein conducted the fifth, and she's gonna do it differently.
And she brings in the different history, the different times during Mahler's life, when he wrote this piece.
So, when he wrote it, see if I'm getting this right, When he wrote it, he, wait, I'm just looking at my notes here because I'm not sure.
Oh, she says that- It was right after World War I, right?
Yeah, but he was in love with his wife.

Dan:
[38:13] Yes.

Judith:
[38:15] Who betrayed him.
So she points out that we're dealing with time in this piece because she says, the quote from the film is, This piece was not born into aching tragedy.
It was born into young love. That's her interpretation.

Dan:
[38:32] Yes.

Judith:
[38:34] And when Gupnik says, well, how are you going to, versus in contrast to how Bernstein would conduct it and how you were going to conduct it, she hesitates.
And she says love.
And so in other words, she's not going to do it as a slow.
She's going to do it quicker, like the excitement of love.
And that relates to how, I guess, when Mahler first wrote it and dedicated it to his wife.

Dan:
[39:02] Yes, yes.

Judith:
[39:05] So at that moment, so I want to get into the difference, the meaning of that.
But at that moment in the film, we again see the back of a woman, a redheaded woman.
We first saw a back of a redheaded woman when Gupnik in his resume of Tarr's achievements is talking about her developing this organization that's funded to mentor young conductors.

Dan:
[39:36] Yes, young female conduct.

Judith:
[39:38] Young female conduct.

Dan:
[39:39] Yes.

Judith:
[39:39] Right.

Dan:
[39:40] Yeah.

Judith:
[39:40] Yeah. So when she says love at the end of this interview, we again see the back of the head of a red, a red headed woman sitting in the back of the auditorium, listening to them. Yes, yes.
Now we we get to know that the woman that committed suicide Krista is red headed.
Yeah. I think this is why I'm I guess I'm spending so much time talking about this.
I think it's so important because she, Tar, it gives us a lot of clues that we, I think, later, like you said, piece together very much easily that she cannot, she's deceiving herself if she thinks she can love.
And she is incapable and unable and has not been able to go back into her past and reconcile with her past. We learn that late in the film, where she comes from.
She goes back to her childhood home. So, she's deceiving herself.
She thinks she's doing it out of love. She, again, it's this dichotomy between love and power.
So that, she cannot, she can't go back into her past.
She's repudiated her past. Yes.

Dan:
[40:59] But just that scene, I think you're absolutely right, that this scene told so much meaning as the rest of the movie unfolds, because even the relationship between Mahler and Alma.
She's saying that this was all about love.
Well, later on, Francesca says, you know, that Alma was subjugated, right?
Because he wouldn't let her write music.
She was a composer.

Judith:
[41:30] Composer.

Dan:
[41:33] And that's not in Lydia's version of this whole thing, of this fit.
She can talk about it in terms of, oh, he wrote this and dedicated it to her, and they had this loving relationship.
But what about the shadow of the subjugation of the, you know, and she says she betrayed him and Francesca disagreed with her, right?
Because is it really a betrayal if the first betrayal happened when he denied her autonomy, denied her art, right?
That was the first wounding, right?

Judith:
[42:15] Yes, yeah.

Dan:
[42:16] And so she's in complete denial about that. So So you're absolutely right.
This whole thing about love is a seduction.
Because then the next scene we see somebody that saw her interview. Oh, yeah.
There was Richard who was talking to her, and there was this flirtation going back and forth, right?

Judith:
[42:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That goes right into the next scene.
But yeah, I'm so glad you're bringing in that subsequent, not too far along, where Francesca calls her on that with Mahler, because we see how, despite Francesca being so subservient to her, she does pop up every once in a while and say, no, that's not the way it goes.
And so then we learn, of course, that Francesca leaves the fold and betrays Tar later, late in the film.
But yeah, there's some autonomy there with Francesca as much as she is subservient and being treated like a servant.

Dan:
[43:22] She's treated like a servant. She's muted and she's put down and she's just treated terribly by Lydia.

Judith:
[43:29] She is, she is, yeah.

Dan:
[43:33] Yeah. And of course denied a position that she wanted, which we'll get into later.

Judith:
[43:46] Yeah, so the next scene is this really rather effusive female fan who's admiring, and it's kind of embarrassing to watch this woman be so fawning, isn't it?
Oh yeah.

Dan:
[44:02] And Francesca was appropriately irritated on the wings there watching this go on.

Judith:
[44:08] Scoffing and irritated like crazy. Yeah. Oh, and we should point out that during the Gupnik interview, oh, I think we mentioned that during the Gupnik interview, we see Francesca mouthing the words. So all of this is reversed.
She wrote that whole thing, yeah.
She wrote it, Tar wrote it, she knows it well.
It's just trotted out, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For her introductions.

[44:31] Yeah. So maybe the scene with this fan, I mean, again, it's like a few minutes long, it's not very long, but there's something about the, again, the cult of celebrity that gets exacerbated if the artist is not, is like you said, not aware of the power of that seduction, because it must be seductive to an artist to have all these people clapping all the time for them and it goes to your head and makes you inflated.
But then what they talk about is also very telling because this woman asked her, do you ever find yourself overwhelmed with emotion on the podium?
She wants to know of Tara's feeling as well instead of just this road mechanical.
And then Tarr responds by saying, oh yeah, when I conducted Rites of Spring, that's when I realized that we're all capable of murder, with the pistol shot or something.
And I thought, another foreshadowing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because it's all these scenes, just a few, not all, a couple scenes throughout the film where you see Tarr boxing.
She's like full of rage. Yes. Full of rage.

Dan:
[45:53] Yes.

Judith:
[45:54] Um, so.

Dan:
[45:57] That's a good, that's a good association there that, yeah, that another foreshadowing.
There's all these little foreshadowing that's going on.

Judith:
[46:05] Thank you.
And then she is why that emotion, right?

Dan:
[46:10] All the possible emotions that she could be experiencing.

Judith:
[46:14] Right, of course. I mean, Dan, I just went to the CSO Chicago Symphony last week and heard Rachmaninoff's Third.
And it was incredible. I have been in this high with feelings of oneness for the world because it's such it was a transcendent experience.
And that's what music it can do. And that's what, you know, in this film, we learn that she learned from Bernstein, which she cannot do.
Tarr cannot get there, unfortunately.

[46:45] And then, if that's not enough, to give us some hints about this character of Tarr, even before the Juilliard master class, there's a scene, a luncheon meeting with her colleague, with whom she started this foundation, Elliot, another conductor and they have this discussion that also drops another huge hint about Christa because Tar says something about let's open up the fellowship to just not women, let's open it up to men and we've had no, she says to Elliot, we've had no trouble placing any of the students and Elliot in response says well yeah but except one, and that's Krista and right and they don't even say her name.
Tar right away says she had issues and then Elliot comes back and says oh yeah it comes up in every what he said city bank meeting with her father.
So we don't know what that means exactly, but that was another foreshadowing of how it's going to unfold with Krista.
And then during the course of that meeting, she calls Elliot, you know, you don't want to be a robot.

Dan:
[48:04] Yes. Yeah.

Judith:
[48:08] And then there's this whole, just again, two second interaction where Tara says to him, there's a man at the next table.
I thought at first he was looking at me, but he's really looking at you.
Do you want me to leave and have you set up up some rendezvous or something, and he says, no, no, no, no, no, please don't.
But she's so disdainful of Elliot. She's so putting him down, condescending.
She's so caught up again with her image. People are looking at her.
She's got that look at me complex that indicates an inflated persona, just inflated.

Dan:
[48:48] Yeah, it's an interesting relationship. You know, when I think about all the women in this film and then all the men, there are no men that are strong and they're all as obsessed and hierarchical and there's no strong man in this film, there's a strong masculine, do you know what I mean?

Judith:
[49:10] I think you're right, there was also intimidated by her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's intimidating and probably maybe toward men most of all, like that whole scene with Sebastian where she's gonna, she tells him, you're out.
And he accuses her, but that goes nowhere because she comes back and attacks him.
And she's got the power, she's got the power. So everybody's afraid of her.
But you're right, nobody can stand up to her No. Because she wields her power so abusively.

Dan:
[49:46] The only woman that really stood up to her was Sharon.
I mean, eventually, right? But there again, there was this sense of subjugated relationship where she was denying what was going on or, you know, kind of forgiving what was going on until she couldn't do that anymore.

Judith:
[50:09] Right, right. She put up with it. Yeah, the feeling is she put up with it or just late in the game became more aware of it.
There's a scene later with Olga where she catches the tenderness between them.
My fantasy is she's in her head going, oh, here we go again.

Dan:
[50:25] Here we go again. Yeah, yeah. She really catches those glances.
But going back to something you said before, the subjugation also includes a, oh, just a, the what she did with Krista was completely stalled her career, just tore down her career, like she couldn't advance.
And you said something interesting earlier that her relationship to the young feminine was included not only this seduction or this attraction, but also this need to shut it down.
Like if I could shut down her from growing, right?
It's, I can stop time, right? I'm, you know, I can't, you know, unconsciously because I can't stop myself from growing, right?
And then, so I'm gonna project it out there. I'm gonna keep these women from growing, right?
Francesca is kept from growing. Christa was kept from growing.

Judith:
[51:35] Absolutely, Dan. I think that's a really important point. And I only came to that very recently because of this whole idea of the midlife crisis.
That she's so threatened by anyone that is younger and with talent, it threatens her core sense of self.

Dan:
[51:52] Wow.

Judith:
[51:53] Don't you think?

Dan:
[51:54] I mean that- Yeah, no, I should say, yeah, I'm thinking Aphrodite with Psyche, this threatening, the queen, the mirror mirror on the wall, right?
The threat of the young feminine.

Judith:
[52:12] Yeah, so she's got to use all of her power for not good, for evil and all those emails that she sends to every major conductor around the world letting them know probably unsolicited.
I mean, I got that if she's just sending out these cold emails, she knows these people because she's conductor of the top orchestra, one of the top orchestras in the world, Berlin Philharmonic, but Riccardo Muti in Chicago and all these other major orchestra conductors and saying, oh, by the way, if this woman comes across your path, she's trouble, she's dangerous.
So that is absolutely violent.
The violence of that.

Dan:
[52:56] That's that's that. Yeah. Yeah, it's um, and it's so complete Yeah, it's so come final.

Judith:
[53:04] It's fine. I know he's got the she's got the word She has power she can do it. So she does it right?
No thought of what that Might mean.

Dan:
[53:18] Yeah, and she does it so we can see that kind of in retrospect with the emails and you know how this all happened. But we can see it in present time with Francesca, how she shuts her down, right?
Ultimately, keeping her from a position that she was in line for, right?
She was being, that she was apprenticing for. Right, right.
And then denied to her, why? No good reason.
Not enough experience. Yeah, she starts this program to get young women involved, to help them grow and help them in this hierarchical system, right?
And then she shuts these women down.
Yeah, it's so paradoxical.

Judith:
[54:09] It is. It is. Well, not when you look at the shadow stuff, I guess, right? Right, right, right. Not when you incorporate that Neumann's new ethic of incorporating the shadow. Yeah. Then it makes perfect sense.
Unfortunately, you know, I'm not condoning it at all.
It makes sense, given her, Tar's inability to mentor these women in a way that is not, you know, that wouldn't be threatening to her.
It is paradoxical, because she started this whole organization, like you said, to advance them in ways, to help them advance.

Dan:
[54:49] Yeah. Like she had this passion at some, point, where she could see the need for women to have these opportunities, but then lost it.
Like she over-identified with the power and got lost somewhere.

Judith:
[55:14] Yeah, and again, what we're saying about the renunciation of the feminine, it was there.
But at some point, she can't acknowledge it. She started this organization in an acknowledgment of that difficulty moving forward as women.
Yeah, yeah, so the next big scene is the Juilliard Master Class.

Dan:
[55:45] And there's so much in there because so you have a situation where she is teaching this class and she's apparently using one of the students to present his music or to conduct and then she interrupts and tries to teach him.
Teach him, but he's, but it comes down to this dynamic of he is.

[56:17] Against Bach because he was a white male, cisgender, you know, and- Many children.
With 20 children and, you know, and so, and then she reacts to that, right?
And the reaction first starts out a little tame, but then it grows.
Clearly she's in complex, right?
Because then she really lays them out, right? It does.
I think this is a good example of how somebody in power, I mean, clearly she's a teacher and student, so the power differential was there before they came together in this scene.
But how she uses her power very meticulously, and I would say, you know, complex driven, to tear this person down.

[57:19] And it all seems to be around this idea of her, her idea of the history, these, you know, these great composers that once you sit with them and you listen and you try to really get into their work, you discover things that go beyond the contemporary, go beyond the biases that we have.
I thought what she was trying to convey was very meaningful, but in his resistance to it was what sparked her sparked her really going after him, right, in that scene. Yeah.

Judith:
[58:07] Yeah. You know, I hadn't thought of this before, but listening to you, I mean, that's why we love doing these podcasts, right, because we come to things that are, that we hadn't thought of that, you know, even just her being in Complex.
I don't know why I hadn't thought of that. But that's, of course, of course, that's when her power just, she needs to tear him down.
Like you said, what is fueling that though, is what I just something I triggered from what you said, because she it's not it's not I think, not just he can't she can't understand why somebody like Bach, he couldn't love why because she says some line in there about Bye-bye.

[58:47] We're exalted by these, by the music. So there it is feelings again.
But the complex maybe is, is that she can't go to that, those feelings.
She can't really feel that embodied.

[59:03] So she's got to go in complex and force it on him and make it like him to realize because she can't.
I read a review that said, in terms of this scene, why didn't she have Max, the student, lie under the piano and feel the feeling?
Or why didn't Tar get underneath the piano? There's this famous story with Chopin where George Somme lays down underneath the piano to feel the feeling of the music.
Of course, she doesn't do that in Tar.
But that's maybe what the complex is about, because he's rejecting being exalted by the music.
But that's just what she can't do.
With all her, I realize all of these movements that Todd Field shows her with these bombastic, hyperbolic movements where she's conducting.
The shot of the poster from the film, one of the shots, I think, for the poster for the film, is her shot from below, with her arms outstretched, this is a kind of Christ figure.
But there's this overdone, forced way that she conducts, because she can't get those feelings in her body.

Dan:
[1:00:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so interesting to think about.

Judith:
[1:00:31] Don't you think that's maybe some of the complex there? It is.

Dan:
[1:00:35] Yeah, it definitely is. It definitely is because she, yeah, that she wants it in him.
Something that she can't experience in her body and she sees his resistance and she wants to put it in him.
Right. That's that's what he's talking about. The dark arrows, the Sadie and the Sadie.
I want to put it in you.

Judith:
[1:01:02] Right.

Dan:
[1:01:03] Yes. Penetrative. And that's what he was experiencing. That's why he said, fuck you. Right, right, fucking bitch.

Judith:
[1:01:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. She even at early on, or not that early, maybe mid the scene, she fake punches him in the face.
Yeah, yeah. So she's already so worked up and rageful about this whole thing with Bach.

Dan:
[1:01:30] And she stops his leg from shaking. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah.
Reaches over aggressively, stops his leg from, Like, that's his tick, right? I'm going to stop your ticks.

Judith:
[1:01:42] Yes.

Dan:
[1:01:43] Yeah.
Like, she's not even aware of her own ticks, right?

Judith:
[1:01:49] No, I don't think she is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think she is.
So, but it's about feeling and what she can't.
Do. And I think that was part of what she got so worked up about.
And then, of course, she calls him a robot again, which is, you know, and then there's this very ironic, ironic, hypocritical statement where you've got to, you've got to, what does she say?
You must sublimate yourself, your ego, and yes, your identity.
You must stand in front of the of the public and God and obliterate yourself.
Well, that's exactly what she does not do. She can't do that.

Dan:
[1:02:29] She can't do that. And how she has that awareness.
I'm going, wow, she would be great in analytic training. Right?
That's what we had to learn, right? We got to obliterate ourselves. Absolutely.

Judith:
[1:02:43] That's great.

Dan:
[1:02:46] But there's another. And these two things may be related.
I'm going to throw it out of here, and maybe later on, And this goes into another film that I'm not gonna talk about, but I do wanna relate the film, Banshees of Anishinaabemowin, because she is so enamored with, in love with, ecstatic with the experience of music.
And just hold your idea that it's not in her body for just one second, but she's so in love with this that she denies the personal, right?
The same way that Colum did in Banshees.
And Colum was so invested in this, writing this song and, you know, that he literally broke off his friendship with Padraic.
And of course the consequences of that lead to the rest of the movie.
But my point is when we glob onto the transpersonal in such a one-sided fashion and deny the personal. so she couldn't appreciate.

[1:03:59] His resistance or his, you know, whatever his difficulty was, right? She couldn't appreciate it in order to continue mentoring him, right?
Because as you said, there have been several things she could have done to kind of help him along, right?
To be with him and not excoriate to not humiliate him.
She stopped being a teacher, right?
She stopped being a teacher because she couldn't be in the realm with him.
He was no longer a person at that point, whatever he became to her.

Judith:
[1:04:41] Yeah, some idea that she had to prove.

Dan:
[1:04:43] Right.

Judith:
[1:04:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. She stopped teaching, right, right. She just stopped teaching at that point, being a teacher. Denying it, yes.
That feels, I mean, I think that is, in terms of the theory, absolutely right. And then we can see it in action here between them.

Dan:
[1:05:01] We can see it in action, yeah.

Judith:
[1:05:03] Your language is right on. I mean, she humiliates him and excoriates, a good word, yeah, completely.
But she's too attached to what she needs him to see, which she cannot see.
So, yeah.

Dan:
[1:05:19] I think there's an imbalance there. So I think what you're saying, I'm agreeing with, it's not in her body because it's not in the personal realm.
It's out there in the archetypal realm.
Because if it was in her body, she could relate to Max in a person-to-person way, right?
She could hold what was going on with him and not turn it into this power dynamic.

Judith:
[1:05:49] Right, right, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and of course, at one point too, when she's stopping his leg from shaking, she says, don't be so eager to be offended.
Well, she should listen to her own advice, right?

Dan:
[1:06:11] She was deeply offended by his lack of respect for these old white men that were composing music.
You know, it struck me that the other paradox here from a Jungian perspective between Poehri, Turnus, and Senex.
She's really on the outside all Senex, meaning she's into tradition, she respects tradition, she respects these composers, she respects and is quite aware of the structure of this, you know, classical music world and the politics of it and all that.
She even respects the, I forget his name, the old guy that she goes out to breakfast or lunch with.

Judith:
[1:07:02] Her mentor. Andrus, yeah.

Dan:
[1:07:05] Even to the point where she realizes he wants to believe that the board is paying for the driver that picks him up. Instead, she's paying for it.
She doesn't even want to, she wants him to go on believing that, right?
To me, that just speaks to the Senex, but then you have this attraction to these young women and this whole other, you know, but none of that's connected, right?
None of it's integrated.

Judith:
[1:07:35] Right, right. It's all completely split. The Senex too, that resonates too, because she's so dry.
She's just so dry and rigid, so rigid. Yeah. Yeah.
Should we continue, Tan, or should we take this up?

Dan:
[1:07:57] Yeah, no, let's go a little longer and then.

Judith:
[1:07:59] Yeah, let's see. Okay, yeah. Maybe to, because some of this stuff is going to be repeated, but we can maybe stress some themes that we're talking about here.
You know, the theme, well, I want to point out too, that in terms of her inflation, she's, what other archetypes would you say that she's the inflationist about?
Because what I think I said to you earlier and in one of our previous conversations, she seems to be possessed by the archetype of genius and greatness and specialness.
And she's got this insatiable hunger to maintain that level of, It's like a part of that may be like immortality.

Dan:
[1:08:49] Immortality.

Judith:
[1:08:52] So, you know, maybe fear of death is in there because she's so rigid around protecting that.
Do you think there's other archetypes involved with, it seems like that's the primary driver.

Dan:
[1:09:06] Yeah, the immortality is really interesting here because immortality and mortality, there's an imbalance there.
She's all into immortality and what's being left behind.
And that may be one of the driving factors for her.
What is her legacy? She's even going to her Wikipedia page and finding out that it's been, you know, that Krista had changed. How often do you go to a Wikipedia?
And then she tells Adam Gopnik that she doesn't read reviews but yet she's getting magazines and she's cutting out stuff for her scrapbooks.

Judith:
[1:09:50] Keeping scrapbooks, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Full of contradictions.

Dan:
[1:09:55] No, I think this immortality is a big one. But the other thing is what's the opposite of robot?
Because if all these other people are robots, what does that make her?

Judith:
[1:10:11] Alive and- Human, human. That's the point that one of the reviewers made and said beautifully, I think, sorry, I can't credit him, but he said something like, where's the humanity in genius?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in terms of feeling and connection and mutuality, all the things we talk about in training and our work, reciprocity, feeling, none of that is there.

Dan:
[1:10:40] That's a real good point. He's not human, but yet everybody else is a robot. You know?

Judith:
[1:10:46] Yeah. you, Yeah, and without that humanity, there's an easy crossing of boundaries, and exploitation, and misconduct, and the whole abuse of power.

Dan:
[1:11:01] Is there a conscience here? I know we'll get into this, but it because she's haunted, right?

Judith:
[1:11:07] Definitely.

Dan:
[1:11:09] All these, these, these these occultish things that start to happen and she's...

Judith:
[1:11:17] I just want to bring in this wonderful phrase, which you've probably heard me say it before.
Hans Lowell is a psychoanalyst. He says, psychoanalysis is a plug for what we do, right?
In terms of this film, psychoanalysis changes ghosts who haunt us into ancestors we can love.

Dan:
[1:11:40] Oh, wow, wow.

Judith:
[1:11:43] And she's definitely haunted. She's haunted. It's really a horror movie of haunting.
Yeah. Between the sounds and the woman screaming in the park and the ghost of Francesca in the bedroom at one point, we see this redheaded woman, the dream sequences that she's, They're almost like PTSD flashbacks.
Of these, that's where the sensuality is. That's the only place, except with her daughter, that's the only place that we see sensuality being enacted.
Now, I think that's being done to her. I don't, we don't, you know, they're very hazy in the film.
We can't even see who's doing what to whom. But it looks like at one point, one of the late, there's two dream sequences, or they're just snippets of images that flash by on the screen.
But one is of a red-headed woman kind of holding her very, and they're like in, what's the phrase, in flagrante, you know, they're in kind of sexual embrace.

Dan:
[1:12:52] And the last time I saw that scene, it occurred to me, again, all these connections, this red-headed woman who you never see her face, all you see is the red here, is holding her from behind and she's caressing her shoulder, her right shoulder.
That's the shoulder where she had the notalgia, paresthesias, they're diagnosed with the burning there.
There was also, that's the arm that she uses to conduct time, right?
All of those, It seems like deliberate, like they were doing that deliberately.

Judith:
[1:13:31] Yeah, either really deliberate and conscious on Field's part, or he's pulling from his collective unconscious as a visionary, and just putting it together without even realizing what he's doing, which, you know, I don't know, which is which.

Dan:
[1:13:46] But in this dream, she was caressing, you know, the memory of Krista clearly was As much as she denied her, it was breaking through, you know, the book challenge, the, you know, all these, the, the mandala, which I don't know if you have any, any comments on that.
Anything about that. I just noticed it seemed like a labyrinth.

Judith:
[1:14:21] Right.

Dan:
[1:14:25] I don't know. It came up in several places.

Judith:
[1:14:27] It did. And we know that it's part of a Peruvian field work that this group in the Amazon does.
And that is because there's one, well, one of the podcasts I saw has a shot of a shaman from that area of Peru with this pattern on their face.
That's right. It's actually in the film too.
That same dream sequence, I think. Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, right. That's right. So, yes, and remember Francesca at one point when she comes in, that's a scene we need to talk about when Francesca announces to Tar that Krista has committed suicide, the dialogue there is very significant in terms of she says, first of all, she comes in and Francesca says, I need someone to hold me.

Dan:
[1:15:23] Yes.

Judith:
[1:15:24] And Tar says, this isn't the place.
So the implication is that they have had boundary crossing connections of holding and physical affection before this.
And then Francesca tells her about the suicide and Tar says, she wasn't like us, she's not one of us us, she's not one of us, and very significantly says she's, that was before she's, we were, Francesca says something like, I keep thinking of our trip.
Yeah. To Yukal-Ya-Wa-Li, the three of us were so close. Yeah.

Dan:
[1:16:06] Yeah.

Judith:
[1:16:08] And then Tara goes on to say, she says right away, that was before, or meaning Krista, she started making demands.
And this gets at what Tar cannot tolerate, which is any kind of reciprocity in relationship.

Dan:
[1:16:26] Yeah, that's a real good point.

Judith:
[1:16:27] And what lengths she will do to destroy Krista.

Dan:
[1:16:33] Yeah, like, you know, demands suggests to me that Krista's autonomy and needs were starting to make themselves known.
And there was no tolerance in, Lydia for that. And clearly, Francesca, You don't, you don't see her demands, you don't see her, you have the sense we know that she was disappointed with the decision about the conductor position but but she's not expressing her needs or demands in the way that Krista does so.

Judith:
[1:17:17] Right.

Dan:
[1:17:20] You know, the two names are interesting to me. I don't know if you thought about it.
Krista is a Christ figure.
And Francesca means free from Francis, and she does. I mean, Francesca does free herself.

Judith:
[1:17:43] Does get free, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think we can add in the relationship that Tar has with Sharon in that there is, we'd never see them really physical with each other.
With all this going on with how it unfolds with Krista, Tar never confides in her.
It's like what the book, you know, we read the Andrea Salenza book talks about that when the lack of reciprocity is there, people are living in a one person universe.
And I think we can say that Tar is living in a one-person universe.
She doesn't confide in, she makes this excuse of that that would burden Sharon, but Sharon, late in the film comes back with, no, you owe this to me, we're a family.
Why didn't you tell me what's going on? And of course, I mean, in other ways, Lydia steals her medication, lies to her, treats her terribly.
So, yeah, and Sharon makes the very, pointed comment that every relationship that Tar has is transactional, except for her eight-year-old daughter, Petra.

Dan:
[1:19:02] Sharon is very motherly in this, I was quite noticing it, I mean, throughout this film, she is very concerned about Petra, and kind of holds there.
It's just everything about her seems to be mother, which is very interesting because Lydia has one opportunity to see her mother, her actual mother, which we never see in the film.
And she, you know, rejects that opportunity to see her mother.
It's like, we have no developmental information, except that she got away from it, or she left it, or she completely denied it. right?

Judith:
[1:19:45] Right.

Dan:
[1:19:45] Right. Wow.

Judith:
[1:19:46] Right. Right. Changed her name.

Dan:
[1:19:49] Changed her name. Yeah.

Judith:
[1:19:50] Yeah. I mean, her brother is almost like an oracle saying when she goes back home and says, you seem a bit loose ends. And even then, after all that this has happened, Tara Stonewalls says, I don't know what you're talking about.
She can't. She's the only time she breaks down is when she's listening to that Bernstein tape and just starts sobbing.
But that, you know, we have no idea if that suffering in that moment will help her to change in some way and open up.

Dan:
[1:20:27] Yeah, that's such an interesting scene to me. Todd Fields said that he, that wasn't in the script, but they went with it because that's what, Blanchette, that's what she felt in that moment.
He felt that was important then to include that because he strikes me as Mike Nichols.
You know, he's very open to what happens in the moment, right, and capturing things that evolved from the setup, right, that he didn't plan. It's very interesting.

Judith:
[1:21:04] It is, it is. And that the actors themselves can contribute to the whole unfolding in the script and the way it is filmed. Yeah.

Dan:
[1:21:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Judith:
[1:21:19] Yeah. The whole idea of her conscience that you brought up earlier and her guilt is questionable whether she ever feels bad.
Although, one of the last scenes is when she's in the Southeastern Asian country, and she goes to that massage parlor and she ends up throwing up, vomiting, and when she sees this young woman with the number five at the massage parlor, in the same position that Olga would be sitting in the orchestra.
And so our body is reacting to what's happened, but we don't know if that's gonna get through to her heart, her withered heart.

Dan:
[1:21:59] Yeah, yeah. You know, Jung's essay on the psychology of conscience, I think is important here because he arrives by the end of the essay saying that conscience really is this, holding the tension between the outer voice of morality, right, the collective sense of morality and intention with an inner voice, right?
The de voce, you know, the voice, this inner voice, which is our inner law, right?
She doesn't have that because everything to me is out there, the outer morality.
And so, there's no interiorness to her. Use a Cal Shed term.
There's no interiorness to her.

Judith:
[1:22:59] Right, right. Right, and I think in that same essay, now you're reminding me that he talks about when you begin to have a conscience, you begin to feel a conflict of duty, I think.
Is that the language I think he said? And that leads to the shadow.
And that's just what she is cut off from.
And even with all this suffering of being let go from the audience, the big scene where she sucks, she walks out to the stage of the live concert, it kind of stretches credibility, that scene.
It does, it does. But it's inevitable that what she's, what it's been building to. Bye.
Even with all of that, losing everything, her daughter, her marriage, her standing, her reputation.
There's that scene where Andres, her mentor, turns away from her when she's driving up to the hall. So she's lost everything.
But she doesn't care. She goes out onto that scene, She goes out onto the hall and socks in front of everybody.
In front of everybody, wow. And then, you know, I think we talked in a prior conversation about that line, that great line, the wisdom of Denzel Washington when he told Will Smith at the Oscars, be careful at your highest point.

Dan:
[1:24:27] I lost you for a second.

Judith:
[1:24:29] Oh, yeah, you were frozen for a minute. You're back. It reminds me of what we talked about earlier about Denzel Washington telling Will Smith, be careful, the devil comes at your highest point. That's right. The wisdom of Denzel.

Dan:
[1:24:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Judith:
[1:24:44] This is exactly what happens to Tar.

Dan:
[1:24:46] I'm glad you made that connection because it would seem that because of her investment in the collective, Everything is about this collective image and her persona, that it would have to be on such a public stage for her to completely humiliate herself, right?
In the same way that Will Smith completely humiliated himself.

Judith:
[1:25:13] Yes, yes, yes, yes. Right, right, right. Oh, wow. What a great point. Yeah.

Dan:
[1:25:21] Like, that's because that's, you know, if it was any smaller than that or any, it wouldn't And if it wouldn't.
It wouldn't be true to the character, I think, you know what I mean?

Judith:
[1:25:34] Not true to the character, even Will Smith profusely apologized.
Yeah, yeah. She was, I'm not so sure she can do that, or will be able to do that.

Dan:
[1:25:48] There's no evidence of that.

Judith:
[1:25:49] There's no, no, I know. Robotic. Yeah.

Dan:
[1:25:53] All the way to the end.

Judith:
[1:25:54] All the way to the end, yeah, yeah.

Dan:
[1:25:57] So what do you think, should we end here and then we could do a part two, what do you feel?

Judith:
[1:26:04] I think maybe we covered a lot.

Dan:
[1:26:06] We did, we did, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we could talk about this forever because there's all these images that he comes up with.
The dream sequence with the fire and she's on the bed and the snake is going.
What did she make of that?

Judith:
[1:26:27] Well, I think it's important maybe that it is in that setting of the Amazon, where they were all together.
But that's her rage, I think. That's her uncontained rage. It's actually, she's self-emulating.
What's emulating? Where you set yourself on fire?

Dan:
[1:26:48] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Judith:
[1:26:49] She's setting her, she has, and her unconscious knows that with this image, right? She's setting herself, she's imploding.
She's imploding with fire. Yes, yes.

Dan:
[1:27:04] And that may be the rage.

Judith:
[1:27:06] That's the rage.

Dan:
[1:27:07] It could also be passion.
Because we were talking about how disembodied she is.
I was wondering if the snake was the instincts, her embodied instincts that are coming for her just as this fire starts in her.
It's an interesting, very interesting image.

Judith:
[1:27:32] Yeah, especially because for Jung in the Red Book, snakes are healing.
Yes. They're all over the Red Book. Yeah, yeah.
Well, we didn't even mention the descent, the descent to the underworld in Olga's apartment building.
Even that didn't wake her up.
She says she comes back to the orchestra saying, oh, you should have seen the other guy.
She has no vulnerability to admit that.
That, yeah, that she's already, there's already sequence of actions that are her downfall, but that symbolic and literal face plant in the concrete where she falls on the steps of being in the underworld and in that basement of Olga's apartment.

Dan:
[1:28:23] And the black dog and, you know, it's a wonderful image of, you know, Black dog is an image of depression.
Churchill taught this depression of black dog.
And yeah, you're right. She's not changed by it.
It doesn't make her even stop and think.
She goes from one light to the next, to the next, and continuing to massage this persona, even as it's dying, Even as this persona is completely dissolving, he's trying to keep it going.

Judith:
[1:29:04] Right, yeah.
Yeah, she'd probably never decide to go into analysis.

Dan:
[1:29:12] Yeah, she'd be too rigid, yeah.

Judith:
[1:29:14] That's true for a lot of narcissists, right? That malignant narcissist, why would they, there's nothing wrong with them, everybody else.
It's a waste of talent, you know?

Dan:
[1:29:30] It really was, right? And I think we talked about it, but I wanted to get your take.
This is a story about a woman that if it was told about a man with all the rest of us, it wouldn't have had an impact, right?
It would have like, oh, here we go, another misogynistic, you know, power-driven male, you know, that we're used to.
And I thought it was brilliant to switch it because by switching it, we can relate to the story without the baggage of all that contemporary stuff.
You see what I mean? We can relate to it in a more raw and meaningful way.

Judith:
[1:30:24] Yeah, I agree, Dan. I know some people are having problems with that gender flip, but I think it is brilliant too because it then, women can be predatory geniuses too.
And it focuses away from the gender to the power dynamics in and of themselves.
Everyone is capable, male, men and women, trans, whatever gender capable of these dynamics.
And I think that maybe that was Tarr's field, the director's view of that. And I think it's a, really inspirational kind of take on it. I think we still have a lot of work to do around gender, of course, but that doesn't take away all of that.
Well, this has been great.

Dan:
[1:31:21] Thank you. Thank you so much.
This is our play space. And, you know, at one point we should talk about what, you know, what is this about for us? Because we, because this is how, when we were in supervision, when I was in supervision with you, that's what we got excited about.
And we were using films between us to kind of understand what was going on clinically, right?
And it's, you know, and so this is, this is so exciting to be able to do this.
It's a very sacred space that we have here.

Judith:
[1:31:56] Yeah, I agree. I feel the same way. Yeah. Yeah, much like in clinical work, these dynamics just come alive. We can see them moving, all the archetypal energies moving around.
And it's fun to get to name them.

Dan:
[1:32:11] Yeah. Well, thank you.

Judith:
[1:32:13] Thank you. Until next time.

Dan:
[1:32:16] Until next time. Take care.

Judith:
[1:32:19] You too. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you.