‘Tár’ Ending Explained: What Is the Meaning of the Maze?

Tár is now streaming on Peacock Premium, which is great news for anyone who loves watching Cate Blanchett strut around in a tailored suit. (And, really, who doesn’t love that?)

It’s also great news for anyone who wants to give this drama about a problematic conductor another look, because Tár is definitely the kind of movie you’ll want to watch more than once. Written and directed by Todd Field, who wrote the role specifically for its Oscar-nominated star Cate Blanchett, Tár is a brilliant commentary on art, gender, power, and abuse. But it is also, at times, confusing.

Though it may seem slow-moving—with a runtime clocking in at two hours and 37 minutes—every moment of this movie is important to the story. This isn’t the kind of movie you can watch while scrolling through TikTok. That said, if you did miss something, or if you got confused, you can rest easy because Decider is here to help. Read on for a complete breakdown of the Tár movie plot and the Tár movie explained, including what the heck that maze means.

Tar movie plot explained:

We meet Lydia Tár as she’s being introduced to a crowd at Lincoln Center, for an on-stage conversation with a writer from The New Yorker. The reporter lists off Tár’s impressive resumé as a world-renowned pianist, composer, and conductor—although the fact that Tár’s personal assistant, Francesca (Noémie Merlant), knows this introduction by heart suggests that the praise was pre-written by Tár’s team (perhaps, even, written by Francesca), and not by the New Yorker writer. (Later, Tár edits her own Wikipedia page to add The New Yorker‘s claim that she is one of “the most important musical figures of our era.”)

Tár, we learn, is not a very nice person. While guest-lecturing at Julliard, she humiliates a young, non-white composing student who says he’s not interested in old, white composers like Mozart. Tár suggests that the student is only interested in composers that he wants to sleep with. Tár proves herself to be a hypocrite later, when she is selecting a new cellist for her orchestra, and picks a pretty, young woman named Olga (Sophie Kauer) based on her looks, and not on her talent. She cheats on her wife, Sharon (Nina Hoss), and does not play an active role in raising their young child together.

Meanwhile, Tár’s assistant Francesca is concerned about a young woman named Krista Taylor, who was a fellow at Tár’s Accordion Foundation program, which she founded to help aspiring female conductors. Krista has been sending Francesca increasingly desperate emails, which Tár instructs Francesca to ignore. It’s later implied that Tár had a sexual relationship with Krista that ended badly—or, perhaps, that Krista rebuffed Tár’s advances, it’s never made clear—which resulted in Tár blacklisting Krista in the music world. (This is not unlike how convicted rapist and former Hollywood bigwig Harvey Weinstein would blacklist actresses who accused him of sexual misconduct.)

Throughout the film, Krista haunts Tár. She sends Tár a copy of Vita Sackville-West’s novel Challenge, which reflects Sackville-West’s own torrid love affair with another woman. Inside the cover of the book, Krista has drawn a maze. This seems to mean something to Tár, as she angrily tears the page out of the book. The emails continue, and despite Francesca’s pleas that Tár responds, she refuses. Then Krista commits suicide, and Tár instructs Francesca to delete all the emails that Krista sent. Tár also deletes all the emails she sent in which she advised orchestras and other music programs not to hire Krista. She also hires a lawyer, in case Krista’s parents try to sue.

Though Krista is dead, Tár is still haunted by her. She is increasingly sensitive to noise—like a metronome ticking in the night, that wakes her up, leading to her finding another maze that resembles the one Krista drew in the book. Tár’s life begins to deteriorate. She fires her assistant conductor, Sebastian, and plans to replace him with Francesca, until Sebastian accuses Tár of sleeping with her assistant and granting favors to young, beautiful women. As a result, Tár finds a different replacement, which drives Francesca to quit. Francesca does this without informing Tár, and purposefully doesn’t tell her that Tár has been called to a deposition regarding Krista’s death.

Tár continues to see Olga—the hot young cellist whom she unfairly granted a solo–for intimate, private lessons. One time, she drives Olga home and then runs after her when Olga forgets a personal item. Wandering Olga’s eerie, dilapidated apartment complex, Tár is frightened by a dog, falls, and injures her face. She tells her wife and others that she was attacked by a mugger.

A heavily and creatively edited video of Tár humiliating that student of color at Julliard goes viral, along with a New York Post article outlining accusations that Tár groomed young women. In the deposition regarding Krista’s suicide, the opposing lawyers reveal they have obtained email exchanges between Tár and Krista, likely provided by Francesca. The company that finances the Accordion Foundation, pulls the funding.

Tar movie ending explained:

Tár is fired as the Berlin orchestra conductor due to the accusations and controversy swirling around her. This is not shown explicitly, but while on a run, she sees a poster with her replacement’s face on it, advertising the upcoming performance, and tears it down. Her wife separates from Tár, and prohibits her from seeing their daughter, Petra.

On the night of the Berlin orchestra’s big performance, Tár hides in the concert hall’s bathroom. Then, dressed in a finely tailored suit, she tackles her replacement while he’s conducting on stage, and attempts to reclaim her podium. That replacement is revealed to be Elliot Kaplan, the man who used to fund the Accordion Foundation and once asked Tár to help him get conducting jobs.

Tár returns to her run-down childhood home on Staten Island. It’s revealed that she was born Linda Tarr, and that she changed her name to separate herself from her working-class roots. She watches an old tape of Leonard Bernstein’s first episode of Young People’s Concerts, “What Does Music Mean?” and is deeply moved.

We find Lydia Tár sometime later, working as a conductor in the Phillippines. She goes to a massage parlor, where she is offered a selection of beautiful young women, and asked to pick one to be her masseuse. All the women are looking down, not speaking, and not making eye contact. Tár, overcome by revulsion, runs out of the building and vomits.

In the movie’s final scene, Tár is conducting an orchestra, and prepares for it with the same air of grandiose that she always does. But then the camera pans to the audience, and reveals she is conducting the score for a fantasy video game in front of an audience of cosplayers. With that, the movie ends.

What is the Tar ending meaning?

At the risk of offending cosplayers, Field clearly wanted to emphasize with that final shot how far Lydia Tár has fallen. Her life and career is now a laughing stock. All of the prestige and acclaim she enjoyed so much is gone. Instead of being lavished with praise in front of an audience at Lincoln Center, as we saw in the first scene, she has been reduced to the “low” art of video game music.

That said, Field also shows us that Tár feels some remorse for her actions. When she is presented with the array of young, beautiful women for her massage, she realizes this is how she has always used her position of power to pick beautiful women out of a line-up, essentially, to be her play thing. She is overcome with remorse and revulsion at her own actions, which is why she vomits in the street.

What does the maze from Tar mean?

Great question! The movie never explains why Krista drew a maze in the book she sent Tár, though, obviously, the symbol seemed to mean something to the conductor. The maze shows up again in the scene when Lydia discovers the metronome in the middle of the night, and a third time drawn on the papers that are scattered on the floor of Francesca’s abandoned apartment. So what the heck does that maze mean? Is it because Lydia Tár is stuck in a labyrinth of her own making? Is it because, as one Redditor suggests, her name is Tar, as in MinoTAUR, the mythical Greek creature that lived in a labyrinth?

My interpretation? It’s an inside joke that Lydia Tár once had with Krista in another lifetime. We don’t need to know what it means, we just need to know that it means something to our protagonist, and that it meant something to Krista. It’s a symbol that shows Lydia knew Krista intimately enough to have a way of communicating with her that the outside world—like us—couldn’t understand.

But that’s just me.