Tár toddler

(spoilers for a number of movies here)

After I saw the movie Tár, I posted regarding what baffled me about it.

And now, here's an answer to at least three of my six questions: the latter part of the film is a hallucination or dream.

Sorry, I don't buy it. I've seen movies with hidden hallucinations or dreams in them before, and they usually worked it better than this. Clearest was Brazil, which - uniquely in this set - openly reveals this at the end. But I'd figured this out earlier, from noticing that the plot had lost all coherence and then deducing at what point this had happened.

Best at this was Mulholland Drive. On first viewing I found it fascinating but completely opaque. Somebody had to tell me that the first part of the movie is the fantasy dream of the character from the second part of the movie, but once they did so, everything in the movie suddenly made sense, which is not only brilliant but is why I put no credence in alternative explanations which don't work as well.

(There is also Fight Club, which I haven't seen and - going by what I've read about it - I doubt I would want to see.)

I also have to include Barton Fink, which I've never read analyzed this way but which I was forced to conclude is a complete hallucination once the story leaves New York, because otherwise I can't make any sense of it at all. I did notice a change of moviemaking style at that point, from naturalism to an eerie "Star Trek at the O.K. Corral" style, which contributed to my theory.

Mulholland Drive also changes style - mostly in its use of color and lens setting - at the critical point, and so does Brazil, mostly in story presentation. But Tár doesn't. It feels the same way all the way through. Maybe the whole movie is a hallucination? But that amounts to no more than saying that the whole movie is fiction, which we knew already. But by denying the viewer even the right to secondary belief, it makes the viewer into a patsy for even trying to watch it at all. So I hope the hallucination theory is false, but that still leaves me with six baffled questions.