In “Tar”, the new film written and directed by Todd Field, Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tar, an internationally renowned orchestra conductor (or “Maestra”). She is adored by music lovers, but also progressives everywhere, especially the young, who look upon her as a champion of women’s rights in the male-dominated canon of Western culture.

Blanchett’s overwhelming performance is epic-sized, but the role demanded that. The reality presented in the film is entirely what Tar witnesses herself, and not one moment from anywhere else. And the story is not arc-shaped. We start where Tar is, at the very top, and we stay with her there for nearly two hours. But all the while, destructive forces have gathered around, mist-like, until, in a kind of snow-blindness, she falls from dizzying heights. That trip down, in the last half hour, is her panic-ride of humiliation, and is as heart-stoppingly, chaotically fast as the first part of the film is measured.

Ah, just like a Mahler symphony. And, although we’re only given tantalizing bites of his music – from the Fifth, the “big one” – Field uses Mahler as more than just a musical motif, but almost as an unseen character: the virtual symbol of the tortured, conflicted, yet dominant Western culture, which Field presents as in its death-throes. The dramatic crisis of the film, and its irony, is that Tar’s success has not only been in spite of, but also dependent upon her being a woman in a male-dominated culture. Field intends to show that, at this point in time, society is breathlessly playing out a kind of “to the death” game between the ruling “white Male” and the “white Female” challenger, to see who will dominate the future. And it seems that his real point is that the most important conflict lies somewhere else, which he slyly inserts into the final scene.

But today’s apparent conflict is also meant to parallel what happened at the turn of the last century. Late romanticism, as exemplified by Mahler’s music and, in a subordinate, but still glorious role, Elgar’s cello concerto, represents the anguish of Western culture as it witnesses its own replacement by the postmodernism of the twentieth century. While Tar’s conducting seems infused with the anguish expressed in Mahler’s Fifth, as well as with the elegiac sweetness of the Elgar (symbolizing the Old Guard’s resigned submission to the inevitable), we see the paradox clearly: Tar not only identifies with the dying tradition but also with its replacement, as exemplified by her confident, even ruthless command of the Berlin Philharmonic. When she brings up how Mahler forbid his wife Alma to compose music herself, we can’t help but notice Tar’s joy in showing how she, a woman, cuts the composer down to size when she rules the podium.

Cannily, Field rightly assumes that the average moviegoer’s unfamiliarity with concert music history should not be a problem, any more than the back-story of American journalism was needed to enjoy Citizen Kane. His method is to quickly establish that his (anti)Hero is supreme in some elitist category – in this case, concert music – and then to just tear her down, which he does mercilessly.

But the difficulty is in making this spectacle dramatic. Here Field also succeeds, but, in retrospect, less convincingly. From the beginning, we see that Tar has hit her middle-age wall and, in spite of her supremacy, the fight is getting her down. The long Adam Gopnik podcast interview that begins the film, in which Tar’s arrogance is barely dimmed by her genuine, if studied, charm, only hides the emotional scars that are revealed once she’s off-camera. As lead conductor of the Berlin Phiharmonic, she knows she represents the pinnacle of cultural power for a woman in the Western world. But her demeanor is anything but serene. She uses her power ruthlessly, but seemingly without pleasure. She rides her female assistant, Francesca, played by Noemie Merlant, unceasingly, yet demands that she present herself in public as proud to be in service of Tar’s genius. Likewise, her lesbian lover, Sharon, played by Nina Hoss, with whom she adopted a child, is expected to perform flawlessly as first violin, and concertmaster, even when publicly humiliated by her life partner.

The main plot device is the entrance of Olga, a beautiful, young female cellist, played by Sophie Kauer, who coyly makes known how much she adores Tar, and is more than willing to use it for her career. Tar is smitten, and plots to make room for the new girl. She shocks the ensemble by announcing auditions for soloist in the Elgar concerto, even though the first cellist, also female, would be the normal choice. All three women – Francesca, her assistant, Sharon, her lover, and the first cellist – are stunned speechless at the move. It is the most telling scene in the film because it reveals, succinctly, that all three woman realize that the newcomer is doing what they all did to get to their elevated status: by seducing Tar.

Another consequential scene, which is referred to late in the film (clumsily, and then dropped), is Tar’s lecture in a Juilliard conducting class. A male student is outraged by Tar’s admiration for Bach because, he claims, the composer abused women, as shown by making his wife bear twenty children. In tortured restraint, Tar dismisses him and, in passing, makes an off-hand, and ambiguous, reference to anti-semitism. Unbeknownst to her, however, this is recorded and eventually goes viral.

But most consequential is the scandal from the suicide of Tar’s protege, Krista, which happened before the film begins. Details of the story are strewn like breadcrumbs throughout the film, including Francesca’s secret correspondence with the girl, which, when Tar learns of it, results in her firing her long time assistant. In fact, Tar’s fury at Francesca for this “betrayal” is so consuming that she seems almost oblivious to the scandal itself, even after Krista’s parents file a lawsuit against Tar. But by then it’s too late.

While suspense is maintained throughout this long and busy film, the resolution is dramatically sketchy, and not as emotionally devastating as I had expected. I felt some pity for Tar as she was falling to her professional doom, but there were no really positive characters in the entire film, including the upstairs neighbor who is caring for her elderly bedridden mother. Unless you count Tar’s nine-year old Syrian adopted daughter, Petra, played by Mila Bojojevic. But Petra displays no injury from Tar, who is uncharacteristically protective of the girl. A revealing moment is when Tar refers to herself once as Petra’s “father”; as always, cognizant of where the real power lies.

Perhaps because Tar’s relationship with her women victims is so murky – there’s very little background about who seduces whom – I never sensed that they earned my sympathy. Likewise, her sole male victim seems a clueless buffoon. Finally, the suicide backstory never coheres to anything dramatic; it slaps yet another “victim” label on Francesca, but the actual details of Tar’s involvement with the dead girl – such as whether her private professional warnings about Krista were justified – are frustratingly ignored.

But it seems Field was never aiming for us to pity anyone. His overview is too cynical for that. He saves his real judgment, from his distanced perspective, for the final scene, which is a stunner that I never expected.  Both unsettling and delicious, it beautifully captures the perspective and tone that the film only intermittently achieves. Simply, is this story a tragedy, or a comedy, or both.