This hypnotic, mesmerising motion picture had me awestruck at the phenomenal confidence and skill of its director, his obsessive style and editing mirroring its progressively maniacal protagonist in the throes of a cancel culture out of her control, unable to dig herself out of a mess of her own making. It demands your complete focus and thus draws you deeper into its muddied internal maze of things blatant and intimated, of a pivotal backstory that is captivating despite us seeing none of it.
The movie could be mistaken for peak Michael Haneke – the clinical aesthetic, the foreboding mood, and all-pervading sense of surveillance. The director (and our monstrous subject) attaches an increasing primacy to sounds within the frame and off-screen, these impinging on the character’s unravelling ego. It’s so well executed that it’s unbearable; you really are along for the ride in a way that recalls Polanski’s Repulsion (1965). And on that filmmaker, Tár (2022) broods over the still-contentious debate: Can we ever forget the person and honour the artist for the art only?
One of the most violent movies ever that has no bloodletting in it, a violence of barely concealed fury and scorn, this is a truly original work.
There are few films like it and I suspect won’t be.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 