I'm overjoyed at the depth of love and understanding with which you have understood, excavated and reconstituted the 'shadow text' of the film! I found it utterly captivating as well - wished CB could have won Best Actress. You taught me things about the film that I had missed or simply 'watched past' - the gothic subtext, the 'horror' of it. I sort of framed it in a predictably more contemporary way: the film that takes the 'great man' trope and turns it into a woman's story. This deeply engrained idea that one excuses, obviates or ignores deep personal failings (if not abuses) because one make great _____. The film, rather, is contratemps the zeitgeist of cultural cancellation. Do we not need to re-set a boundary between art & artist? (Your point on the scene w/Max about not succumbing to the art/artist argument withstanding .... BEYOND the confines of the film I do want separation). We have nearly lost 'comedy' as an art form because everything offends, or could. Everything hurts our could. My line is that philosophers & comedians are both tellers of uncomfortable or unavoidable truths. We ignore the former and laugh at the latter. Now, we can't even laugh. Again, thank you. REALLY a thorough dive. My favorite scene was an incidental one - where Tar fires the resident conductor at the Berlin Philharmonic. Todd Field keep that in a wide two shot when she delivered the coup de grace. There was no cut to his reaction or a set up shot of her delivering his professional dismissal - the whole thing played out it a wide 2-shot from the far side of the room. That's restraint!