Opening the Rook File Versus a Locked Pawn Chain

 A strong Austin Texas USA chess player told me that certain questions are literally unanswerable, but another former tournament Grand Prix player said every chess question has an answer depending on the depth of the calculations one wants to undertake.

So I present the following diagram which contains a nagging question.

Black could lock up the pawns by playing a3, but how about opening the a file with pawn takes pawn at b3? I am certain many commentators like Andrew Jeselon would bail out by saying it is a matter of style but this weak player has always thought that answer is generally bullshit. 

The aforementioned Grand Prix player, who almost went broke crisscrossing the country(eating fast food, consuming 80 proof alcoholic beverages on empty stomachs, no access to health care, STD from unprotected sex with inexpensive prostitutes, etc) would probably say that a deep enough calculation would conclusively answer the question. He would then scratch his balls. 

So what we really have here is the legendary Michael Rhode-Vasily Smyslov juxtaposition where Rhode had wasted 20 minutes calculating a variation that MR POSITIONAL Smyslov had NOT EVEN CONSIDERED!!! probably because the endgame virtuoso was just trading down to an ending where he had a minute but squeezable advantage.