Cate Blanchett: “Breaking Down the Myth”

By Lena Basse

Ahead of one of the most prestigious award ceremonies of the year, there are many different predictions about who will win the golden statuette. Cate Blanchett, once again, is a frontrunner in the Best Actress category at the Oscars®.

Cate Blanchett’s remarkable performance in Todd Field’s Tár was widely recognized since the day of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. During her very emotional acceptance speech at the BAFTA ceremony as Best Lead Actress, Blanchett acknowledged the performances of her fellow colleagues, “Every year there’s idiosyncratic, remarkable performances just breaking down the myth that women’s experience is monolithic.”

In fact, the entire career of the 53-year old actress is striking proof that the female experience is everything but monolithic. In Manifesto by Julian Rosefeldt that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015,

Blanchett delivered 13 great performances by declaiming philosophical manifestos of some of the most influential creators of the twentieth century, from Malevich and Kandinsky to Jim Jarmusch and Lars von Trier, and of course, Karl Marx.

In addition to the enormous variety of more than 100 roles on stage and on screen, Blanchett is not too shy to use her enviable influence as a public figure for her humanitarian and environmental activity. Mother of four, she debunks the idea that being a feminist means to be “anti-family.”

In 2018, she performed in a completely new role for herself as the head of the jury at the 71st Cannes Film Festival. Thus, she became the twelfth female chairman in the entire history of the most prestigious world film festival, which added symbolism to the feminist movement. Blanchett did not miss the opportunity to show her solidarity with women working in the cinema, leading with Agnieska Holland on the red carpet of the festival’s 82 participants, demanding equal pay with male colleagues for equal work. In doing so, she marked another historic moment on the red carpet, focused not on the glitz and glam, but on an important political movement for women everywhere.

Blanchett’s tenure as the president of the Cannes jury went so well that in 2020, she was again invited to head the jury of another international film festival, this time in Venice. As a longtime, style icon, Blanchett has become an advocate for sustainable fashion. She was one of the first celebrities who decided to re-wear some of her cherished looks at the Venice Film Festival. And she has continued the practice at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival. Being privileged enough to talk with Blanchett several times, whether it was in New York, Los Angeles, Venice or Cannes, I was always intrigued by her intelligence, strength, and her ability to articulate her own strong opinions without being apologetic. At the same time, she definitely values the importance of listening. She commented, “I think one of the strongest leadership skills you can have is deep time listening. If you try to canvas everyone’s opinion and make sure that everyone is heard.”

“Daniel Del Lewis in a woman’s guise”

Today, it is difficult to imagine that Blanchett, despite her unconditional talent and beauty, even after she received a professional acting education, she did not think about a film career at all. She enjoyed working in the theater, which involved a long and deep study of image. She had the chance to play on the stage along with the best Australian actors, among whom was Geoffrey Rush himself, appearing before the audience in the classic images of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Nina in Chekhov’s The

Seagull. Recognition of her talent came not long after, and she won prestigious theater awards one after another.

Of course, the cinema could not leave such a successful young actress unattended. “When I first started out, people were saying, make the most of it, because as an actress, you probably got almost five years. But I am trying to be an optimist and the positive thing about that is I have treated every job like it’s going to be my last, so I have tried to relish it, no matter what the size of the role.”

The real breakthrough in her cinematic career was in 1998 as Queen Elizabeth of England in the historical film of the same name by Shekhar Kapoor, for which she became famous not only in her native Australia, but also abroad.

Since then, Blanchett has created many memorable images on the silver screen, both for women and men. She was first nominated for an Oscar for creating one of the seven portraits of singer Bob Dylan in the extraordinary film I’m Not There. About her ability to transform, Leonardo DiCaprio even described her as “Daniel Del Lewis in a woman’s guise.” Her partners on the set were such famous actors as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, and Russell Crowe.

In her numerous collections of awards, there is an Oscar for the leading role in Woody Allen’s Jasmine, and an Oscar for a supporting role in Martin Scorsese’s The

Aviator. Interestingly, in Aviator, she played the role of Katharine Hepburn, who for almost 60 years remained the leading actress in Hollywood and was awarded four Oscars. Thus, Blanchett became the first actress to receive an Academy Award for creating a portrait of an Oscarwinning actress.

With her eighth Oscar nomination this year Blanchett is at the pinnacle of her profession. Her transformation into Lydia Tár, a self-made, world-renowned conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, who in her own words looked at the beginning as “very dangerous and career-ending,” turned into one of her finest performances.

Customized role

This role was meant for her. Todd Field is often referred to as “an actor’s director,” specifically wrote the role for Blanchett, after his fifteen year hiatus. At the film’s press conference in Venice, the first thing Field wanted to make clear to the journalists in attendance was that, “It wasn’t written with Cate Blanchett in mind. It was written for Cate Blanchett.” Blanchett herself confessed that she was very moved when Todd Field came to her with the idea of Tár. “I think it’s a hallmark of Todd’s films, and it’s a very spare and special moment when Todd decides to leave the house and make another movie”.

In order to match the character that was created specifically for her, Blanchett had to learn to conduct an orchestra, to play a piano (and an accordion), and to speak German. Sounds almost like Lydia’s long list of accomplishments that is read out on stage during her live interview for The New Yorker at the beginning of the film. Lydia’s latest mountain to climb is to conduct a live recording of Mahler’s famous Fifth Symphony, which coincides with the release of her latest book. Her assistant, Francesca, played by Noemie Merlant, helps Lydia to navigate a very busy schedule, not without observing her in hopes to become one day conductor herself. Lydia lives in Berlin with her partner, Sharon (played by Nina Hoss), who plays the first violin in the orchestra, and their adopted daughter, Petra. Her whole life seems to turn upside down when she finds a love interest in the latest addition to the orchestra, a young cellist, Olga, played by Sophie Kauer.

Even though that the situation that Lydia placed in is rather atypical for female characters, Blanchett admits that the story is “a fairytale of sorts because there still is no female conductor leading the great old German orchestra around the world,” and confessed that “strangely, I didn’t think about the character’s gender, nor her sexuality at all.” The actress also hoped that “we have perhaps matured enough as a species that we can watch a film like this and not make that the headline issue.”

“It’s a very long journey in a very short period of time for Lydia,” Field said, to which Blanchett added, “She’s definitely haunted by someone, by something. By her past, by herself, by past deeds… She was someone estranged from herself. And I think in a way, probably all the characters are. We all are. It’s human. You don’t have to be a concert pianist or the conductor of the world’s greatest orchestra to experience that feeling.”

What she loves most about this film is that “It’s a very human portrait.”

Tár

Answering the question about a search of her own identity, Blanchett said, “I’ve never thought of my identity as being a static thing. I think I am still in the process of becoming who I am.”