Rendez vous avec Cate Blanchett © Amélie Canon / FDC
Rendez-vous with Cate Blanchett
Actress, producer, President of the Feature Film Jury in 2018, Cate Blanchett was the Festival’s guest for a Rendez-vous marked by sincerity. She opened up about her career, her commitments and her way of working, with a subtle mix of respect for her audience, precision and caustic humour. Selected highlights.
On her role as Jury President in 2018
It was a pleasure to immerse myself in other people’s visions. But an enormous responsibility. I called Guillermo Del Toro (President of the Jury at the Venice Film Festival in 2018) and he told me, “get there first and sit in a different seat every time.” It sounds banal, but when you always sit in the same seat, it’s always the same person who speaks first. Also, being a juror is not a question of taste, it’s a question of attending to what the filmmaker is trying to make. Some films, I didn’t receive them on first viewing. A jury member would say: it’s a masterpiece. I’d go back and watch it at 9 in the morning. The deliberations? It was like being in a Masonic lodge, a secret society. The jury was divine.
On gender parity and #MeToo
I do a headcount every morning on my sets. There are 10 women, 75 men. I love men. But the jokes always happen. It just ends up being boring. #MeToo allowed people to speak with relative safety. It revealed a systemic layer of abuse. If you shut that problem down, you can’t move on. The inclusion riders, the green riders — very quickly, the studios say: we have our own version. There’s hypocrisy too. I’ve had many experiences arriving on set and people frantically wheeling out the recycling bins. “She’s coming, let’s pretend we’re doing something.”
On her passion for acting
It’s intact, look at who I’ve had the chance to work alongside! That said, I’m very slow. The first two days, I ask to walk around the set, I don’t want to act, it must come from my theatre background. What hasn’t changed is that I always start by not knowing. The artist Richard Serra used to say: “if you can sense what the sculpture is going to become, hand it to somebody else.” And nerves are important. It means you have a chance to break through something new.
On Babel
Iñárritu loves chaos. On the first day, Brad (Pitt) and I shot a scene. He came up and said: “this is shit, there’s nothing here.” It puts you in danger. It’s a direction. Sometimes a director directs with love, but an incredibly tough love. That look on the bus in Babel? It was maybe just the fear that he’d come back and tell me it was shit.
On The Aviator
Scorsese told me: “she doesn’t need to be a redhead, she can just look something like you.” He was liberating me from the idea that I had to do an impersonation of Katharine Hepburn. My job was to be in the film Martin Scorsese was making — not to present a one-woman-show on Katharine Hepburn.
On her humanitarian commitment
Ten years ago, 60 million people were displaced. Today, more than 120 million. When you’re displaced, you don’t stop being a filmmaker. The average length of displacement before a safe return: 19 years. An entire career lost. We launched a fund here, in Cannes, fifty thousand dollars for five established displaced filmmakers. Tomorrow, we announce the second round. Festivals are a bit like polar bears on ice floes. That’s where discussion and dissemination happen, not only of films, but of what is moving through society.
