A Beautiful Mystery That Always Saves Something Extra
What is it that keeps one artist so continuously flourishing in her greatness? For Cate Blanchett, it's her undying power of making her characters anything but ordinary. Nearly all focus goes to her when we watch her because she’s just so original. She always portrays her characters so that they're so incomparable to one another and that it's only Blanchett herself that you feel you really know.
As an audience you want to feel characters but not in their entirety. There's something powerful about watching someone who’s a mystery and most of Blanchett's roles are just that: Mysteries. Intense psychological phantoms you can never know fully but get to know enough leaving you wanting to know more.
Knowing complicated people in complicated situations can be exhausting. Blanchett gives audiences the luxury of surprise while always saving something extra for her next role. From Queen Elizabeth I and Katherine Hepburn to Bathsheba Hart, Jasmine Francis, and Carol Aird, Blanchett always unwraps what's specific about a character as though she's unwrapping a Christmas present given to her by someone who she knows didn't do the wrapping because the wrapping is just that put together.
She finds empowerment in flaws and in those with layers of bad choices. She often represents the hero but sometimes the anti-hero. Sometimes the downfall but also the new beginnings. One closed door opens another and she can open any door she sees fit. Locks and bolts could never keep her out. She pushes characters front and center that will make you go “wow”. She's just a wow artist and that wow will only get louder as cinema continuously inches slowly like a caterpillar back to all of us.
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