Cate Blanchett
Elizabeth
Notes on a Scandal
G’day and howdy, my lovely, loyal readers. Spring has been predictably sticky, buggy, and emotional so far, and I, for one, can’t be bothered to do much beyond watching movies, inside with air conditioning. But as we close out the month of April, let us not fixate on the swamp ass with which we’re all inevitably afflicted, let us instead discuss another one of my favorite actresses, one who has been celebrated plenty but I’d still like to celebrate: Cate Blanchett. I’ve had a pretty legendary run (if I do say so myself) of writing about notable actresses, from Catherine O’Hara to Demi Moore, Diane Keaton to Cher, Meryl Streep to Jennifer Lopez, Jane Fonda to Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand to Joan Crawford, Pam Grier to Denise Richards. I’ve been an admirer of Cate Blanchett’s acting abilities and screen presence since I first saw her glowing as Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. From then on, I would spot her in various films and prestige TV, but I’m not sure if I ever paid special attention to her. That’s what happens when you’re a reliable, steady, comfortable, and believable performer—one gets so used to the perfection delivered every time, that they seldom take the time to really appreciate it. Her talents are overwhelming, and the versatility of her resume is astounding. There’s no metric by which we can measure the levels of icon-hood she has reached, but all of the metrics that do exist for those in her field have already recognized her: she has two Oscars, three Actor (formerly SAG) awards, four British Academy Film Awards, and four Golden Globes. Catherine Élise Blanchett was born on May 14th, 1969 in Melbourne. Her father, a US Navy chief petty officer-turned-advertising executive from Texas, met her mother, a native-Aussie teacher, when his ship broke down in Melbourne, but he died when she was just ten years old. She’s described her childhood self as “part extrovert, part wallflower”—often dressing in more masculine clothing, and even shaving her head during one of her punk eras. She went to school for business, and volunteered at a nursing home, but when she was on a trip to Egypt in 1990, she was spontaneously cast as an extra in a boxing film called Kaboria. She’d initially only taken the job because she needed the money, but when she came back to Australia, she enrolled herself in the National Institute of Dramatic Art. Blanchett’s first stage role was opposite Geoffrey Rush in the 1992 David Mamet play Oleanna, then she was cast as Clytemnestra in a production of Electra, and after winning the Sydney Theatre Critics’ award for Best Newcomer and Best Actress in one year, she found her way on camera through an Australian miniseries or two. Her film debut was a Glenn Close/Frances McDormand vehicle called Paradise Road, and her first leading role was opposite Ralph Fiennes in a film called Oscar and Lucinda. Cate Blanchett would go on to star in indies, blockbusters, comedies, dramas, kids movies, episodes of Family Guy—each one an opportunity for her to dazzle and captivate audiences. She’s appeared in over 70 films and theater productions including, but not limited to: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Bandits, The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou, The Aviator (which earned her her first Oscar), Babel, Hot Fuzz, I'm Not There (where she played the most convincing Bob Dylan), Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Ponyo, Hanna, Blue Jasmine (2nd Oscar), Thor: Ragnarok, Oceans 8, Where’d You Go Bernadette?, Mrs. America, Nightmare Alley, Tár, GDT's Pinocchio, Disclaimer, Black Bag, just in 2015 she starred in Knight of Cups, Cinderella, Carol, Truth, and Manifesto, and she once starred in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire which Jane Fonda described as “perhaps the greatest stage performance I have ever seen” and Meryl Streep declared, “That performance was as naked, as raw and extraordinary and astonishing and surprising and scary as anything I’ve ever seen... I thought I’d seen that play, I thought I knew all the lines by heart, because I’ve seen it so many times, but I’d never seen the play until I saw that performance.” She’s also an environmental activist—joining Al Gore’s Climate Project in 2006, and becoming the ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation in 2007. She’s married to playwright Andrew Upton, with whom she has four children, and is consistently chic on screen and off. I knew she was immensely, immensely talented, and I knew that I wholeheartedly agreed with her stance on the pointlessness of leaf blowers, but it was her episode of Las Culturistas last year that really solidified her as an icon to this critic, because she was so effortlessly, hilariously real. She’s so compelling, I still think about her appearance on Hot Ones, and how perplexed she looked when Sean Evans asked her what she’d like to plug. She’s so consistently captivating, I couldn’t help loving every moment of her presence in Don’t Look Up—a movie I otherwise despised. She’s so enthralling, I didn’t even get sleepy as I watched tonight’s historical, first film.
Cate was not the first choice for the lead, but when director Shekhar Kapur saw her in her first leading role ever in Oscar and Lucinda, he knew she had something special, this is the 1998 film Elizabeth. This film follows the early days of the reign of Elizabeth I of England and the many plots to take her down, which for some reason, was told slightly (very) out of order. We are greeted by the classic, vague, nondenominational chanting that all historical films implement, and are shown a title card that says, “England 1554: Henry the VIII is dead, the country is divided.” The division lies between Catholics and Protestants, and just as a young Elizabeth (Blanchett) is set to take the throne, she is imprisoned in the Tower of London by her half sister, Mary, for being Protestant. This, along with the fact that she is Anne Boleyn’s “bastard” child, makes her ineligible to rule, in Mary’s eyes—though Mary is overcome with sickness and a phantom pregnancy. Elizabeth is advised to trust no one, not even her childhood friend and lover, Sir Robert (Joseph Fiennes). Finally, Mary dies, Elizabeth takes the throne, and is immediately pursued by suitors who may inject her with an heir, because god forbid a woman rule the country that was already nearly run into the ground by a man. “The queen is dead, long live the queen” they say as Elizabeth is anointed and crowned ruler, though she already has enemies in her court, most obvious of all being the Duke of Norfolk (Christopher Eccelston). She is swiftly put to work and scrutinized, as Scotland faces 4,000 French troops and Elizabeth desperately wishes not to engage in war. Against her wishes, the war rages on, which demolishes English troops. But according to the mysterious and shady Lord Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), Catholic lords and priests intentionally deprived Elizabeth’s army of proper soldiers, so that their defeat could be used as evidence of Liz’s inability to rule. Even when Elizabeth gains the respect of some members of the court, learning to speak their macho language and making self-deprecating jokes, and even when she proposes the most logical solution of all—the Act of Uniformity—the target on her back persists. All the while, everyone is trying to get Liz laid by anyone but her lover, who could never be king, and when she resists this, Sir William Cecil (Richard Attenborough) reminds the young lovers, “Her majesty’s body and person no longer belongs to her, it belongs to the state.” The rest of Elizabeth is full of dark, bleak moments like this, but my favorite, unexpected bit of darkness was the small sampling of creative body horror that this film had to offer—from the intricately-lacerated bodies of soldiers upon the Scottish shore, to the poisoned dress that is sent to Elizabeth but is worn by one of her ladies-in-waiting instead. It is all a historical, heretical spectacle, one that could’ve been more boring, certainly, but it also could’ve been more exciting. I fear that director Shekhar Kapur was not aware of the powerful talent he had in young Cate Blanchett, and relied too much upon the other members of the cast to do the heavy lifting. In his defense, the film also stars every single heavy-hitter of the UK acting pedigree: John Gielgud, James Frain, Kathy Burke, Emily Mortimer, Kelly Macdonald, Jamie Foreman, Edward Hardwicke, Kenny Doughty, Daniel Craig, Alfie Allen, and Vincent Cassel as the boisterously-out-of-place Frenchmen (who we do at least get to see in drag.) Of its historical inaccuracies, biographer Patrick Collinson wrote, “…as if the known facts of the reign, plus many hitherto unknown, were shaken up like pieces of a jigsaw and scattered on the table at random”, but I enjoyed it nonetheless—mostly because of Cate Blanchett’s performance. Even at this early stage, she had a profound command of that camera, and she was a remarkably believable queen. Plus, how many historical dramas do you know that are popular enough in these “modern” times to warrant a sequel, as this one did? I sort of expected the credits to end with, “Elizabeth will return… in The Golden Age”, but I digress.
One film that is too devilishly delectable to have a sequel, and is so layered and complex that even commenting on it feels slightly sinful, though I will attempt to anyway, is Richard Eyre’s 2006 film Notes on a Scandal. Adapted from Zoë Heller’s novel of the same name (by Patrick Marber), Notes on a Scandal does not suffer from the same lack of bold, intricate writing that Elizabeth did, and instead presents us with more brilliantly scathing details than some may be able to handle. The film introduces us to a woman named Barbara Covett (Dame Judi Dench), a history teacher at comprehensive school in London, where the (no offense) rowdy chavs are fairly out of control. “People have always trusted me with their secrets, but who do I trust with mine? Only you” Barbara writes in her diary, with her only companion, a cat sitting by her side. Barbara’s writing/narrating proves the depths of her taciturn cruelty, as she watches students rush into the doors and remarks, “The first day of a new term… here comes a new crop of future shop attendants… and the odd terrorist, too, I’m sure.” Her dull, lonesome monotony is disrupted, though, when a new art teacher named Sheba Hart (Blanchett) arrives, full of vitality and energy and the radical idea that these students are not all lost causes. Barbara is already perplexed and a bit obsessed with Sheba, before they even speak, noting how, “the complexion of her skin is like a white peach, and her trendy politics are just as transparent.” But no matter how cynical and bitter Barbara is, she can’t help being enchanted by Sheba, especially when Sheba invites her over for lunch one day. The two disparate women swiftly develop an unlikely friendship, but Barbara is clearly smitten, and her tone of writing about Sheba becomes far more complimentary, caring, and romantic. Barbara teaches Sheba that children are feral and can feel one’s anxiety, that it is better to be respected than to be popular, and in return Sheba’s kindness and attention offers more life-affirming fuel to Barbara than Sheba could ever know. Their peaceful friendship is threatened, though, when Barbara discovers that Sheba is having an affair with a 15-year-old student. Rather than report her right away, Barbara pleads with Sheba to explain this situation, and to cut it off as soon as possible. Sheba agrees, but she has a humdrum existence of her own, and enjoys the rush of this inappropriate affair far too much. Barbara is horrified, yet somehow, inspired, and decides to use this knowledge not to take Sheba down, but to bring her closer. Notes on a Scandal is a shocking, riveting, subtly disturbing film where secrets are deadly weapons and the classic Nokia ringtone is an effective jumpscare. It’s the kind of daring cinema that makes you feel dirty for having watched it, but it will linger in your mind once you think you’re done with it. It explores dynamics and complexities and an uncomfortable interiority that is both repulsive and addictive—especially as the story develops and weaves in unpredictable directions. It’s not a horror movie, but a psychological thriller of epic, interesting, undeniably feminist proportions, and it left me absolutely gagged. It also stars an impressively stacked cast, featuring Bill Nighy, Juno Temple, Phil Davis, and Joana Scanlan. This is a film I’ve been wanting to watch for so long—long before the clip of Judi Dench telling Cate Blanchett “you’re not young” started being used as a hilarious response on Twitter, but I was extra curious to watch when my search for viewing options took me to the old, reliable effedupmovies.com. Because I’m a sicko freako, I absolutely loved this bleak movie, even more than the bleak historical movie before it. I don’t mind a movie putting me in a weird, kinda bad mood if the journey there is worth it, and Notes on a Scandal was absolutely worth it. I’m not the first to sing the praises of Cate Blanchett, and I won’t be the last, but with the rise of AI and complacent consumerism, I am compelled to celebrate the real human beings who make me feel things—no matter how numb the world tries to make me. Thank you for reading along and letting me indulge in more intriguing films, my fellow cinephiles. Until next time, abolish all leaf blowers! Ciao 😘🍃
