Cate Blanchett: Queen of the screen (2)

Cate Blanchett: Queen of the screen (1)









Blanchett's best performances haven't always come in her most feted films. One of her finest (and surely most underrated) was as the frontierswoman in Ron Howard's The Missing. She plays Maggie, a mother in search of her teenage daughter, who has been kidnapped by Indians and white carpetbaggers planning to sell the daughter into prostitution in Mexico.



凱特最受歡迎的作品未必是她最好的演出。例如鬼影迷蹤，凱特飾演一個女兒被綁去做娼的母親。









What makes Blanchett's performance so striking is that blend of doubt and defiance. We understand Maggie's maternal devotion to her missing child. We know she has suffered indignities and hardship (it is implied that she has been raped) and also that she is full of prejudice. At the same time, Maggie is utterly dogged in her determination to get her daughter back. She has the same zeal as John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in The Searchers.



疑懼與不妥協的拿捏是凱特如此具有說服力的原因。我們可以理解凱特為人母的心情，我們知道凱特受了很多苦，本身也充滿偏見。另外一方面，凱特想奪回女兒的意志，和搜尋者的約翰韋恩沒什麼兩樣。









Before The Aviator and The Lord of the Rings, Blanchett seemed to be on a run of flops. Charlotte Gray (2001) failed at the box office and helped to sink the old FilmFour, one of the UK's most adventurous film companies. There was a sense at this stage – Elizabeth in 1998 notwithstanding – that Blanchett couldn't carry a film on her own. There was a tension at the heart of Charlotte Gray that reflected the doubts about the actress playing her. The film couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a hard-hitting, realist drama about treachery in wartime France or a romantic epic. Her character, a Scottish woman parachuted behind enemy lines, is supposed to be in fear for her life but is still made up and dressed as if for a Dior commercial.



在神鬼玩家和魔戒以前，凱特似乎成了票房毒藥。戰地有心人就差點把英國最大的片場拖垮了，先不管伊麗莎白，曾有段期間凱特被認為不具號召力。戰地有心人到底是寫實的戰爭片還是浪漫史詩？凱特照理說該擔憂自己的性命安危，卻弄得像在拍迪奧廣告一樣。









Bandits (2001) didn't catch audiences' imagination either, even if it proved that Blanchett, playing a housewife embroiled with mobsters, had a knack for screwball comedy to match that of Hepburn. Heaven (2002) showed Blanchett in a much more sombre groove, playing a young woman who commits a terrorist act (she plants a bomb but kills several innocent people by accident). There was a self-consciousness about the film-making – and Blanchett's performance – that stopped the film from pulling at the emotions.



終極土匪也沒人要看，即使凱特證明自己有和赫本媲美的搞笑本領。凱特在天堂奔馳展露較抑鬱的面向，該片內省而不訴求情感。









Still, no one had doubts about Blanchett's ability. "She's heart-stoppingly good, an exhilarating actor," said Anthony Minghella, who directed her in The Talented Mr Ripley. The problem wasn't so much her as the films she was appearing in. They had all the right credentials, but she appeared to be taking herself too seriously.



當然，沒有人質疑凱特的能力。「凱特令人屏息。」安東尼明格拉這樣形容凱特。天才雷普利有凱特出現的部份是比較不需要擔心的，但凱特搶戲搶過頭了。









Blanchett (born in 1969 to an American father and Australian mother) could have pursued a career as a stage actress. She was a star pupil at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated in 1992. She won plaudits for performances in such plays as Sweet Phoebe, Hamlet, The Tempest and The Seagull.



一九六九年次，父親是美國人，母親是澳洲人，凱特本來要往舞台劇發展的。一九九二年畢業於澳洲國家戲劇學院，甜蜜菲比，哈姆雷特，暴風雨以及海鷗都是這位明日之星的代表作。



找不到甜蜜菲比的中文名稱，只好自行翻譯。









Throughout her career, she has tried to continue working in theatre. The problem is that her celebrity now gets in the way of her stage work. When she took the role of Susan Traherne in a London revival of David Hare's Plenty, she was warned that taking six months off to appear in a play was – in Hollywood terms – career suicide. It's a refrain that has been repeated again and again, but it only seems to drive her on to do yet more stage work.



身為電影明星，凱特還是對舞台劇情有獨鍾。凱特要求挪出半年在倫敦演出大衛赫爾的富足，在好萊塢眼裡這根本是自殺。人們不斷提醒凱特這點，此舉似乎刺激她更往劇院發展。



富足同甜蜜菲比。









"Blanchett prowls the stage with a splendid combination of restless energy and helpless languor. She is like a beautiful but dangerous animal... it is marvellous to watch," The Australian wrote of her performance last year as Hedda Gabler in a Sydney Theatre Company production of Ibsen's play in a new adaptation by her husband, Andrew Upton. When the play transferred to Broadway, The New York Times was equally complimentary, calling Blanchett "a moody perpetual motion machine, twirling among several centuries' worth of acting styles. She variously brings to mind the deep-toned grandeur of a Bernhardt or Duse, the refined screwball stylings of Katharine Hepburn and a very contemporary self-satirising malcontent. All of which would be merely entertaining or irritating... except for the instances of genuine, revelatory brilliance that suddenly sear the air like a camera flash."



「凱特潛行於舞台，精力沛滿卻又倦怠無助。就像個只可遠觀的美麗生物。」澳洲同鄉相對凱特的海達嘉布樂有著以上的看法，該劇原著為易卜生，姐夫改編。移師百老匯也是備受讚譽，以下是紐約時報的評語：「永恆的情感，跨世紀的演技。她深沉的調性好比貝恩哈特，杜絲，或是凱薩琳赫本精準的喜劇風格，以及相當現代的犬儒自嘲。種種衝擊不是令人大為觀止就是惱怒生厭……除了真誠又富啟示的凱特，誰能凝止片刻如鎂光捕捉。」



Sarah Bernhardt 1844~1923

Eleonora Duse 1858~1924



淋了一場大雨－Hedda Gabler









As such reviews attest, Blanchett has a grandeur that most contemporary screen stars can only dream of. Now, directors have to wait for her. Shekhar Kapur admitted that he could not have conceived making a sequel to Elizabeth unless Blanchett had been ready to play the Queen again. "It's like with The Godfather," he says. "You couldn't replace Marlon Brando. You could replace everybody else, but you couldn't replace Marlon Brando."



類似的評論證實，凱特擁有其他明星只能妄想的偉大特質。現在想跟凱特合作不是一通電話就能解決的，謝科卡普認為沒有凱特就沒有伊莉莎白續集，「這道理和教父一樣，馬龍白蘭度是無可取代的，誰都可以更換，就是馬龍白蘭度不能。」









The challenge now will be to find screen roles that really stretch her. Ibsen heroines and Virgin Queens will put her on her mettle, but there is the danger she will lapse into mannerism and give more of those eccentric, overblown performances in parts she does not regard as a challenge.



找到讓凱特有發揮空間的角色更是個挑戰。易卜生的女主角和處女女王是凱特的拿手好戲，但凱特也有可能一個不小心，就陷入過度詮釋的危機。









Longevity, at least, shouldn't be a problem. Blanchett is such a striking actress, so adept at switching between leading roles and character parts, that her screen career should continue to thrive. Now 38, she is unlikely to become one of those stars who slowly fades from view.



年紀不會是個問題。三十八歲凱特在女主角與配角間都能找到定位，我相信凱特還有很寬廣的舞台等著她，絕對不會是那些悄悄消逝的殞星。









When she made her film debut in 1996 in Bruce Beresford's Paradise Road, about prisoners of the Japanese during the Second World War, she was cast opposite such formidable actresses as Glenn Close and Frances McDormand. She held her own. She equally assured opposite Ralph Fiennes in Gillian Armstrong's Oscar and Lucinda (1997), as a wealthy, poker-playing heiress. Then, early in her career, came the plum role in Elizabeth, which won her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.



凱特在處女作火線浮生錄，就和葛倫克羅絲和法蘭西絲麥朵曼這樣可怕的女演員對戲。奧斯卡與露辛達，和雷夫范恩斯打撲克牌。接著是伊莉莎白。









Blanchett dominates many of the films she is in. It's telling that her character often gives the movie its title, as with Elizabeth (1998), Charlotte Gray (2001) and Veronica Guerin (2003). Somehow, she combines a family life (she and Upton have two children) with a prolific film and stage career. Last year, she and Upton were appointed co-artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company; they take charge next year.



凱特的電影常以劇中角色作為片名，例如伊莉莎白，夏綠蒂葛蕾，薇若妮卡吉倫。和姐夫有兩個小孩，忙不完的片約和舞台劇，凱特在家庭與事業取得良好平衡。去年凱特和姐夫是雪梨戲劇公司的藝術總監，現在奧普頓賢伉儷有更大的發揮空間。









Again, Hollywood producers must fret that such a demanding job is career suicide. "The acceptance of the role as artistic directors of the company is not a dalliance," Blanchett insisted. She's on a three-year contract that allows her to take three months out each year to pursue other endeavours. There is little chance that she will ever again be as prolific on screen as she has been; in 2006 alone, she made Babel, The Good German and Notes on a Scandal.



這下子製片又得開始擔心凱特的好萊塢生涯了。「藝術總監這職位可不是說好玩的。」凱特簽的三年合約，給凱特每年三個月的空檔做其他想做的事。二零零六年的火線交錯，好德國人，醜聞筆記，以後大概很難再看到凱特如此多產了。









Still, Blanchett is astute enough to mix and match her projects. Cinema audiences may fear that she is about to disappear to Australia to appear in high-minded stage plays, but at about the same time she and Upton are taking the reins in Sydney, she will be seen opposite Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There's little chance she will slip from public consciousness.



凱特夠精明，電影和舞台劇都難不倒她。影迷或許正擔心凱特為了高尚的舞台劇，將減少在大螢幕上出現的頻率。但和姐夫在雪梨伸展的同時，阿姐正準備和印地安那福伯尋找水晶骷髏頭。短期內我們的阿姐是不會和廣大影迷們道別的。









Cate Blanchett: Queen of the screen