The gods have been too kind to her. She's tall, gorgeous and almost garishly gifted. She has won more awards than there are awards, seemingly. To top off her list of crimes against equity (and Equity), she appears to be a decent person in a stable marriage. What else could fate bestow on this Australian paragon? Maybe an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, a tribute to her creepily persuasive incarnation of Bob Dylan, circa 1965, in I'm Not There?
Todd Haynes' fantasia imagines no fewer than six fictional versions of the singer-songwriter, but Blanchett's is the wow. Sucking on cigarettes as if for life support, deflecting intrusive questions with gnomic jokes, hunched over in isolation like Quasimodo, her Dylan seems caged by the celebrity she, or he, is redefining. Like her Queen Elizabeth, her Katharine Hepburn and her Veronica Guerin, Blanchett's Dylan is impersonation as critique, imitation raised to art.
A gal playing a guy is quite a stunt, but to Blanchett, the gulf dividing men and women is no wider than the one between, say, a queen and the ex-junkie she took on in Little Fish. Each role finds the actress submerging herself in the character; each is illuminated by her onscreen radiance. Whether playing royalty or commoner, male or female, Cate is great.