Cate Blanchett: Marquee Films Are Driven By Men For Men

Cate Blanchett has criticised big budget Hollywood blockbusters as being “driven by men, for men”.

Blanchett was talking to Yahoo while promoting her new film Carol, which sees the ‘Lord Of The Rings’ star play a married women in the 1950s who gets involved with a younger female shop assistant.

“I read a really interesting article in the Financial Times over the weekend,” said Blanchett, “that was talking about how at the advent of cinema people said it was medium for women because the bulk of audiences were female. I would hazard a guess that that was still the case, but the marquee films are driven by men for men.”

She was talking in response to the recent discussion on unequal pay for women in movies that was highlighted in an essay by Jennifer Lawrence.

“It’s not just the film industry, it’s the banking industry, it’s the media,” said Blanchett. “Equal pay for equal work. It’s also about access really and I think there’s a critical mass of women across all industries saying lets just move on… It’s also time to stop remarking on it. Every year you come with a film like ‘Carol’ and they say isn’t it great this year that there are a lot of great roles for women and I’m like ‘yeah there was last year, why are we still talking about it as if it’s unusual’! There were great roles at the advent of cinema.”

Blanchett’s co-star in ‘Carol’, Rooney Mara, believes the lack of good movies in Hollywood is a bigger problem than a supposed lack of female roles.

She said: “Maybe there are more great roles for men than women. I just think that there’s not that many great movies being made any more so there are less roles all around that are great. It took 11 years to make [Carol], its not just because of the subject matter, its just really hard to get a movie made like this.”

The film, based on the book by Patricia Highsmith, was languishing in development hell for a decade before producer Blanchett helped get it off the ground with acclaimed director Todd Haynes at the helm.

Explaining the protracted production, Blanchett said: “We didn’t want to make it any old way. It’s a very delicate film. It relies an enormous amount on atmosphere, on tension and on a way that our not making a piece of agitprop. Now that its been made by Todd Haynes you feel that it couldn’t have been made any other way. I think that’s a very gratifying feeling.”

“I think because Todd is so particular it feels like it has universal appeal. If it had been made ten years ago, I think looking back in retrospect, even if it had been made in exactly the same way, it would be viewed through a much more political prism but I think the conversation has evolved.”

Rooney Mara added: “It probably has to do with a few things, probably the subject matter maybe, audiences weren’t ready for it 11 years ago? But then it took 8 years to make ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, it takes a long time to get small independent movies made these days, that’s just the sad truth about our industry.”

Thankfully ‘Carol’, which has been tipped to win a bunch of Oscars, HAS made it onto our screens. It’s in cinemas now.