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Cate Blanchett has a professional sweet tooth and Brad Pitt is her movie candy.
"In terms of working with Brad, it's like chocolate," Blanchett told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival when their first film together, Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu's towering Babel, made its world premiere.
Blanchett and Pitt play an American married couple whose children are in the care of their Mexican nanny back in L.A. While struggling to keep their flagging marriage alive on a vacation in Morocco, Blanchett and Pitt find themselves stranded in a crisis situation in a remote village in Morocco. A random "terrorist" shooting has left one of them hovering near death.
It sounds gruesome but the actual film experience was upbeat, according to Blanchett, who gives the credit to Pitt. "He is glorious and wonderful and we really wanted to work together for quite a long time and to work together in quite an unexpected way."
They have certainly done that in Babel. That is why, despite missing Cannes while awaiting the birth of his child with Angelina Jolie -- he sent Cannes a congratulatory e-mail instead -- Pitt showed up at the Toronto International Film Festival in September to support the film at its North American premiere.
Pitt was gracious, threw no tantrums, made funny faces, dutifully signed autographs for fans, worked the crowds, played the perfect gentleman and even seemed to react well to the media at his press conference, despite initial misgivings (but no one in Toronto asked any stupid or rude questions about Brangelina).
In this case, Blanchett was missing because she was working on a new film but her approval of the finished film remains high. It is, she said at Cannes, "an astonishing, spiritual, interconnected masterpiece."
Pitt had a similarly strong, if less poetic, way to put it when he faced theToronto media.
"The movie itself now is exactly as he talked about, what he was after," Pitt said in praise of Inarritu's ambition. "I think it is a great achievement."
Closing in on 43 (his birthday is on Dec. 18), Pitt remains a Hollywood superstar for his genetics more than for his acknowledged talents as an actor. But Babel, no pretty-boy role, reminds us that he has done great work before in the service of unorthodox filmmakers. Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995) earned Pitt his first and only Oscar nomination, as best supporting actor. Fight Club (1999) is a savage masterwork which could have generated another nomination. Pitt's sterloing work in Babel is being discussed as an Oscar possibility, probably in the supporting actor category.
For his director, that would be the highest compliment of his ensemble casting.
While Pitt "is very, very good" at what he does in Babel, Inarritu told the Toronto Sun, "I think this is not a Brad Pitt film. It is not a Cate Blanchett film. It is not a Rinko Kikuchi film. It is about human beings.
"If I can make people forget that they are watching Brad Pitt, that they are watching just one more human being, then the film has succeeded."
For the Moroccan segment of the Babel shoot, Inarritu took his stars to the remote village of Quarzazate, a small outpost that, until the filmmakers helped out, had no electricity. Thanks to Babel, they are on the electrical grid on a permanent basis.
"It's a town where Brad could walk easily without being recognized," Inarritu said. "Most people didn't know who he was. And that was great because were were really surrounded by that atmosphere of people who were really pure."
According to Pitt, that meant he could just focus on acting. "It is actually very freeing in that sense where you can just concentrate on the work."
Inarritu confirms the result. "I think that Brad was always completely submerged and connected with the character, every day. There were no disruptions there -- nothing! It was very tough conditions, very tense moments, very uncomfortable, not a fancy shoot. All of us, were were there, we were working."
"For me," Pitt added in Toronto, "I appreciate that. Like Alejandro, I like an adventure. It is one of the perqs that we get to experience, to really get under the skin of a place. So I'm up for that."