Cate Blanchett plays 13 characters in German artist Julian Rosefeldt’s feature-length film based on his earlier multi-screen gallery installation exhibited in Berlin and New York. In a series of scenes (sometimes intercut with one another), the actress portrays people declaiming a medley of revolutionary manifestos, beginning with Karl Marx and followed by would-be artistic rebels, from Futurists, minimalists, and figures in the Fluxus movement, to surrealists, expressionists, and exponents of the Dogme 95 filmmaking school. At different times Blanchett adopts the guises of a homeless man, a news anchor, a wealthy capitalist, a puppeteer, a factory worker, and a scientist. Among the more amusing segments are ones in which she plays a Gloria Swanson-like choreographer rehearsing a bevy of dancers, a prim mother saying a prolonged grace at a meal as her husband and children fidget and giggle, a eulogist delivering a Dadaist diatribe at a funeral, and a teacher instructing her astonished young charges about filmmaking in the words of people like Stan Brakhage and Lars von Trier. Manifesto is an extended piece of recorded performance art, very well done from a technical perspective, with Blanchett clearly relishing the opportunity to take on so many rambunctious characters. Recommended. (F. Swietek)
Manifesto
FilmRise, 95 min., not rated, DVD: $19.95, Blu-ray: $24.95 Volume 33, Issue 4
Manifesto
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