Man­i­festo – first look review

Being cast as 13 dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters in the same movie would be a dream for any actor world their salt. Few, though, could pull off such an almighty task with the same degree of flair and panache as Cate Blanchett. In Man­i­festo she appears to have been game for just about any­thing, offer­ing up some well-timed, light-heart­ed flour­ish­es in an often hard-to-access film.

Ger­man video artist Julian Rosefeldt’s adap­ta­tion of his own 2015 mul­ti-screen instal­la­tion is ambi­tious to say the least. At times, it labours long and hard over the mean­ing, impor­tance and, well, art of art – it will no doubt test the patience of audi­ences less inclined to embrace the anar­chic, free­wheel­ing nature of it all. Blanchett jumps between wild­ly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters (and accents, often in voiceover) with glee, deliv­er­ing a series of mono­logues that ques­tion, cel­e­brate and chas­tise dif­fer­ent aspects of the art world in equal mea­sure. Is it pre­ten­tious twad­dle, wor­thy art­house fair or some­thing out­ra­geous­ly play­ful and exper­i­men­tal, designed to chal­lenge and defy audi­ence expectations?

Some recur­ring sequences, such as a home­less char­ac­ter dredg­ing through a waste dis­pos­al site, are vir­tu­al­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble. Oth­ers are more engag­ing and obvi­ous­ly enter­tain­ing. A moth­er ser­mon­is­ing over grace before a fam­i­ly din­ner (with Blanchett’s real-life hus­band, Andrew Upton, mak­ing a rare on-screen appear­ance), and a mourn­er espous­ing the virtues of Dadaism, are a riot – both char­ac­ters ele­vate the piece beyond the con­fines of the art crowd. Anoth­er, a Russ­ian chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, espous­es the virtues of Fluxus to a dance troupe, all dressed like an army of young aliens. Else­where, a mod­el mak­er makes up a minia­ture ver­sion of her­self backstage.

The most play­ful scene of all, though, sees two ​“Cates” debat­ing the nature of art with­in a fic­ti­cious TV news envi­ron­ment – one, a red­head­ed TV news­cast­er, the oth­er a blonde reporter on loca­tion on a news feed, stand­ing under staged wet con­di­tions. Only a chain-smok­ing, foul-mouthed rock chick per­sona feels a lit­tle forced, even self-con­scious, in its exe­cu­tion. To try and make sense of it all – and find out where all the mono­logues come from – you’ll have to wait until the final credits.

What’s most impres­sive, beyond Blanchett’s tour de force performance(s), is the fact that the whole thing was appar­ent­ly shot in just 12 days, in and around Berlin. It is exquis­ite­ly pho­tographed by Christoph Krauss and scored by Nils Frahm and Ben Lukas Boy­sen. Only time will tell what becomes of this curi­ous film. It is dif­fi­cult to see it hav­ing much of a the­atri­cal run though – some­thing both direc­tor and star (and poten­tial investors) are sure­ly well aware of. Viewed in this light, as a piece of art-ori­ent­ed cin­e­ma, Man­i­festo con­fi­dent­ly ful­fils its ambi­tious intent with ease. And it’s great fun – if you can get into it.