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Manifesto review: Cate Blanchett brings 13 characters to life in high-concept drama

Leading lady: Cate Blanchett in Manifesto
Leading lady: Cate Blanchett in Manifesto

Everyone loves Cate Blanchett, which is good news for German artist/film-maker Julian Rosefeldt. Blanchett appears in almost every frame of his polemic about polemics, channelling 13 different characters.

The trouble is, many of us would rather watch Blanchett play just one character. In Thor: Ragnarok. Because Thor is amusing and has a plot. Based on Rosefeldt’s 2015 video installation, Manifesto sees relatively ordinary people (a cockney punk and a Scottish tramp among them) delivering famous blueprints for art and life created by Karl Marx, Claes Oldenburg and many others.

After meeting the first few characters I was gripped by an overwhelming desire to nod off. Then I saw the light. Blanchett steps up to the podium at a hifalutin funeral. With supreme elegance she explains that the Dada philosophy, though flawed, is full of potential: “It’s still s***, but from now on we want to s*** in different colours.”

This line was written in 1916 by 20-year-old Tristan Tzara, a Romanian Jew who embraced every conflict in the 20th century (right up until the Algerian War) with a wide-open mind. The film doesn’t supply this information. It just finds a way to channel the sparkiness of his thinking, via Blanchett’s emotion-filled face.

If the aforementioned funeral is like a speed-date with Hamlet, another segment resembles a stroll through a Charlie Kaufman-esque dream. A puppeteer (Blanchett) discusses art as the camera roams over doll-versions of eminent figures. At the end, the character fondles a bald puppet and pops a wig onto its head. The creepy-cute marionette is mesmerising, not least because it has Blanchett’s face.

Here’s the loveliest surprise of all: Manifesto is funny. A passive-aggressive teacher (Blanchett) instructs obedient school-kids in the do and don’ts of Dogme-95. A family (played by Blanchett’s playwright husband, Andrew Upton, and the couple’s three sons), look bored and befuddled during a gushy ode to Pop art. Their expressions, like bolts of lightning, illuminate the landscape.

There’s also a laugh-out-loud sequence in which a glamorous US news anchor (Blanchett) raises questions about conceptual art while a dowdy, rain-lashed reporter (Blanchett) provides answers.

Possibly influenced by Chris Morris’s work, especially on The Day Today, Rosefeldt is playing with media conventions (it’s delicious, the way the news anchor slips between professional mode and folksy). She’s all style, which is precisely why the substance of the conversation makes an impression.

Of the 50 or so texts used in the film only four were written by women. And people of colour don’t figure at all (unless you count Mexican poet Maples Arce). Blanchett’s very presence puts the woman into Manifesto.

Still, there’s no disguising that this chameleon has a white face. I’m pretty sure Rosefeldt and Blanchett want this to be an inclusive experience. But there’s definitely a polemic to be written about who and what they’ve left out.

In the meantime, revel in this multiverse of Cates and rise above binary oppositions. Thor and Manifesto are equally fantastic. See them both.