Blanchett’s not bad, but ‘Manifesto’ is overkill

Artistic and political manifestos are best consumed in small bites, a significant problem for Julian Rosefeldt’s new movie.

If anyone could pull this off, surely it would be Blanchett, and it’s fun, at least initially, to watch her glorying in the revelations, contradictions and absurdities of the documents she quotes.

Among her other roles are a homeless person, a TV news anchor (and the reporter with whom the anchor has an on-air chat), a puppeteer with a puppet who looks just like her, a hazmat-suited worker in what appears to be nuclear power plant and an autocratic Russian choreographer.

There are quotes from early works such as Tristan Tzara’s Dadaist manifesto of 1918 and from the Futurist and Fluxus movements, and later words from the filmmakers behind Dogme 95 and from Werner Herzog’s 1999 Minnesota Declaration.

There are some blunt ironies in the contrast between the quotations and the characters and contexts in which they are delivered: from a woman in widow’s weeds at a funeral or a CEO offering commands to her subordinates.

The manifestos are dense with meaning, full of paradoxes, wild imagery, anger, contempt and impossible dreams, and eager to contradict themselves and each other.

The cumulative effect is overkill, and all the sentiments begin to blend together into a free-floating rage at things as they are and a call for perpetual rebellion.