Manifesto

Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto is a tricky film for me to fully endorse. It’s the definition of a curio, and a capital-A Art Film (or maybe even an all caps, billboard-sized ART FILM). I’m glad it exists, especially with the current homogenization and corporatization of movies we’re now knee deep in. But this isn’t a movie I can say I enjoyed watching, even if I didn’t mind it, necessarily. And it’s certainly not a film that’s ever going to stick with me, nor are there many people I’d fully recommend it to. Nothing’s particularly upsetting about the movie, for instance. It’s just that Manifesto‘s goal of being playfully pretentious doesn’t line up with what I look for out of a film, which is to be moved or entertained. Rosefeldt’s film did neither for me, even if I can perceive its worth as art.

The conceit here is twofold — and surprisingly simple — as Rosefeldt has chopped up bits and pieces of famous manifestos, from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel’s The Communist Manifesto to Jim Jarmusch’s “Golden Rules of Filmmaking,” with a mishmash of other texts mixed in between. These manifestos are then turned into monologues for Cate Blanchett, who plays a bevy of different, disparate characters, from a vagrant to a punk to a newscaster. Each character is placed in different, often imaginative situations, occasionally accompanied by some striking visual composition.

That’s the gist of the film — and beyond this, Manifesto does little from the perspective of a traditional narrative. Rosefeldt and Blanchett have called Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There (2007) an inspiration, while the film — tonally — reminds me a lot of the work of Leos Carax, but Manifesto is less conventional than either of those very unconventional touchstones. It is, after all, a movie with no plot and one performer, meaning that this is Blanchett’s film, really, along with the words of the artists and philosophers she, herself, is speaking. Because of this, obviously, much of your fascination or enjoyment falls on her shoulders. This has much to do with my I couldn’t connect with Manifesto. Too much of Blanchett’s performance (or, better worded, performances) feel jokey or over-the-top, not in a fun, scenery-chewing way, but one that’s a bit too cheeky and ironic. The sheen of irony that covers the movie really came to a head for me as I watched Blanchett as an uptight housewife reciting Claes Oldenburg’s occasionally abrasive “I am for an Art” to her preteen boys in a hokey American accent — a scene that felt cheap and easy.

This scene, along with Blanchett’s bevy of affected accents, makes for a film that lacks an amount of seriousness, like a high-minded episode of Saturday Night Live. Perhaps taking the air out of all this theory is the point, but having a point doesn’t necessarily make for great viewing. My guess is that the movie makes more sense as a work in the confines of its original form as a multiscreen art installation. As a movie, Manifesto constantly feels like more of an exercise than a film. And while it’s a strange exercise, it’s not one that seems to have much to say as a traditional film, and one I can’t get too excited over beyond general curiosity. Not rated. Now playing at Grail Moviehouse.