In Manifesto, a multichannel video installation that ran at New York’s Park Avenue Armory until Jan. 8, Cate Blanchett plays a newscaster, a homeless man, a schoolteacher, a punk rocker, and a puppeteer (complete with mini–Cate Blanchett puppet), all of them delivering monologues stitched together from manifestoes whose authors range from Karl Marx to Lars von Trier.
In Manifesto, the 90-minute film set to make its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, Cate Blanchett does the same thing, only in less time. The trailer for the film version doesn’t offer any hints as to how Rosefeldt will adapt the original piece, which climaxes with all dozen of Blanchett’s personalities speaking in carefully harmonized monotones, to the linear mode of a feature film. But it does allow those who didn’t see the installation version, either in New York or during its previous runs in Melbourne or Berlin, to catch a glimpse of Blanchett in all her variously made up glories, as a ranting madman quoting Guy Debord or a teacher calmly instructing grade school students in the tenets of Dogme 95. Cate Blanchett might think it’s a bit much, but I hear Cate Blanchett loves it.
