I'm not giving Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto a rating because, really, it's a companion piece/re-imagining of an art exhibition that I didn't get to see when it came to New York City. The original installation was a multi-screen presentation where Cate Blanchett acted out 13 different manifestos as 13 different characters. My friends who saw the installation told me that the 13 films would periodically sync up, creating a cacophony that was the artwork's high point. Such a chorus only happens once in Rosefeldt's 90 minute feature adaptation: at the very end. The film is at its best when it embraces its own absurdity: Blanchett tearfully delivering a Dada manifesto at a funeral; Blanchett praying a lengthy pop art manifesto at a dinner table while her hungry sons and husband gaze lustily at the roast chicken; Blanchett as a schoolteacher exclaiming the Dogme 95 Manifesto as she corrects her students' classwork. But much of the film is just empty words which, if you're not intimately familiar with the manifestos themselves, wash over you like so many waves.
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