Cate Blanchett can play just about anyone or anything. Nearly a decade ago, Blanchett was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for one of the most unconventional roles of the decade: a 1960s era Bob Dylan in the fictionalized biopic I'm Not There. Since then, she's played an elf, the love interest of a guy aging backward, and won an Oscar for Best Actress for channelling Woody Allen. (Need an actress to put on a tour de force performance as a tree in the background of a scene? Get Cast Blanchett—and she'll probably win all the awards for it.)
So, it would only make sense that, in order to challenge herself, Blanchett would star in a film in which she plays 13 different roles. In Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto, Blanchett plays everything from a homeless man, a newscaster, and a school teacher. The film just finished up as an installation at the Park Avenue Armory, which described the work as "a collage of artistic declarations from the past century reinterpreted as poetic monologues to provoke timeless questions about the gendered, social, and political contexts that shape the artist's role in society."
If anyone can pull something like that off, it's Cate Blanchett. A 94-minute version of the film installation will premiere at Sundance next week.
