With both a wink and a clenched fist, Manifesto signals strange and singular things. The incomparable Cate Blanchett shape-shifts across 13 personas, from hobo to scientist — and reinvigorates audacious declarations from the ages. Ideas, unruly and inciting, spill forth from artists and thinkers — from Sol LeWitt to F.T. Marinetti, Karl Marx to Yvonne Rainer, Werner Herzog to Fluxus — each embodied in another clever Blanchett guise. First presented as a site-specific art piece, the new film has a cockeyed, contagious charm that thrusts you onto the barricades while snickering at the absurdity of the effort. Delivering the film’s credo, schoolteacher Blanchett invokes director Jim Jarmusch, admonishing her young charges, “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.”(PS)