Manipulation

David Balda’s Manipulation has lofty ambitions. It is a globe-trotting adventure about a shadowy organisation pulling the strings of global politics. But it is also a family drama, a twisted thriller, a romance, a coming-of-age story, with a brief excursion into investigative journalism, and, for a moment, even a chase film. A lot is going on, but Balda’s film becomes so entangled in its own web of intrigue that it struggles to find a way through. Its characters, caught in the same web, are the ones who suffer most.

Manipulation opens with Matteo (Radoslav Gavlas) attending an ominously cloaked meeting of men, among them his father. Matteo is new to the Green Lodge, an Illuminati-like society headed by the megalomaniacal Master (Pawel Lawrynowicz), and he has just received his first task: locate Father Vitus (Heino Ferch), who is in some way crucial to the nefarious cabal’s plans. As Matteo’s involvement in the organisation deepens, he begins to doubt whether the murderous, mega-wealthy secret society might actually be as benevolent as it claims. Spurred on by growing relationships with Anna (Anna Ctvrtnícková) and his Professor (Pavel Kríz), Matteo decides enough is enough. It is time to take the Green Lodge down.

A lot of film is crammed into Manipulation. Just as it appears to settle into a rhythm, the narrative veers off in another direction, chasing a new goal or introducing another idea. This is a shame, because the premise has genuine potential. A conspiracy thriller exploring how politics, extreme wealth and religion converge to sustain an almost unassailable institutional power could hardly be more timely. Yet the Green Lodge remains frustratingly opaque, its motivations too vaguely defined to establish the full extent of its threat or explain Matteo’s determination to destroy it. Instead of deepening its central mystery, the film continually distracts itself with new plot strands, until its many moving parts fail to coalesce into a coherent whole.

The film assembles a broad international cast, reinforcing the sense of a conspiracy that spans borders, but makes the confusing decision to have its characters speak in what appears to be their second language. It is difficult to tell whether the resulting stiffness stems from the language barrier or the performances themselves, but the effect is unmistakably stilted and removed (heavy use of ADR does little to help). The dialogue often feels rehearsed for linguistic precision rather than emotional truth, a particularly glaring weakness in a film so reliant on exposition. Its characters often feel less like people with competing interests and convictions than pieces moved around a board to advance the plot.

The actors are not wholly to blame; many of the problems originate in the script itself. Character development happens almost entirely off-screen, whether through a romance that materialises without warning (or chemistry), or major decisions that go unexplored. The film is so preoccupied with moving its plot forward that it rarely pauses to establish why its characters behave as they do, let alone what their choices mean to them. More time spent developing these relationships and motivations, at the expense of some of the convoluted plotting, might have given the story the emotional grounding it desperately needs. As it stands, the result is a profound disconnect from the characters and apathy towards their eventual fates.

Where Manipulation succeeds is in its cinematography. Its location shooting across Prague and Bologna makes excellent use of the cities’ grandeur and antiquity, while the detailed production design lends the film a suitably foreboding atmosphere. Yet even such accomplished visuals cannot compensate for a script that is both overly complicated and inert in its pathos. The result is a film whose elaborate web of intrigue conceals not some grand design, but a story that has lost sight of its own purpose.

Manipulation will be in UK Cinemas from 6th November