THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS
Directed by: Jørgen Leth & Lars von Trier.
Produced by: Carsten Holst.
Director of Photography: Dan Holmberg.
Edited by: Camilla Skousen & Morten Højbjerg.
Released by: Koch Lorber.
Country of Origin: Denmark. 90 min. Not Rated.

Director Lars von Trier assigns five different impediments to Danish experimental filmmaker Jørgen Leth. In each of the assignments, Leth is to remake his 12-minute 1967 film, “The Perfect Human,” an anthropological satire. Von Trier directs Leth, in the first challenge, to edit his film with no single shot longer than 12 frames. The result, shot in Cuba, is an amusing bombardment of frenetic images. For the second, Leth is to shoot his film in a “miserable place.” Leth chooses the red-light district in Bombay, India. This assignment reflects a sensibility the self-aware von Trier describes as satanic and vicious - qualities that are also reflected in the ordeals of his own heroines (like in the recent Dogville). The film follows their behind-the-scenes collaboration, with a finale of the five resulting and divergent films. Von Trier's treatment of the veteran Leth may here and there be reproachful, yet is always respectful. He acts more like a teacher than a peer. While The Five Obstructions may do little to win over von Tier detractors - who find his films, like these obstructions, too intellectually schematic - it will appeal to his fans and filmmakers, if for no other reason than it will remind them of film school. Kent Turner
May 26, 2004