FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS
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
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