Anna ten Bensel To express simply is to express nothing at all. Lars Von Trier is an absolute genius and Jorgen Leth certainly has what it takes to know how to fight pressure from Trier himself. It's absolutely amazing to watch to renown filmmakers challenge one another. As a young filmmaker and art advocate, to see Von Trier push Leth the way he does in this film is a sight to be seen. Leaving Leth exposed, the audience is able to capture what has never be captured or communicated before on film - Leth's depression. After reading Bjork's statement on Dancer in the Dark and what a mind blowing experience it was, as an audience member, I am now able to see how Trier can push you down and pull you back up. This challenge provided the perfect jumping off point for artists pushing each other to do greater things. Truly a must-see film for those contemporary film fanatics.

antcol8 I really wanted to love this film. I still want to like it a lot. I am a big fan of any kind of obstruction or limitation. I really enjoy formal precepts. Oulipo is an amazing thing. Did it produce "masterpieces"? By extension...It cleared the air. It revealed the machinery and "made" nature of literary production. It de - reified "inspiration" and/or "emotion" in art. These things are great...The reflexivity in Godard...amazing. OK, the artificiality in Dogville! Also amazing.But I didn't feel the tension between the "Obstructions" and their products. The game was obvious, but what was learned? Leth made a few movies, and they all circled around The Perfect Human, his film from 1967. But did they land? He remade it in Bombay. He made it into a cartoon. He made it in Cuba. He made it as a classic "Three Colors: Whatever" Eurotrash film (in Brussels). Maybe the moral is you can never make a (former) mentor into a student, and if you think you really want to, you probably should start teaching. Get 'em while they're young, while they're really impressionable. Talk about restrictions as a kind of craft; make the students aware of the need to work and explore rather than to sit around and wait for "inspiration". This is surely useful. But for Leth? He seems happy enough self - medicating in his little quasi - retirement paradise in Haiti...what has he done since this film?The Perfect Human is not really a Masterpiece, IMHO. But it has in incredible "look". Sometimes I really think that the sixties were really the highpoint of filmmaking. The look of films from that time is so etched - lifelike and artificial, both at the same time. The screen image, the chiaroscuro...the clothes, the manner. Far away from the thirties "Dream Factory", but still aware that the film is an object, a thing...The Five Obstructions has that shiny, sweaty video look. It looks too casual. I can't take leave, not at all. I want to find the object that it is compelling. But I don't.

D A Wildly inventive documentary experiments with alternate short film types as modern Danish mastermind Lars von Trier orders his friend and collaborator Jørgen Leth to reinterpret his classic short film "The Perfect Human" with five new orders to follow.The cinematic results yield five very interesting mini movies which are displayed throughout the behind-the-scenes footage of these two director's strategizing how to accomplish any given task.While fascinating purely from a technical love for cinema, The Five Obstructions ultimately feels like a pretentious and partially vacant exercise, exemplified best when von Trier's demanding arrogance leads to the underwhelming and pseudo-profound conclusion.

selfparody Remake a film several times, with several restrictions (they really aren't obstructions: they seem so minor that they shouldn't stop him from finishing the films) For a director who seems to love the medium as much as Jorgen Leth seems to, it should be interesting to see him go through the progress of overcoming the challenge...if the film were challenging to make.The film in question, The Perfect Human, is the sort of art film that has made the word "art" so reviled to audiences. It features a guy doing nothing so interesting as walking on a pure white set, jumping, shaving, etc. as a narrator drones on. It says absolutely nothing. Give anyone a 35 millimeter camera and some money to waste, and I guarantee you they could make this film, shot for shot.Not to sound like an action movie junkie, but maybe if there was something that happened in this movie that was hard to do, or a story line, it would have met with my approval. But no, we have a remake of absolutely nothing over and over again.The remakes are, or course, just as shallow and pointless, but, notably, they look great: lots of polish. But it's like polishing a ball of shoe polish: there is no reason to look at it.Occasionally, unintentional humor surfaces, such as when Lars tells Jorgen to go Bombay, and make it there without letting the surroundings, which are chosen specifically for their awfulness affect the work. In essence, " go make your shallow film surrounded by infinitely more interesting material" and, of course, Jorgen does let a little local flavor in, and this pisses Trier off a little.Ordinarily, I'd just give this a two or three for being full of itself and pointless, but I'm knocking it down further for one little scene: for no reason, they leave in a moment of Leth and Trier eating caviar with some drink. This, an obvious attempt at trying to show themselves as sophisticated, just rubs in the audience's face "we're so rich that we freely waste money on overpriced crap." It made me think of all the poor, struggling filmmakers who want what would be pocket change for these guys, but no, the rich have to waste it on their own egos.It was nice to see Leth give a woman in Bombay with a child a few quid. So I'll give it two instead.