The Five Obstructions

In this film the director Lars Von Trier convinces an older director that he admires (Jørgen Leth) to remake a film that Leth made early in his career called "The Perfect Human". However he must remake it 5 times, each time with a different set of "obstructions" (devised by Von Trier) in order to get the director to think in a different way.

The obstructions

1. Leth must remake the film in Cuba (but with no set) with no shot longer than 12 frames, and he must answer the questions posed in the original film; Leth successfully completes this task.
2. Leth must remake the film in the worst place in the world but not show that place onscreen; additionally, Leth must play the role of "the man". The meal must be included but the woman is not to be included. Leth remakes the film in the red light district of Bombay, only partially hiding it behind a translucent screen.
3. Because Leth failed to complete task 2 perfectly, von Trier punishes him, telling him to either remake the film in any way he chooses, or redo obstruction 2 in Bombay again. Leth chooses the first option and remakes it in Brussels using split-screen effects.
4. Leth must remake the film as a cartoon. He does so with the aid of Bob Sabiston, a specialist in rotoscoping, who creates animated versions of shots from the previous films. As such the final product is technically an animation but not a cartoon. Nevertheless von Trier considers the task to be completed successfully.
5. The fifth obstruction is that von Trier has already made the fifth version, but it must be credited as Leth's, and Leth must read a voice-over narration ostensibly from his own perspective but in fact written by von Trier.

For me the original film (The Perfect Human) was an interesting watch. While I didn't enjoy it greatly I appreciated the irony of the ideas shown in the film and the acting itself. It was also shot particularly well in places I thought and even a little humorous. I could certainly see why someone like Lars Von Trier would admire it so much.

The Five Obstructions as a film I enjoyed a fair bit when I watched it. There was something fascinating (if self indulgent) about watching these two directors discuss their movies in this unusual way. I enjoyed a couple of the completed remakes of the film as little experimental films. I also thought it ended on quite a sweet note with Von Trier's narration that he wrote for Leth.

The most interesting thing about this film to me, however, is the idea of the obstructions and what they can do for a film maker. For our projects we were given similar obstructions to work around and this certainly got us thinking about our films in different ways.