Review

Review Date: 29-August-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

The Five Obstructions (2004)

In 1967, Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth made a funny little movie called "The Perfect Human," and for the past few years he has been battling depression in Haiti. These are all the facts I learned about the man from the sort-of documentary "The Five Obstructions," but it gave me a gratifying glimpse of his interior and that of the modern master of cinematic provocation, Lars von Trier. "The Five Obstructions" (itself a funny little movie) documents how von Trier challenged his friend and idol to remake "The Perfect Human" with various rules, or obstructions, imposed upon him. Along the way, it captures a whole lot more.

The movie opens with little hoopla or introduction, presenting a portion of Leth's original film (a stark, minimalist affair) and then moving into the particulars of von Trier's first experiment. He begins by placing logistical obstructions on Leth, which result in a colorful, rather exciting Cuban version of "The Perfect Human" with rapid-fire cuts no longer than a split second. Next, determined to inspire the sort of glorified agony that marks his own work, von Trier sends his subject to a place of horror (Leth chooses Bombay's red light district) and demands that the film created there suggest the surroundings without showing them. Here Leth's character begins to take shape, for he worries about the task before him but bends it to suit his taste. The disappointed von Trier then instructs Leth to do a 2002 version of the picture any way he likes (complete freedom being the obstruction), and after receiving a dreamy montage set in Brussels, he gets tough again by commissioning a cartoon. (It's cute to see these two intellectual, artistic types recoil from the thought of so lowbrow a thing. Working with an artist in Texas, Leth still delivers gold.)

While the different versions of the same short film make an interesting study, the real appeal of "The Five Obstructions" is its portrait of two artists who are indelibly human. At various points, von Trier is pegged as "perverse" and "self-flagellating," and these qualities come through as much as his monstrous arrogance. But as in his own dramas ("Breaking the Waves," "Dancer in the Dark"), he is undoubtedly, inescapably fascinating. He evinces a hunger to embrace --- nay, wallow in --- all of what it means to be alive (especially the painful stuff), and in this way stands in sharp contrast with Leth, who appears to combat a deep-seated fear of life with a determination to discover something aesthetically beautiful within it.

The clincher comes with the fifth obstruction, in which von Trier himself revises the film, using Leth as the perfect human, and reveals the true nature of his inspiration. The ending changes the tenor of the experiment from an arty game to a crucial moment in a deeply personal relationship; the viewer could feel like he was intruding if this view of von Trier addressing someone close to his heart had not been earned by what came before. Ultimately, Leth may have walked away from "The Five Obstructions" more exhausted than changed by the experience, for the goal was von Trier's all along and he seems to have achieved it. In so doing, he has also made a unique work that deals with art and man-as-object, but should touch anyone who can relate to human nature.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.