The Five Obstructions (2003/2004) (AKA
De fem benspaend)
Look at the perfect asshole.
Perhaps the most pointless, insipid,
frustrating, egotistical and pedantic film ever made,
"The Five Obstructions" is a piece of shit that just
wants to make you bitch-slap Lars Von Trier and tell
him to go park cars for a living. Better yet, this
asshole should run a one-man weather station in the
Arctic Circle, somewhere isolated where his fetid
thoughts could go unheard and his cinematically fecal-matter
splattered hands could never again taint the silver
screen. This guy is an asshole. And I hope he dies
soon.
This film is purportedly about Von
Trier working with another filmmaker, a guy named
Jorgen Leth, to make the same short film over and
over. Each time, Von Trier, the self-centered little
impish asshole, offers up constraints to Leth in order
to trip him up. However, truth be told, this film
is absolutely nothing like that short synopsis suggests.
It's just a muddled nonsensical mess.
First off, the five new short films
that are made here are remakes of Leth's original
short film "The Perfect Human" ("Det perfekte menneske"),
which was made in 1967. We are given flashes of this
original film throughout the film here (albeit mostly
in the first 3/5ths), but we never get to see the
whole short and so the very basic idea of the film
is completely unknown to us. How could we possible
compare, contrast or even comprehend these remakes
if we are not allowed to see the merely 13 minute
original? Well, to be honest, we aren't even really
allowed to see all five remakes in their total form
(except for the last one, but I'll get to that). One
presumes quite quickly here that the way to see this
film is going to be on the DVD, where all the elements
of film at play here, we presume, will be more readily
accessible because, we presume, the full length shorts
and remakes will be included in that format. Why this
truncated, 100 minute version of the film has been
unleashed to theaters is anybody's guess. Von Trier
certainly isn't afraid of boring his audience; anyone
who has seen the three-hour, Godawful "Dogville" knows
this. Why is this film so short?
Regardless, even though we haven't
been able to see the entire original short film, which
indeed looks very interesting and compelling (probably
because Von Trier has had absolutely nothing to do
with it), we are off to Cuba where Von Trier has set-up
the first set of obstructions for Leth: To shoot the
film somewhere he has never been before, to have no
cut over 12 frames, to answers some questions put
forth in the narration of the original, and to not
have sets. After a bit we see Leth's first "new" short
("The Perfect Human: Cuba") and it is quite interesting.
Von Trier views the film and realizes that the obstructions
he set forth for Leth have only aided him in the making
of this film. It is fresh, unique, compelling and
well-made.
At this point the film could end.
We see the point. A filmmaker given impediments while
trying to make a film will only work to make a better
film around these roadblocks. That's it. That's the
point of the film. The rest of this dung is only of
interest to film students and, in fact, this egotistical
garbage is simply like spreading an opulent feast
before a starving person and not allowing him to eat
when it comes to its intended audience of film students
and film scholars. Filmmakers are so fortunate to
make films and this privilege should not be taken
lightly. Young wannabee filmmakers who see this film
will be horrified by the amount of cinematic waste
that appears here. Von Trier could have taken the
money he used to complete this ludicrous and pointless
cinematic exercise and funded 10 young student films
that were creative, fresh and important. Instead he
wastes his money and his fame-cache on this cinematic,
psychologically posturing, pompous sewage. It's revolting.
Leth continues through the second
film to be challenged by the process and is sent to
"the most miserable place he can think of" (Bombay)
and forced to re-film a sequence of the film where
a huge dinner is eaten and he is also forced to star
in the film himself. He is supposed to have a plain
white backdrop but Leth ignores this convention. (What's
the point of setting up obstructions if they aren't
going to be abided by?) Still, Leth creates a stunning
and compelling short. On the streets of Bombay, with
hundreds of starving children and women as his backdrop,
he separates himself from them only by a hazy sheet
of plastic and eats his huge meal at an opulent table
with the faces of the starving behind him, acting
as backdrop. It is repulsive to view and perfectly
captures what Von Trier has in fact done here, created
a short film intended mainly for students of film
that flaunts its budget and high-mindedness as well
as its pointlessness in front of those who hunger
for the filmmaking tools such as budget and modern
equipment that he has so readily at his disposal.
What a conceited, wasteful son of a bitch!
After this segment the film loses
its way even more wildly, first suggesting it would
be an obstruction to give Leth total freedom (it's
not even close) and then by making him make a cartoon.
Von Trier makes it clear that this should be a "bad'
cartoon and Leth can't abide by this obstruction either
(thus rendering the film even more pointless). If
you want to make a serious cartoon in the new millennium,
there is only one person to talk to and that is Austin's
Bob Sabiston, the man responsible for the animated
"look" of Richard Linklater's "Waking Life." Leth
travels to Austin and meets with Sabiston and using
clips from the original film and the new shorts already
shot, the two create a short animated film that looks
very much like "Waking Life." While this film again
looks interesting, it has absolutely no relation to
the project as it is supposed to be constructed.
In the final "obstructions," Leth
is forced to have no hand in the filmmaking (Yawn!)
Von Trier makes the final short and forces Leth to
read narration written by Von Trier that sounds like
it is his own. As the final supposed insult, Von Trier
puts Leth's name in the credits. There is a great
deal of psychological posturing here as if Von Trier
had some sort of right to "fuck" with Leth. We are
given no history of these two men's relationship,
so we never understand how this project came to be,
let alone why it should exist. It is obvious why Leth
is here, Von Trier has money and is using him as a
workhorse to fuck with him cinematically, but the
fact that Leth allows himself to be subjugated to
this cinematic servitude is repulsive. Von Trier proves
the sickening message of his own "Dogville:" Given
the chance, people with power will be corrupted and
abuse their supposed inferiors. Hey Lars! Just because
you're an asshole doesn't mean the rest of us are
buddy. Go fuck yourself in your cinematic a-hole!
"See the perfect human fall down."
The objective point of this film has already been
made much earlier but Von Trier spells it out for
his audience, whom he assumes are idiots. Humans,
and in particular filmmakers, work better against
adversity. Obstructions only serve to make us more
creative, more intellectual, more focused. Von Trier,
his ego bombastically booming in this film, realizes
he has failed in hoping to trip up Leth. In playing
God, with his freshman- psychology-student logic exposed
as the idiocy it is, he realizes that he has only
helped Leth become a better filmmaker with his silly
roadblocks. He has failed. It would be nice to think
that Von Trier also means this message on a more grand
scale, something to the effect of: "What doesn't kill
us only makes us stronger" or "Faced with adversity,
man will find creative ways to prevail," but such
a grandiose message is never really implied here.
If Von Trier is hoping to create such a message with
this film, he fails miserably.
"See the perfect human fall down,"
the original film states as its subject enacts a collapse.
The fact that Von Trier would even consider presenting
himself as "the perfect human" in the first place
shows what an asshole he is. And just as we expect
from such a cinematic anus, the only logical conclusion
is that this film is his biggest piece of shit yet.
Notes:
The film debuted at the Toronto
Film Festival in 2003. It debuted in America at the
Sundance Film Festival in 2004. It's run in Denmark
began in November, 2003, and it began a run in U.S.
arthouses in May, 2004.
Viewed in September 2004 at the
Alamo Village in Austin
