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Five Obstructions, The

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 21 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 5 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Documentary | Drama | Foreign
Written by:
Jørgen Leth
Lars von Trier
Asger Leth
Sophie Destin
Directed by:
Jørgen Leth
Lars von Trier
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 26, 2004
DVD: October 5, 2004
Running Time: 90 minutes, Color
Origin: Denmark / Switzerland / Belgium / France
Language(s): Danish, English, French & Spanish (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Patrick Bauchau, Lars von Trier, Jørgen Leth, Jacqueline Arenal, Daniel Hernández Rodríguez, Alexandra Vandernoot, Marie Dejaer, and Marie Dejaer
Lars von Trier, true to form, has a bizarre way of showing his regard for mentor Jørgen Leth whose 1967 short film The Perfect Human, he claims to have seen 20 times. Von Trier challenges Leth to remake the film following an increasingly difficult set of obstructions. (Film Forum)
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
This movie equivalent of Robert Rauschenberg's artwork "Erased de Kooning" is funny, ornery, and ultimately inspiring.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
As he rises to each challenge, you realize that von Trier, the most exalted of prankish sadists, has orchestrated the filmmaking equivalent of the story of Job. The Five Obstructions glories in art, life, and the faith that binds them.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
A complete original. This ingenious, almost indescribable film won't remind you of anything else because there's nothing else like it.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
The next time you hear a director complain about the studio or his stars or the weather or whatever, think of what Jorgen Leth achieved with Lars von Trier as his boss -- when five obstructions became five splendid opportunities.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Riveting, and frankly it's great fun to see Leth best the smirky von Trier five times running.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Staff (Not credited)
A sensational oddity. It sheds light on the creative process, on filmmaking and on the durability of friendship and professional respect despite the odds.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Keep "Survivor" and "Fear Factor," and give me this spellbinding mind teaser, the ultimate game for movie buffs.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
It's a treat to be diverted by a film that actually has a brain.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
From its very first frames it exerts a powerful fascination.
Read Full Review >Variety David Stratton
Though billed as a documentary, The Five Obstructions doesn't easily fall into any category. Perhaps it's best described as a game, in which a pair of Danish film directors from different generations spar with one another in a highly civilized, and surprisingly entertaining, fashion.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
Watching The Five Obstructions is at once like witnessing two chess masters playing dominoes and like spying on a series of therapy sessions. Mr. von Trier clearly sees himself as a maniacal psychoanalyst.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Even those who dismiss Von Trier as a talented sadist might reconsider after seeing this revealing and ultimately poignant documentary -- and the funny thing is, on the surface it's not even about him.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Part of what hooks you to this movie is how Leth outsmarts his taskmaster, and how the two men have divergent, almost incompatible aesthetic ideals.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
In The Five Obstructions, we meet the Danish filmmaker for an extended period, and he's exactly what a fan might hope and expect him to be like: impish, insightful, unpredictable, mildly sadistic and rigorously honest.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
It all feels like a performance for the camera: von Trier as madman producer taunting the elder filmmaker.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The Five Obstructions clearly calls for a sequel, in which Leth would require von Trier to remake "Dogville," despite Obstructions 6 through 10.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck
In this enjoyable if trivial battle between von Trier's psychodrama theatricality and Leth's cool formalism, it's ultimately the viewer who comes out the winner.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
An unclassifiable film-school exercise--one part documentary, one part psychodrama, and one part mock manifesto--The Five Obstructions mainly serves to illuminate the game-like nature of Lars von Trier's aesthetic project.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray
The film is also valuable for raising awareness about Leth, whose work hasn't been as widely recognized as that of his European contemporaries, but who now makes an impressive case for his skills, five times over.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Staff (Not credited)
As Leth overcomes each obstacle set before him, the film becomes a work of extraordinary artistry, intellectual exhilaration, emotional uplift, and outright affection.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
In short, it's amusing only if you agree not to think very much about it.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Carl B. gave it a3:
The concept behind the film is interesting, but the film itself is boring.
Chad S. gave it an8:
Mikheil Kalatozishvili's "Soy Cuba"(American title: "I am Cuba) used a traditional editing style to convey its communist ideology which sort of undermined their intent to be oppositional to first-world cinema. In Jorgen Leth's first film(set in Cuba), cineasts wake up because the two Danes make a correction on the 1964 classic by applying a Vertovian(Dziga Vertov) approach to editing(eyeblinks) that would've been helped strenghten its pro-Castro stance. "The Five Obstructions" is dazzling, sometimes infuriating. Jorgen Leth proclaims that all animated films are uninteresting, which would seem to infer that his own stab at a cartoon is better than "Fantasia", "Princess Mononoke", and Richard Linklater's "Waking Life", whom Leth owes a nod to. That said, the animated short is great; the Calcutta film, likewise, which Von Trier hillariously slams. Hillarious, because the author of the Dogma manifesto ignores his own obstructions(mainly the tenet which states that there be no genre) when he made "Dancer in the Dark". "The Five Obstructions", like Jonathan Caouette's "Tarnation", finds a new way to document real life.
Dmitry P. gave it a 10:
This fast-paced and endlessly surprising movie starts out uproariously funny, then transcends itself to become emotionally moving and, yes, profound.
