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The Five Obstructions
The Five Obstructions Image
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Metascore
79 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 21 Critics What's this?

User Score
6.4 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 5 Ratings

Your Score
10 out of 10
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  • Summary: 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)

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 21
  3. Negative: 0 out of 21
  1. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    100
    This movie equivalent of Robert Rauschenberg's artwork "Erased de Kooning" is funny, ornery, and ultimately inspiring.
  2. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    100
    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.
  3. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    60
    As Leth overcomes each obstacle set before him, the film becomes a work of extraordinary artistry, intellectual exhilaration, emotional uplift, and outright affection.

See all 21 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 3
  3. Negative: 1 out of 3
  1. ChadS.
    8
    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.… Expand
    • 1 of 1 users said yes
  2. CarlB.
    3
    The concept behind the film is interesting, but the film itself is boring.
    • 0 of 1 users said yes

See all 3 User Reviews

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