The Five Obstructions
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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

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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. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    80
    From its very first frames it exerts a powerful fascination.
  3. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    80
    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.
  4. 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
  2. CarlB.
    3
    The concept behind the film is interesting, but the film itself is boring.

See all 3 User Reviews

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