Advanced Search Beta »
Basic Search Fields
The Five Obstructions
Metascore
79 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 21 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 21
  3. Negative: 0 out of 21
view
per page
  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. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    100
    A complete original. This ingenious, almost indescribable film won't remind you of anything else because there's nothing else like it.
  4. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    90
    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.
  5. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    89
    Riveting, and frankly it's great fun to see Leth best the smirky von Trier five times running.
  6. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    88
    Keep "Survivor" and "Fear Factor," and give me this spellbinding mind teaser, the ultimate game for movie buffs.
  7. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    88
    A sensational oddity. It sheds light on the creative process, on filmmaking and on the durability of friendship and professional respect despite the odds.
  8. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Marc Mohan
    83
    It's a treat to be diverted by a film that actually has a brain.
  9. 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.
  10. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    80
    From its very first frames it exerts a powerful fascination.
  11. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    80
    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.
  12. Variety
    Reviewed by: David Stratton
    80
    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.
  13. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    The Five Obstructions clearly calls for a sequel, in which Leth would require von Trier to remake "Dogville," despite Obstructions 6 through 10.
  14. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    75
    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.
  15. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    75
    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.
  16. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    75
    It all feels like a performance for the camera: von Trier as madman producer taunting the elder filmmaker.
  17. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Frank Scheck
    70
    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.
  18. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    70
    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.
  19. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    70
    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.
  20. 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.
  21. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    50
    In short, it's amusing only if you agree not to think very much about it.
prev next
Page:
  • 1

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.4 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 5 Ratings

User 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.… Full Review »
  2. CarlB.
    3
    The concept behind the film is interesting, but the film itself is boring.
See all user reviews »