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21 Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Five Obstructions, The
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MPAA 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)
| 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: |
DVD: October 5, 2004 Theatrical: May 26, 2004 |
| RUNNING TIME: | 90 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: | Denmark / Switzerland / Belgium / France |
| LANGUAGE(S): | Danish, English, French & Spanish (with English subtitles) |
Original title "De Fem Benspænd"
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...
The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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.

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