In the year 2000, Lars von Trier, the 'enfant terrible' of cinema (and
chief provocateur at many a Cannes film festival) challenged his Haiti-based
fellow-Dane mentor/poet/director Jørgen Leth to remake a 13-minute surreal
short film 'The Perfect Human' (1968)... not once, but in five different
'obstructed' variations. The film opens with the two colleagues chatting
casually in Lars's dingy living room adorned by a dusty old school CRT TV.
"The Perfect Human is a little gem that we're now going to ruin" says Lars
with a glint of mephistophelean mischief in his eyes.
The tone of 'The Five Obstructions' (90 minutes of Blu-Ray) is one of dry,
deadpan barely-humour and joyful underproduction. Lars instructs the
cameraman to continue filming Jørgen while he takes two minutes to think silently. "I want you to make a crap film. I want to banalize you," Lars tells
his cinematic forebear with a sadistic yet loving level of control and
authority. The two directors share the occasional smile as if operating on a
buddy mentality, both acknowledging the tongue-in-cheek nature of the
experiment.
Let's start with a brief background: Lars Von Trier was the of pioneer of
the avant-garde Dogme 95 movement together with Thomas Vinterberg. They
spawned a signed declaration introducing self-imposed restrictions on their
film-making. The aim was to preserve purity of intent and artistic integrity
(story, acting and theme), and to prevent the churning out of shallow films
where technological trickery would steal the limelight. The only Lars von
Trier film to follow the movement 'to a tee' ended up being the provocative
'Idiots' (1998), but all of his subsequent works have featured elements of
self-restraint in the use of artificial special effects. The timing and
motivation of 'The Five Obstructions' are both byproducts of the same school
of thought.
Lars proposes five different improvised-on-the-spot obstructions to his
flustered colleague, Jørgen:
1) The first film needs to use choppy 12-frame edits, needs to be filmed
in Cuba (an improvised rule due to Jørgen smoking a cigar at the time of asking) but needs to answer all of
the original film's questions. Cuban dance and flickering imagery follow.
The documentary follows the mundane, strange and awkward insights
that Jørgen experiences on his travels. Low-key shaky cam musings reveal
moments of raw insecurity and self-doubt.
2) Lars wants to push his colleague further with a second film. He
instructs Jørgen to travel to the most wretched place on Earth and to play the main
character himself. Jørgen chooses the deprived red light district in Mumbai, the most
miserable place he remembers visiting. He sets up a transparent screen on
a busy street and dressed up in a black-tie suit, performs jumping jacks
and feasts on a succulent piece of fish, explaining that such a gourmet
meal warrants a glass of Chablis and the finest silverware. Behind the
screen, the bemused local folk stare at the opulence while the diner hums
: "Why is joy so whimsical? Why is happiness so brief?"
The striking Mumbai film is a triumphant and thought-provoking
interpretation of human 'perfection', one would assume? Not so, according
to Lars. "I'm very disappointed in you," he says. The film is too good.
The locals were not supposed to be shown, only Jørgen himself, to adequately verify whether the wretchedness of the
location rubbed onto his friend's demeanour. To resist putting the local
sights in the film was supposed to be the real challenge. Lars asks what
would be an adequate punishment for misapplying the rules. Jørgen says he'd rather not decide what to do, so Lars says that
either Jørgen needs to go back to Mumbai to film against a white wall or he
faces the punishment of getting no rules to work with for the next film.
Since Jørgen did not want to be left to his own devices, that is precisely what
he gets.
3) The next film has French-speaking actors and English narration: it is
a dreary film with daydreamy imagery of train tracks, chimneys and loud
hotel sex in Brussels. At one point, Jørgen gains inspiration from eavesdropping on rowdy times in the hotel
hallway. It is not clear whether the scene is scripted or spontaneous.
This is the least entertaining film.
4) The fourth film needs to be a cartoon. "But I hate
cartoons," Jørgen complains. "Me too, I f**king hate cartoons," Lars agrees. But he
wants Jørgen to squirm. The poet-director explains that although a crap film is
what Lars expects, he is too proud to succumb to mediocrity. Poetry
matters to him too much. With the help of a Texan animation company, a
polished and lyrical animated film is produced. It incorporates animated
editions of the other film variations and elicits sentimentality about the
human in a subtle way: a man dresses into a jacket multiple times in
succession, never comfortable in his perfect skin. Lars is pleased. It is
a cartoon. The feedback is short and to the point.
5) For the final film, Lars wants Jørgen to do nothing but to read a narration that Lars has prepared, and
to falsely assume director credit for work that he did not do. In the
narration, Jørgen expresses his displeasure in Lars forcing him to read words that
are not his own. Except that those words are also written by Lars. Are you
confused yet? Jørgen is made to declare his depressive traits and vulnerabilities. The
real obstruction was the opposite way around:Jørgen inflicted it on Lars by not allowing any film leave a true mark on
himself (by hiding his true self). The narration is set on a mellow
backdrop of scenes from the documentary itself.
'The Five Obstructions' is a memorable and unique personality study that
veers into vacuous musings and airy pretence at times. It uses 'torturous
awkwardness' as a tool to explore what art and inspiration mean. It is a
fascinating watch for fans of cinema who are not easily distracted by
experimental/meta constructions and who have patience to be challenged. The
friendship and gentle respect between mentor and apprentice comes through,
despite the jokingly sadistic nature of the asks. Films 2 and 4 were the
highlights, as well as the clips from the original 1968 classic, dispersed
throughout the runtime of the documentary. While watching, you will learn
many 'indispensable' facts about life: for example, that caviar should be
consumed using a bone spoon rather than a metallic one.
Extra remarks:
The Blu-Ray is part of Curzon Cinema's beautiful new collection (2023) of
von Trier films. The box is sturdy, has two 7-disc serpentine jewel cases
with lush art, a book of essays (left-leaning
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek reviews Melancholia, making the case
for it being a tool for understanding clinical depression) and there are
four special art posters for collectors (including the famous Dogme 95
declarations, if you fancy hanging it on your bedroom wall). The film
'Dancer in the Dark' is missing (rumour is that the HD version was of poor
image quality), and another omission is The Kingdom (Riget)
series.
The disc for 'The Five Obstructions' contains a rare 36-minute
experimental black-and-white film by a 22-year old Lars von Trier
from 1978: The Orchid Gardener. The film starts with several minutes of
ticking emanating from what looks like a birdless cuckoo clock. The disc
also contains five minutes of well-spoken musings by film-maker Ari Aster
(Midsommar, Hereditary).
Wikipedia reveals that Jørgen Leth lived in Haiti until an earthquake destroyed most of his
belongings in 2010. He continued to live there with friends for half of
the year until 2013. He got into media trouble for admitting (in graphic
detail) his sexual relations with the 17-year old daughter of his Haitian
cook in an autobiography called 'The Imperfect Human'. Amid the
controversy, Lars (who himself was accused of sexual harrassment by Björk)
was supportive of the release of Erotic Man in 2010 and acted as executive
producer. I choose not to speculate on specifics of such
matters.
Thank you to Mike for inviting guest reviews. I look forward to
contributing more of these in good time.
- Nicholas Korpelainen
Many thanks to my good friend Nicholas Korpelainen for his excellent review. It's the first guest review in my blog since 2016, and I hope there will be many more.
ReplyDeleteI confess that I haven't seen "The Five Obstructions". Based on the description, it sounds like a highly experimental film. Or films. I've seen several of Lars von Trier's later films. He's a director that I respect more than I like. He makes films with a message, rather than attempting to excite or animate the viewer. For instance, in the film "Nymphomaniac" he shows many explicit sex scenes, but they're overlaid with philosophical explanations and so clinical that they're hardly arousing. In the film "Melancholia" we see the end of the world, but instead of panic and screaming the main character accepts it stoically. Lars von Trier never gives us what we expect from a feature film. "The Five Obstructions" is one of his earliest films, and it seems to be more extreme than his later offerings.
Thank you! Melancholia and some of the others were conceived while Lars was in therapy for clinical depression. The feeling of happy acceptance of the apocalypse is a special feature of the illness. It may not be arousing to watch the films but it is deeply unsettling to watch them....
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