Old School Trumps New School in The Five Obstructions

The Five Obstructions is a 2003 Danish film by Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth. The film is a documentary, but incorporates lengthy sections of experimental films produced by the filmmakers. The premise is that Lars von Trier has created a challenge for his friend and mentor, Jørgen Leth, another filmmaker. Von Trier's favourite film is Leth's The Perfect Human (1967). Von Trier gives Leth the task of remaking The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different 'obstruction' (or obstacle) given by von Trier.

Lars von Trier, whose own films combine harsh intimacy with jarring theatricality, professes great admiration for The Perfect Human, which may be why he wants to smash it, describing it as ''a little gem we are now going to ruin.'' Arbitrary constraints were conjured up by von Trier. He beckons Leth from his home in Haiti to reshoot the movie in Havana, with the proviso that no shot could last more than 12 frames, which translates into half a second of screen time. Leth turned the stuttering staccato of abrupt jump cuts into elegant syncopation. The next version had to be shot in ''the worst place on earth,'' which turned out to be Mumbai's red light district on Faukland Road. von Trier, disgusted by the results -- ''It's a marvelous film, but you didn't follow the rules'' -- punishes Leth by ordering him to go back and do it again, and then when this order is refused, to make ''a film without rules.'' After that he had to remake The Perfect Human as a cartoon, for which he enlisted the help of Bob Sabiston, the a Texas-based computer genius.

Lars von Trier sees himself as a maniacal psychoanalyst. His goal is clearly to shatter Leth's nearly superhuman composure, to wrench him out of longstanding habits and techniques and to break down his aesthetic and psychological defenses. It is amusing and rather gratifying to watch him fail, since his restless provocations are in the end no match for Leth's implacably passive-aggressive reserve. Their battle of wills climaxes with a fifth obstruction, in which von Trier has already made the fifth version, but it must be credited as Leth's, and Leth must read a voice-over narration from his own perspective but in fact written by von Trier. All of his meddling failed to produce the desired result, which was to force Mr. Leth, a chilly perfectionist, to make an imperfect film. This amounts to an admission of defeat on von Trier's part. At stake are two divergent ideas about what art should be: Leth values control, formal balance and arm's-length irony, while von Trier is interested in making a mess. This is the collision !

At the Berlinale 2010, Lars von Trier, Martin Scorcese and Robert De Niro announced plans to work on a remake of Scorsese's film Taxi Driver. The film will be made with same restrictions as were used in The Five Obstructions.