Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.
The Five Obstructions is a genuinely one-of-a-kind documentary — a structured artistic duel between two filmmakers that functions simultaneously as creative experiment, psychological portrait, and meta-essay on cinema. The 'plot' (the escalating challenge structure) is conceptually brilliant, with each obstruction revealing new layers of both men's artistic philosophies. Cinematography earns a high mark because each remake is visually distinct and often stunning, particularly the Cuba and Bombay segments. Novelty is exceptional: no other documentary quite occupies this space between collaboration, provocation, therapy, and film theory. Acting is limited by the documentary format — Leth and von Trier perform themselves with varying degrees of self-consciousness, and it's not a conventional acting showcase. The ending, where von Trier forces Leth to narrate a film von Trier has secretly made 'for' him, is conceptually clever but slightly deflating as a resolution to the creative tension built up throughout.