Review of The Five Obstructions (2003)

Lars von Trier invites his friend and mentor, Jorgen Leth, to participate in a series of exercizes—or Obstructions—in which Leth must re-shoot his best known film, The Perfect Man. With each re-shooting, von Trier introduces a list of rules that Leth must follow, intent on analyzing not the film, but the director behind it. Von Trier sees Leth as The Perfect Man—cool, calm, in control—and he wants to upset that. He wants desperately to get Leth to peer inside himself and see the imperfections, and the weakness that one feels against such nihilistic obstructions (one of which being no shot can be longer than 12 frames). Leth, however, is clearly a gifted director, and he manages to take every painful obstruction and make it work beautifully for his own purposes. He has an insatiable creative drive that is constantly searching for new solutions, new perspectives, and when he comes back from his shoot time after time with a successful film, von Trier starts to realize that Leth is unbreakable. In his nihilistic attempts to force another to view themselves as insignificant, he discovered his own sense of elitism and pettiness, and is humbled once again by his mentor. Any fan of film analysis and production will love this powerful and acutely insightful movie.