Reflections: Screening

/
0 Comments
The Five Obstructions// Lars Von Trier and Jorgen Leth 






The idea behind this documentary style film was that Von Trier was to set his mentor, Leth, to remake his move The Perfect Human five times, with a different obstruction for him to overcome each time. 

The Perfect Human// Jorgen Leth (1967)



Obstructions
  1. Leth must remake the film in Cuba (but with no set) with no shot longer than 12 frames, and he must answer the questions posed in the original film; Leth successfully completes this task.
  2. Leth must remake the film in the worst place in the world but not show that place onscreen; additionally, Leth must play the role of "the man". The meal must be included but the woman is not to be included. Leth remakes the film in the red light district of Bombay, only partially hiding it behind a translucent screen.
  3. Because Leth failed to complete task 2 perfectly, von Trier punishes him, telling him to either remake the film in any way he chooses, or redo obstruction 2 in Bombay again. Leth chooses the first option and remakes it in Brusselsusing split-screen effects.
  4. Leth must remake the film as a cartoon. He does so with the aid of Bob Sabiston, a specialist in rotoscoping, who creates animated versions of shots from the previous films. As such the final product is technically an animation but not a cartoon. Nevertheless von Trier considers the task to be completed successfully.
  5. The fifth obstruction is that von Trier has already made the fifth version, but it must be credited as Leth's, and Leth must read a voice-over narration ostensibly from his own perspective but in fact written by von Trier.

Thoughts

At first the documentary style was a little confusing but I soon picked up the pace of the film. I liked the way it cut to show both directors' meet ups in between each obstruction and found it interesting to see the ideas and viewpoints each of them had. It was both funny and intriguing  to see Lars' reaction each time to the finished pieces that Leth produced. At times it did seem rather random/ odd though...I also had some trouble keeping up with the dialogue and watching the screen at the same time which is something I don't normally have a problem with when watching foreign films which was weird! Overall was an enjoyable and interesting watch. 





About Post Author

Morbi leo risus, porta ac consectetur ac, vestibulum at eros. Fusce dapibus, tellus ac cursus commodo, tortor mauris condimentum nibh, ut fermentum massa justo sit amet risus.

You may also like

No comments:

About Me

My Photo
Lauren Fox
Third year at UCA studying Digital Film and Screen Arts
View my complete profile

Popular Posts