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A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I really wanted to love this film. I still want to like it a lot. I am a big fan of any kind of obstruction or limitation. I really enjoy formal precepts. Oulipo is an amazing thing. Did it produce "masterpieces"? By extension...It cleared the air. It revealed the machinery and "made" nature of literary production. It de - reified "inspiration" and/or "emotion" in art. These things are great...The reflexivity in Godard...amazing. OK, the artificiality in Dogville! Also amazing.But I didn't feel the tension between the "Obstructions" and their products. The game was obvious, but what was learned? Leth made a few movies, and they all circled around The Perfect Human, his film from 1967. But did they land? He remade it in Bombay. He made it into a cartoon. He made it in Cuba. He made it as a classic "Three Colors: Whatever" Eurotrash film (in Brussels). Maybe the moral is you can never make a (former) mentor into a student, and if you think you really want to, you probably should start teaching. Get 'em while they're young, while they're really impressionable. Talk about restrictions as a kind of craft; make the students aware of the need to work and explore rather than to sit around and wait for "inspiration". This is surely useful. But for Leth? He seems happy enough self - medicating in his little quasi - retirement paradise in Haiti...what has he done since this film?The Perfect Human is not really a Masterpiece, IMHO. But it has in incredible "look". Sometimes I really think that the sixties were really the highpoint of filmmaking. The look of films from that time is so etched - lifelike and artificial, both at the same time. The screen image, the chiaroscuro...the clothes, the manner. Far away from the thirties "Dream Factory", but still aware that the film is an object, a thing...The Five Obstructions has that shiny, sweaty video look. It looks too casual. I can't take leave, not at all. I want to find the object that it is compelling. But I don't.

A captivating experiment and one that delivers on all counts. The relationship between the two directors sparks off a challenge instigated by Von Trier for Leth to remake his 1967 short with a variety of obstructions. What then transpires is a glimpse into a creative mind left to re-cycle an old film and the results are fabulous. Easily the best two are the Cuban film and the Miami segment. They are the two with the most restrictions and the two which Leth fears producing the most. He confronts these fears head on and produces two dazzling films. The film explores the nature of creativity, the genesis and the complexity of it. How much can one control in film-making? Von Trier admits he likes to control everything. Leth says that there is always something that you cannot control once you have set up, and that he likes not being in total control. This reveals a man who likes to confront his demons, who likes to be in an uncomfortable place more than he admits. Von Trier wants Leth to make a film that leaves a mark on him, a scar but Leth is beyond this I believe. He turns in films that show just how creative he is. How he is able to remodel the narrative each time in a fresh way. It is Von Trier who ends up with egg on his face although I am inclined to think Von Trier knew exactly what he was doing. This is a consummate filmmaker and having generated this project once more he is the puppet master.

This documentary was a pleasant surprise. I saw the original short movie "The Perfect Human" before viewing this, which is about re-making "The Perfect Human" under different and more difficult circumstances (the five obstacles), and I recommend others to do the same. To truly enjoy this movie you should have some interest for art movies and movie-making in general. It is amusing to see the frustrations of the movie-maker in question, Jørgen Leth, as he is ordered to cripple his original "masterpiece". The movie shows how creativity and imagination is stimulated under the right circumstances. I felt inspired after viewing this movie and actually made my own version of the short movie together with some friends (still not cut, but it will probably be awful). All in all, interesting and fun but sometimes it gets me thinking that some of the chunks between the short movies should have been cut out.

The English title of this film - "The Five Obstructions" - makes you think of either a very complicated bowel problem or some third rate rock band. Neither image stirs much anticipation, but that is apposite. The wisdom of this film, supposedly about conceptual and technical issues in film-making, may be obvious to film historians, screenwriters and crypto-technicians, but it is entirely lost on me.It seems instead like either a conceited little tyrannical riff by von Trier, who is known as much for his immodesty and presumption as for his movies, or some mysterious insider joke, a sort of expensive parlor game, one that can only amuse von Trier, Jørgen Leth, his mentor and co-conspirator here, and a few others in the know.The whole thing is said to have been inspired by Leth's 1967 film, "The Perfect Human" (we see a few of its scenes in this film). Leth, chit-chatting with von Trier in the present, agrees to remake a particular segment of that film within the constraints of one or another rule ("obstruction") that von Trier trumps up and arbitrarily imposes.This is done five times, i.e., five shorts are created within this film, each using one of the five different constraints. These are, in turn: (1) no edit can be longer than 12 frames (i.e., that's the constraint for the first short Leth is to make); (2) the film must be shot in a miserable environment (in Bombay as it turns out); this, von Trier says, is to pose an ethical challenge; (3) the film must be shot in a setting of complete freedom, whatever that means; this time Brussels is chosen, though I was unaware that that city was known for its wild abandon; (4) the film must be animated, i.e., rendered in a cartoon form; and (5) the film is composed of Leth reading aloud a letter previously composed by von Trier for Leth, though the letter is framed as though it were vice versa, i.e., written by Leth to von Trier.The best part is the animated segment, using a technique producing images not unlike Richard Linklater's in "Waking Life," maybe better. Also pretty amusing is the first sequence, showing various rapidly shifting poses of a (Cuban?) man smoking a cigar. The rest is a colossal bore. (In Danish, English, French & Spanish) My rating: 5/10 (C). (Seen on 05/2/05). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.