30/08/2003 - A docu-drama about five attempts at finding The Perfect Man. The audience shows their appreciation for this minimalist work

Carsten Holst: videointervista

pplause rang out during and after the screening of Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth’s documentary-cum-drama entitled The five obstructions, which screened in Controcorrente.
Once again the Danish director pulled the rabbit out of the hat and surprised the audience with this Spartan story about the problems of reproducing art and the variety of interpretations it lends itself to.
Von Trier’s starting point was a 1967 short film by Leth entitled Det Perfekte Mennesker (The Perfect Man). The co-founder of the Dogme movement then applied five new criteria for a remake, with each one more complex and tricky than the last. From Cuba to the streets of Bombay, from animation to the final document directed by von Trier in person, the two directors play a high-risk game that gradually transforms itself into a sort of tribute. Furthermore, they achieve this without a care for the possible references to their work emerging.
The film is a continual work-in-progress and does not have a screenplay as such. Inevitably, this was something of a problem for the producers: “it was an authentic nightmare,” concurred Zentropa Real’s Carsten Holst. “It was impossible to set a budget and none of us knew how it would turn out in the end. All we knew was that they were going to make five distinct films: brick-by-brick.”
A very satisfied Jørgen Leth would be glad to repeat the experience: “for me, this is what filmmaking is all about. I took a gamble because I didn’t know just how far I could push myself. We entered an open space and explored it.”
The Five Obstructions will very likely benefit from a European distribution “this film goes against the mainstream, just like the section that it was selected for here,” added co-producer Gérard Morin. “There’s definitely a future for docu-fiction. In the 1950s fiction was the fruit of reality. Today, documentaries are a fictional take on reality.”

(Translated from Italian)