The Five Obstructions
I was really impressed with Jorgen Leth's film 'The Perfect Human' 1967. It showed a man and women in a set that was a white room performing tasks with a tongue in cheek voice over narration similar to a wildlife observation documentary. The actors / subjects performed tasks such as eating and walking, and the film displayed parts of their bodies as in a scientific study. I liked the simple design and presentation of the film and the random acts that the humans performed, along with - what turned out to be - improvised moments and dialogue.
For the film The Five Obstructions, Lars Von Trier met with Jorgen Leth, of whom he is a great admirer, and discussed the ideas behind the original film. As a project they agreed that Lars would challenge Jorgen to remake The Perfect Human five times and each time Lars would impose limitations on how the new film would be made. This whole process would be filmed throughout to show the meetings between the two directors and how Leth interprets and approaches the challenges set. Leth approached each film with confidence and a (mostly) positive attitude and with flexibility which meant that he could adapt his original idea of The Perfect Human film and introduce new ideas. For example, one of the restrictions placed on his Bombay film was to distance himself from the place and people, for this Leth used a translucent screen through which the people of Bombay could be seen watching him eat.
Of all the remade films I particularly enjoyed the animated version. The artwork was incredible and the ideas (including animated versions of scenes from the previous remade films) and planning and movement of the artwork worked very well to create a mysterious 'thriller' style animated film.
I thought the idea of the project was clever, in that watching The Perfect Human the viewer doesn't realise how many layers there are to the simple looking film. Once these layers were taken away and they weren't allowed to be used in the remakes then you appreciate the complexity of the original film.
Throughout most of the Five Obstructions film I was getting more and more irate with Von Trier and his manipulating, condescending manner towards Leth. I felt that for a director from the Dogme 95 school of film makers which believed in realism in film making, Von Trier should have rebelled against using the obvious set ups in the documentary device to show the process of the project, and maybe done a more complimentary narrative which didn't put down Leth as much as the documentary footage seemed to do. In the film Von Trier seemed to be playing puppet master to Leth and Leth was battling against Von Trier, and winning each round. By the end of the film when Von Trier announced that the limitation was to be that he had already made the film and that Leth provides the voice over scripted by Von Trier I realised that that was why there had been so many set ups in the documentary filming. The montage of footage coupled with the voice over did achieve a fitting tribute to Leth and reaffirmed Von Trier's admiration of Leth and his work.
Dekalog - On the Five Obstructions
This was an interesting article that discussed the meaning of style within the context of film. The author quotes the influential view of Richard Wollheim which state that 'every artist (as compared with a mere practitioner of a given art) has an individual style'. Hjort goes on to say that therefore 'individual style is thus typically aligned with inventiveness and innovation, with creativity in some sense of the term'.
The article goes on to analyse Individual Style and Cinematic Authorship and Individual Style, Salience and Discernability. It asks what individual style is to a film maker and how identify a given film practitioner's individual style. The article quotes David Bordwell's definition of film style "I take style to be a film's systematic and significant use of techniques of the medium. Those techniques fall into broad domains: mise en scene; framing, focus, control of colour values and other aspects of cinematography; editing; and sound. Style is, minimally, the texture of the film's images and sounds, the result of choices made by the filmmaker(s) in particular historical circumstances".
It was this recognition of filmmakers style that formed the basis of the experiment for The Five Obstructions. By imposing restrictions which would disable the filmmaker Leth's ability to incorporate his own aspects of style, we the viewer see the flexibility and improvisation that Leth must adopt in his approaches to recreating his film The Perfect Human five times to different briefs with differing restrictions.
The interesting aspect of The Five Obstructions, for me, was watching a well respected, naturally talented filmmaker recognise and have to fight against his instincts, and how traits of his natural way of working, indeed his individual style, seeps through, and how he justifies his natural urges in filmmaking. As Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park says "Nature will find a way!".
It was interesting reading this article now as I am currently reading Scorsese on Scorsese and in recounting his early days and interest in films it is evident how he now recognises his own individual style.
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