five obstructions

[pete]

SPOILER SPOILER CAN YOU EVEN SPOIL THIS MOVIE? SPOILER SPOILER

I had a friend who hated it simply because he was convinced that Von Trier already knew what the last obstruction was going to be from the beginning.  any opinions?

[Sal]

i was a bit let down by the last obstruction but i knew that's the way the movie had to end.  Shrug.  I preferred the other obstructions, those were the meat of the movie and were highly entertaining exercises whereas the last obstruction was like von trier summing up the reasons for why he did all those obstructions.  the other reason i didnt prefer it to the others was that it was footage wed already seen, not used to any specific effect, but more just backdrop since what we were hearing was more important than the image itself, whereas in the other obstructions, the visual element was always the strongest.

[pete]

review here:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-obstructions10f.html

I didn't even know the movie was still playing.

[hedwig]

[rustinglass]

I saw last night at the lisbon documentary film festival. I liked it very much. I think it was great the amount of respect they have for each other.

[grand theft sparrow]

TV ALERT


This is going to be on tonight (11/8) at 9PM on Sundance Channel.

[ono]

Now to figure out how to get the Sundance channel in 7 hours.

...

I got nothing.

[meatball]

rent the dvd, yea?

[grand theft sparrow]

Now that I've seen it, Pete (I know I'm a few months too late but for what its worth...), I have to agree with Sal:  

There's really no argument to say it isn't pretentious, but this pretense works for the movie.

It's like watching two guys creating mathematical theories, which is why I found it to be one of the more interesting films about filmmaking I've seen.  If you don't get what they're doing, sitting through the film isn't really going to help you understand.

But it's pretty funny to see Lars von Trier, instead of writing his own gushing cinematic love letter to Jorgen Leth, opt to make Leth do it for him.

[RegularKarate]

I finally watched this last night.  I really liked it.

I think Leth proved himself to be a better short-film maker than Trier.  

I was especially impressed with the first obstruction.

[The Obstruction]

I saw this one about half a year ago, i liked it as my author name referces to, but I agree that it's Pretentious, but that is also what make's this film stand out.
If one takes a hard look on the danish documentaries are they often very boring because of there subjects and lack of dedication to the genre documentary.
An attempt from the danish Tv station DR1 to kick start the genre failed, even though the hired Lars Von Trier to make a draft on some dogme rules for documenteries, and as this project so did every other danish documentary i have ever seen except for  The Five Obstructions and other Jørgen Leth movies which per defination is very Pretentious.