Introduction
In 1967, Jørgen Leth, a young Danish
filmmaker, directed a short film called The
Perfect Human. Leth’s film was a mock anthropological study of the perfect
Danish man and woman living their normal lives within an enclosed environment.
Topics of discussion include how they eat, how they dress, how they jump and
how they fall. Since its release, Leth’s film has come to be recognized as one
of the greatest experimental films ever created. In 2003, Lars von Trier, the
current poster child for Danish cinema, decided that The Perfect Human must be remade. In the Leth/von Trier co-directed
film, The Five Obstructions, Lars von
Trier “forces” one of the inspirational forces behind his own films, to remake
one of von Trier’s favourite films five different times. Each time, von Trier
adds several obstructions, making Leth’s job more difficult and seemingly
trying to make him fail. The Five
Obstructions is, technically speaking, a documentary which tells the tale
(and shows the final products) of the creation of these five remakes. However,
the film also works as a biographical documentary, taking the viewer deeper
into the lives of these two individuals and their rivalry-laden friendship.
The
Five Obstructions poses a lot of questions about the nature of remakes, the
nature of filmmaking and even the nature of life and humanity. In this film,
henceforth loosely known as “the remake”, some of the questions that Leth and
von Trier ask include what can the remake tell about the “remaker”? If a film
is remade by its original creator, is it the same? Is it more authentic or is
it corrupted? Do age, experience and life changes distort the original idea,
for better or for worse? The questions are taken even further when it becomes
obvious that von Trier’s role in the film process is not a passive one. Then,
the question becomes, who is the filmmaker anyway? Lars von Trier plays the
role of a sadistic producer attempting to restrict Leth, in order to get the
film that he wants, while Leth attempts to inject his own views into a “studio”
film. It is almost like the situation of the Hollywood auteurs of the 1940s and
1950s. Is the filmmaker in this case the artist or the financer? The Five Obstructions is a fascinating
look at The Perfect Human, the mind
behind it and the man who wants to play the role of Frankenstein and bring it
back to life.
The
Five Obstructions, the Perfect Human and the Aging of Jørgen Leth
In his study of Alfred Hitchcock,
Stuart Y. McDougal claims that Hitchcock remade scenes, shots or sometimes even
whole stories throughout his illustrious career (McDougal, 53). Hitchcock only
technically made one acknowledged remake. In comparing the original The Man who Knew Too Much from 1934 to
its remake of the same title in 1956, Hitchcock claimed that “the first version
is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional”
(Truffaut, 65). Putting these two together brings about another truism; a
director who remakes his or her own work is essentially remaking his or her own
self. In other words, when a filmmaker returns to the well and remakes an
earlier work, he or she is recreating it with all of the added ideas and
experiences that have been acquired over the last years. This would explain why
Michael Haneke’s cast a big star in Funny
Games, why George Sluizer removed the important cynicism from the Vanishing and why Howard Hawks
decided to remake Ball of Fire as a
musical. Since The Five Obstructions
is so self-aware, it ends up answering this same question, this question of
why, for Jørgen Leth. It should, however, be noted that this film could very
well be lying to its audience, as certain sequences, which will be mentioned in
time, seem a little too uncharacteristic or out of place.
Before one can study the effects of
a remake, one must dissect the original. Jørgen Leth’s The Perfect Human seems to dispel the myth that the human being,
even the perfect human being, is anything special. The films shows that these
“perfect humans” are just as fragile as anything else, as they are visually
vivisected, their body parts displayed and their faults exposed, while an
unseen narrator asks a series of questions about what makes a perfect human.
The perfect human is vulnerable and self-obsessed. The perfect human wants
attention, but fails to notice when others are watching him or her. The perfect
human is rich enough to spend his or her day in a tuxedo or an expensive dress
and eat a gourmet meal nightly, but the money has not brought him or her
happiness. The perfect human is insecure, depressed and bored! In short, it
becomes clear that Leth, the thirty year old artist making short films, did not
have a very positive view of humans or perhaps even the world that they
inhabited, in general. Then, the question becomes whether, in the thirty six
years after completing the Perfect Human,
Leth has changed his mind?
The
Five Obstructions’ mission statement seems to be clear to Lars von Trier,
who simply states that the original film is “a little gem we will now ruin”. By
the time the first film is finished, it becomes clear that Leth has definitely
changed. The first obstructions were that the film had to be filmed in Cuba,
with no set, shots no longer than twelve frames (which was described as an
attempt at being destructive) and, in order to remove all subtlety, the film
had to answer all the questions that were asked in the original film. This first
obstruction does not push Leth towards many boundaries, but a new visual style
becomes clear. For example, this film is much more glamorous than its
predecessor, with a larger focus on the erotic. A feeling of leftist revolution
is still visible in the film, but it is overpowered by the techniques of the
imperialists, which makes sense when one realizes that Leth has left Denmark
since the filming of the Perfect Human,
residing in Haiti while filming was occurring. It is only with the second
obstruction that the repressed surfaces.
While “snacking” on caviar and
vodka, von Trier tells Leth that he wants to take away his perfection. His plan
for this is to send him to the most miserable place in the world. This
obstruction, which ends up filming in Bombay, India’s red light district, will
be filmed in the middle of misery, but it will not show it. Furthermore, this
completed film will only consist of the man, who will be played by Leth
himself, and the meal. This obstruction may be one of the most unethical films
ever put on celluloid and even this lack of ethics has several layers to it. As
Susan Dwyer explains, one of the main issues within the ethics of documentary
filmmaking is the level to which the subject of the documentary is exploited
(2). This becomes an issue when the filmmaker attempts to be sympathetic to the
subject. However, in this case, where von Trier is actually attempting to be
unethical, that becomes a whole new issue. When von Trier sets these particular
obstructions, the most important part is that the suffering should remain on
the peripheries and be entirely invisible. In other words, this film could have
very easily been filmed in the richest neighbourhood of Luxembourg, in order to
avoid the ethical implications involved. However, Leth, in a brilliant twist
which he credits to his director of photography, Dan Holmberg, decides to
subvert this particular obstruction by placing a clear barrier between himself
and the suffering masses, so that they will appear on the film. This is obviously
Jørgen Leth’s attempt at fighting back his personal sense of wrongdoing. That
still ignores the question of whether even accepting such a task is moral. The
artist’s job is often to break taboos and do the unthinkable, but how far is
too far? In a segment later in the film, von Trier asks Leth if he would be
willing to film a dying child in a refugee camp, but Leth states that even he
is not that perverse. Meanwhile, the Bombay segment is filmed in front of
several children, either young prostitutes or children of prostitutes, and a
woman with a child. Eating a gourmet meal in front of the suffering, even if it
is to make a point, is an objectively disgusting activity. Especially when one
adds in the fact that these people and their suffering is used merely to point
out that Leth is affected by it (Dwyer, 9). Leth was the one who picked this
particular area, because he felt that it was a “horror show”. Obviously, even
if he claims that he was unaffected by it, that can be ignored as a lie. So,
the questions again becomes, what’s the point? Why must one prolong suffering
in a neo-colonized country just to prove a paltry point? Another interesting
item of note is that, while this activity is being prepared, Leth is having
another ethical crisis. According to Leth, the meal sequence from the original
film was almost entirely improvised by Claus Nissen. So, the problem becomes
whether he can use Nissen’s lines and mannerisms without committing an act of
plagiarism. This will be discussed in more details later.
After the Bombay obstruction, von
Trier chastised Leth, since he had not made the film that was requested. Von
Trier decides that Leth must go back to Bombay and shoot the film that von
Trier asked for, which Leth refuses (again, why could he not refuse this
obstruction the first time around?). Leth’s ethical side comes out here when he
claims that he shot the film “cold-blooded and unscrupulous[ly]” and that,
after filming this sequence, he felt that he had made a “Faust-like deal”. So,
as a “punishment”, Leth has to make the third film any way he wants to, without
any obstructions, unless he is willing to go back to Bombay. So, the third
obstruction, filmed in Brussels, Belgium ends up being a film shot almost
entirely in a split-screen format, with the latest technologies on display in
perhaps the most commercial obstruction in the series. This film, the first to
be shot in English with a crisp look missing from any of the others, looks like
the film of an artist attempting to sell out to a community that refuses to
buy. Another thing that shows in this particular obstruction is just how old
Leth seems to feel now. If one were to look at the original man in the Perfect Human as a surrogate for
Leth, which becomes more blatant when Leth plays him in the second obstruction,
one can trace Leth’s evolution since the filming of the original film. Then,
Leth was a young artist; he was cynical, but he was still full of life. In
Cuba, he was still young, perhaps a decade along, and still able to dance and
move. By Bombay, when Leth takes over his own role, the audience is offered a
vision of a man past his prime; a man who cannot fall down and who gets lost
trying to navigate the world. By the Brussels obstruction, Leth decides to cast
Patrick Bauchau, an actor who worked with Erik Rohmer at the age of 29 and has
since washed up, relegated to roles on television and cheaply-made B-films. The
fact that Leth and Bauchau were born within two years of each other seems to
send the message home: Leth is afraid of aging. He is afraid of becoming an
imperfect human. While he used to loathe that
perfect human in his thirties, he now envies him.
The
fourth obstruction, a cartoon constructed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, only
furthers this old man hypothesis. Leth and von Trier both admit to hating
cartoons, a symbol of childhood, and Leth more or less refuses to truly commit
to the obstruction. In the end, he creates a rotoscoped film using footage from
the previous obstructions and several Danish films. Again, like in Brussels,
Leth embraces technological advancements, while refusing to return to his childhood.
The
Fifth Obstruction
The fifth and final obstruction
brings up many questions that are not asked in the earlier obstructions. This
final obstruction is to be directed by Lars von Trier, but still credited as
directed by Jørgen Leth. This obstruction will be composed of film shot while
shooting as Leth prepared and filmed the first four obstructions. All Leth has
to do is a voice-over consisting of a fake letter, written by von Trier in the
guise of a letter written by Leth to von Trier. The final product looks like an
in memorial video shown at an awards show, with black and white footage of Leth
taking part in various activities. However, the audio tells a different story. The
audio tells von Trier that he failed in his mission. While he attempted to make
Leth stumble and fall, Leth simply became more and more confident and in the
end, it was von Trier who stumbled. This final obstruction brings out another
question about the film. How much of this film is real, unscripted documentary
and how much of it is scripted fiction created by a man who wishes to tell a
conventional story.
Blurring
between Fact and Fiction
By the end of the fifth obstruction,
the Five Obstructions starts to look
like a narrative feature. While the
Perfect Human and its remakes are made, the in-between segments tell the
story of a superhero by the name of Jørgen Leth and a super villain by the name
of Lars von Trier. In his director’s statement, von Trier mentions that with
this film, he was “searching for something between fiction and fact” (Hjort,
xvi). These segments between the films suggest that von Trier is perhaps that
perfect human that Leth hated, who has come back to destroy him. This may be a
bit farfetched, but fictional elements pop up throughout this film, including
the ending, where the von Trier character (a character that he has been
developing throughout his filmmaking and interviews) admits defeat to the
greater Leth, going so far as to write a fake letter to himself.
A more important blurring element in
this film is related to Leitch’s idea of disavowal. Disavowal, in its original
sense, involves the relationship between a remake, an original and a source
material, where the remake attempts to show the errors that the original
adaptation has made, in its adaptation of the source material, as a betrayal
which the remake will avoid (Leitch, 51). In this case, in a more fictitious
state, von Trier attempts to show that this same betrayal has occurred.
However, while the source material is the
Perfect Human, the original adaptation is Jørgen Leth, the decrepit, old
man who is as far away from perfection as possible. Von Trier mentions that he
knows Leth better than even Leth knows himself and that the Five Obstructions is an attempt to help him. So, the remake
then takes the form of the true remake, in an attempt to remake Jørgen Leth and
bring him back to perfection. In the end, von Trier’s letter mentions that Leth
is the perfect human (the line “this is how the perfect human falls” is
accompanied by an image of this old man falling) and that his perfection was
never lost. So, the disavowal that was attempted resulted in a failure!
Authorship:
Whose Film is it Anyway?
As a final question, the subject of
authorship is brought up several times throughout the Five Obstructions. This is to be expected with most remakes, as
the creator of the original is held as somewhat responsible for the creation of
the remake. However, in this case, these matters are complicated owing both to
the fact that the creator of the Perfect
Human is, obviously, at least half-responsible for its remake, but also
because the two creators are in a constant power game for control.
There is something of a subgenre of
films which one may call the master-student co-productions. Essentially, these
are films like Lightning over Water
and Tigrero: A Film That was Never Made
where a protégé (Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch, respectively) gets the
opportunity to co-direct a film with one of his or her cinematic heroes (Nicholas
Ray and Samuel Fuller, respectively). However, these films often take the form
of reverence films, where the protégé spends most of the films basking in the
glory of the individual who inspired him or her and whose brilliance he or she
wishes to, one day, reach. The Five
Obstructions is nothing like that. As has been mentioned so many times
already, this film is, at least in a fictional sense, about disrespect; this
film is about von Trier’s attempt to treat Leth like some kind of fraternity
pledge. So, if there is no mutual respect, who becomes the author? Is it the
creator of the original or is the original unimportant in this context? This
question is probably closest to the question of producer versus director in the
struggle for control. Von Trier acts as the producer who gathers the finances
and gives Leth ridiculous demands, while Leth takes the role of director,
closer than anything else to the early Hollywood auteur, who takes these
demands and makes them fit his own agenda. So, who comes out dominant?
In
a way, this is the manifestation of the author versus the critic that was
brought up in Roland Barthes’ “the Death of the Author” (129), although
Barthes’ author/critic relationship was not quite so vehement. Barthes’ view of
this authorship question could be interpreted in two ways: faithfully or in a
more subverted fashion. The obvious Barthes opinion would be that the Five Obstructions, just like the Perfect Human, has no author. The
original film can be de-authorized by the mere fact that the film is a parody
(or perhaps pastiche) of a previous film form, the anthropological study film,
and is thus rendered as a simple part of an intertextual continuum (Barthes, 126).
The mere use of language in both films would render them as non-authored film
(Barthes, 126). Besides that, both films would also lack authors because they
are up to the viewer to discover and comprehend (especially thought-provoking
and experimental films like these two) (Barthes, 129). However, one could also
claim that, using Barthes ideology, the remake and its obstructions make Lars
von Trier the author. While Barthes would certainly disagree with that
sentiment, one must look at von Trier’s role in the production of this film.
Von Trier may give Leth the obstructions, but he is not an active participant
in the creation of the five short films. His only participation involves
viewing the films and judging them, giving his opinion on their meanings and
shortcomings. As far as the death of the author gives birth to the reader
(Barthes, 130), Leth’s death gave birth to von Trier. On a final
Barthes-related note, one of Barthes’ main issues with giving authors credit is
that the author becomes an absent figure during the consumption of the finished
product (129). Since the author is simply leaving (objectively, speaking)
undecipherable writings, then the author’s importance must become a thing of
the past (Barthes, 128). This ideology, however, becomes problematic in this
scenario where the author is right there. It is very difficult to remove the
author when the author is sitting at the other end of the couch! If one
humanizes the author, does that not simply turn the author into another reader?
Barthes leaves more questions than answers, so it may be necessary to look at
authorship through other means.
The most convincing position is that
Leth is the author of the remakes, just as he was the author of the original.
This position may go against most established ideologies, but it becomes clear
when one looks at the six films. All six films were made with almost-entirely
unique cast and crew, with new innovations and evolutions coming from Leth and
the final results always seemed to be the brainchild of Leth, in that they all
seemed to have that Leth-ian look and feel to them, even if they did stray
towards the edges sometimes. Another figure who was also in all of the
obstructions, but absent in the original, is the director of photography, Dan
Holmberg. Does he have any claim to the authorship of the remake? That is a
question for another essay entirely. Using this theory, that the auteur can
always manipulate those around him or her and make the film that he or she
wants would place Jørgen Leth as the author of both the Perfect Human and the
Five Obstructions.
However, just because it is fun to
answer questions with questions, one must look at the role of Claus Nissen in
the whole making and remaking process. As mentioned earlier, Nissen played the
perfect man in the Perfect Human.
During the filming in Bombay, Leth wondered aloud whether it would be ethical
for him to simply copy Nissen’s actions, when his actions were his own creation
and not in Leth’s original script. So, one must wonder, is Nissen owed some
credit as an author of this film? It is mentioned by Richard Dyer that stars can often take the form of
the auteur, through their mannerisms and characteristics that later define them
and any film that they make (483). So, since Nissen was in many of Leth’s early
films and his screen persona and mannerisms defined the Perfect Man and said mannerisms were transcribed into the
remade obstructions, Nissen is a star who may transcend towards author. Due to
this and the fact that his mannerisms were what defined the film, particularly
in the meal sequence, and gave it its surreal effect, perhaps Claus Nissen
should be given some credit as an author of both films, alongside Jørgen Leth.
Conclusion
The
Perfect Human held a cynical view of humanity. More than thirty years
later, that cynical view has not changed. Except now, the perfect human is
extremely rich and he has the ability to use this money to play games, in which
he will attempt to humiliate and destroy other perfect humans. The Five Obstructions really creates
many questions that it, perhaps, was not planning to ask. Where are these
directors headed? Since the creation of this film, Leth wrote an autobiography
where he confessed to drug smuggling and sexual escapades with the underage child
of one of his Haitian workers, followed by a documentary detailing his sexual
conquests in the “underdeveloped” world. Meanwhile, von Trier went on to create
one of the most self-consciously misogynistic films in recent memory and to
botch a joke, ending with him calling himself a Nazi. Leth’s cynicism may have
been a foreshadowing of things to come. After all, these individuals are now
the perfect humans. They have grown up, gained experience, become rich and are
now important cinematic figures. However, these are not the only perfect
humans. Right now, the perfect humans are politicians, police officers,
business owners and CEOs. The perfect humans are all around and they are
running everything and, just like in the ending of the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, they are coming for you!
Works
Cited
Barthes,
Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Authorship:
From Plato to the Postmodern. Ed. Sean Burke. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1995. 125-130.
Dwyer,
Susan. “Romancing the Dane: Ethics and Observation.” On the Five Obstructions. Ed. Mette Hjort. London: Wallflower,
2008. 1-14.
Dyer,
Richard. “From Stars.” Film Theory and
Criticism. 7th Ed. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009. 480-485.
Hjort,
Mette. Preface. On the Five Obstructions.
London: Wallflower, 2008. xiii-xxviii.
Leitch,
Thomas. “Twice-Told Tales: Disavowal and the Rhetoric of the Remake.” Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and
Practice. Ed. Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2002. 37-59.
McDougall,
Stuart Y. “The Director who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock Remakes Himself.” Play it Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes.
Ed. Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998. 52-69.
Truffaut,
Francois. Hitchcock. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1967.
