The Perfect Blog

The Perfect Blog
My response to The Five Obstructions

What is the perfect blog? How does one read it? How does it look? What stories does it follow?



No, no, I won’t get carried away, and don’t expect me to answer those questions like writer and director Jorgen Leth had to do during his first obstruction challenge in Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions.

I found the movie overall to keep me quite entertained. For an artsy independent film, I found the story-line more interesting than not and I was generally curious as to the reaction of Leth each time the next obstruction was reveled to him. Even more so as the story went on I became more and more curious as to how Leth was going to approach the challenge and what the end result would be. In most cases I found that each subsequent obstruction built on the previous attempt and added to the overall dynamic of the film. Along those lines, I think that is why the cartoon obstruction worked out so well. By piecing together all the different parts of the first three obstructions along with the original films, it nicely summed up the entire project. It also, for me, helped me overcome what was my most obvious distraction, the fact that there is no single perfect person and within each of the first few obstructions and the original film, you must accept the contrary as fact as the narration plays out.

What turned me off from the movie was the way Leth approached each obstruction with such emotion. Now my mother taught me to not cry over spilled milk, though crying over the fact that you can only use 12-frames in a shot -- come on, that seems a little over the top. Watching the film I felt that Leth should have been more excited overall that he was even asked to do this new project. I understand that he may have butcher his masterpiece, though I look around Hollywood today and I regularly see these days new directors trying to remake old films that studios try to stamp out time and time again to little avail, hoping to cash in on a large box office. For Leth, he got the opportunity to remake his own masterpiece.

With that said, there was one obstruction in particular where I agree with Leth’s hard feelings. The rule von Trier set forth to go to the worst place in the world and film on location there. And while it is hard to quantify, perhaps the choice of the red light district in Mumbai is not actually the worst place in the world, suffice to say, I would not be too happy living there. For me, it is a matter of simply a matter of priorities. It is one thing to go to a poor neighborhood and film a documentary, it is another to use it as a backdrop to a short video all about extravagance and perfectionism. Still though, as bad as Leth thought it was I found it somewhat satisfying to see the joy on the communities faces, especially the kids as you tried to stare through the translucent barrier Leth had erected behind him on the set.

It was on a similar note this past week when a picture in The New York Times struck my eye. The picture accompanied a story about increasing criticism of a recent Vouge photo shoot in which seemingly random homeless Indian citizens are seen modeling $100 fashion garments and $10,000 designer handbags. The article points out the obvious criticism of publishing the photos including pointing out that over half the country lives on less than an dollar and a quarter a day and the fact that you still have 1000s of farmers killing themselves each year to avoid debt that is burdening their families. In other words, the critics of the ad don’t necessarily disagree with the products though simply the way they are being marketed. Of course the article also lets the other side debate their side of the matter with people claiming, that brand awareness of products is important in the emerging markets and the notion that the idea of flaunting money being a bad thing is a uniquely western one and that if one looks at China or other Far East countries he or she can see though who made it like to show it. I am not sure where I stand on this debate and I am sure I could flip flop back and forth all day, though I will say this: I know that buying a two dollar shirt instead of a hundred dollar shirt and donating the rest of charity is not going to stop poverty. At the same time I realize that the street-dwelling models in these photos will most likely never be able to realize the value of the objects they are showing off. I don’t think Vogue is necessarily doing any harm to society though at the same time I don’t think they are nearly as active as they could be in helping identify the sources of poverty and working to solves its bane.