The Five Obstructions
A film which could not have been conceived by anyone other than Lars von Trier, and co-executed by von Trier and Jørgen Leth. Von Trier is here really concerned with pursuing art as a kind of therapy, and with, incredibly, his teacher Leth as his patient.
Even more incredibly, he sees the characteristics of this therapy with the utmost clarity, knowing, really knowing: (1) that any such therapy has to be based on an almost crazy adherence to the notion that constraint is the condition of freedom; (2) that the other condition of freedom is control, and that just about everything lies in recognising the depth one must go to in order to compose with these seemingly oppositional elements; (3) that the therapist requires the courage to believe that they know the patient better than they do themselves; (4) that if the therapist actually cares, he or she must have the strength and fearlessness to apply therapeutic technique with whatever rigour and force the situation demands; (5) that by taking things as far as they can go they inevitably rebound upon the therapist too; (6) that silliness and seriousness, as well as success and failure, are all bound to get mixed up together in a way that is nearly impossible to disentangle; and (7) that this mixing up, which has nothing arbitrary about it but whose expression as work is always singular, is really the source of all the enjoyment that can ultimately be derived from art as a therapeutic struggle; (8) that this rich mixture is, as such, what must be cultivated in artistic production and savoured in its consumption; and (9) that all of this is a question of what there really is to think, and that what there is to think is ultimately the question of how it is possible to take care; but in the end he also knows is that, (10) whatever the composition of success and failure, however rich the ingredients of the brew they compose together, in the end he trusts no one but himself to write a monologue for the patient to speak aloud that contains enough genius to really tell the truth. It is all a question of art as the struggle for neganthropic reinvention through a process of co-individuation that is also a struggle for the individuation of the medium in which it occurs, and where that medium, which is always a technical milieu, sets the conditions of possibility and impossibility of that process of co-individuation.
Re-watched in 2026, after having seen it in the cinema in 2004.
Even more incredibly, he sees the characteristics of this therapy with the utmost clarity, knowing, really knowing: (1) that any such therapy has to be based on an almost crazy adherence to the notion that constraint is the condition of freedom; (2) that the other condition of freedom is control, and that just about everything lies in recognising the depth one must go to in order to compose with these seemingly oppositional elements; (3) that the therapist requires the courage to believe that they know the patient better than they do themselves; (4) that if the therapist actually cares, he or she must have the strength and fearlessness to apply therapeutic technique with whatever rigour and force the situation demands; (5) that by taking things as far as they can go they inevitably rebound upon the therapist too; (6) that silliness and seriousness, as well as success and failure, are all bound to get mixed up together in a way that is nearly impossible to disentangle; and (7) that this mixing up, which has nothing arbitrary about it but whose expression as work is always singular, is really the source of all the enjoyment that can ultimately be derived from art as a therapeutic struggle; (8) that this rich mixture is, as such, what must be cultivated in artistic production and savoured in its consumption; and (9) that all of this is a question of what there really is to think, and that what there is to think is ultimately the question of how it is possible to take care; but in the end he also knows is that, (10) whatever the composition of success and failure, however rich the ingredients of the brew they compose together, in the end he trusts no one but himself to write a monologue for the patient to speak aloud that contains enough genius to really tell the truth. It is all a question of art as the struggle for neganthropic reinvention through a process of co-individuation that is also a struggle for the individuation of the medium in which it occurs, and where that medium, which is always a technical milieu, sets the conditions of possibility and impossibility of that process of co-individuation.
Re-watched in 2026, after having seen it in the cinema in 2004.
Mini Review: A film which could not have been conceived by anyone other than Lars von Trier, and co-executed by von Trier and Jørgen Leth. Von Trier is here really concerned with pursuing art as a kind of therapy, and with, incredibly, his teacher Leth as his patient.