The Five Obstructions

I think Von Trier's placing obstructions on Leth's projects is helpful; it provided a challenge to help him think critically and evaluate his processes when creating a movie. It caused each version to have a completely different style, which in turn allows the viewer to realize how many ways a director can interpret the same subject.

I thought the "worst" obstruction was the lack of an obstruction. Even though I enjoyed the result of that version, it seemed kind of useless because with any project you are normally without an obstruction. So this wasn't much of a challenge. Although because he had been working with specific constraints before, his mindset was probably already altered. The result of the "no obstruction" movie that we saw was probably different than if that had been the first "obstruction", before any of the constrained exercises had began.

The flexibility of the rules relies in how literally one interprets them. Perhaps Von Trier should have specified that he literally wanted Leth isolated from people in the environment, without any hint of them in the footage. Von Trier expected Leth to rigidly adhere to the rules, whereas Leth ended up only loosely following them. Oftentimes, when rules are loosely followed, it allows for more diverse and personalized interpretations of the project. However, for the sake of this exercise, adhering to the rules at least a reasonable amount was the most productive way.

The film kind of made me want to use people as a subject. However, using people is difficult because they need to be able to act and do exactly what you direct them to do, and that doesn't always work out well. I think that the different angles used and the speed of the cuts between the different angles were the most influential aspects for me, and they made me think about whether those can be utilized in my project.