My friend Skye Sepp brought over this entertaining Danish documentary, a bit of truffle for film buffs. Back in 1967, young director Jørgen Leth made a short film called “The Perfect Human”. It was the kind of clever, enigmatic, “arty” thing that appealed to the sensibility of the time, then became a chestnut of short film festivals and film schools, much like Norman MacLaren’s films, here in Canada. Looked at now, you can see that it has an elegance to it, mostly because of the superb performances of the only two actors, Claus Nissen and Majken Algren Nielsen. Nissen, apparently, improvised most of his most effective moments. Watch it online here.
Fast forward to 2003. Leth is in semi-retirement in Haiti, and his friend/colleague Lars von Trier dares him to make five “remakes” of the influential short film. In each case, he will demand “obstructions” — absurd restrictions and demands meant to challenge the director’s ingenuity. The film cuts between von Trier presenting his obstructions [“No sets”; “You have to film it in someplace disgustingly horrible”; “You have to remake it as a cartoon”; “You have to act in it yourself”…], the resulting remakes, and fragments of the original film. The result is a fascinating look into how a creative film-maker works, with numerous moments of spontaneous humour.
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