Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

[ianungstad]

Unrelated to Melancholia but Lars Von Trier announced his next project at Cannes. He's teaming up with Martin Scorsese for a remake of The Five Obstructions.

[MichaelB]

Unrelated to Melancholia but Lars Von Trier announced his next project at Cannes. He's teaming up with Martin Scorsese for a remake of The Five Obstructions.

So who's going to be obstructing whom? Is Scorsese going to be required to remake an early short like The Big Shave under differing conditions? Underwater, in front of a class of impressionable schoolchildren, that kind of thing?

[ianungstad]

CANNES - The creator of Antichrist and the helmer of Taxi Driver will collaborate on their next project. Danish director Lars von Trier and Oscar-winner Martin Scorsese are teaming up for a remake of The Five Obstructions, von Trier's 2003 documentary deconstructing the film making process.

In the original Five Obstructions, von Trier challenged fellow Danish director Jorgen Leth to remake his 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each time giving him a set of strict rules, or obstructions, that he had to follow. In one version, no edit is allowed to last more than 12 frames, or about half a second. In another Leth has to shoot in a slum in Bombay. Another version is an anime. After each attempt, Leth and von Trier meet to discuss the results and von Trier gives Leth his next challenge.

The project has echoes of the Dogme 95 movement, which von Trier co-founded. In Dogme, directors had to follow certain strict rules, including always using a handheld camera, never using artificial light and always shooting on location.

It's unclear which of Scorcese's films will form the basis of the Five Obstructions remake. Possibilities include remakes of Scorsese's earlier shorts, such as The Big Shave (1968) or What's a Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This? (1963) or remakes of one of the many iconic scenes in Scorcese's feature length films. Earlier this year there had been speculation, denied by von Trier, that he was interested in remaking Scorsese's Taxi Driver, suggesting that iconic film could form the basis of this new project. TrustNordisk will handle international sales on the project.

The new Five Obstructions will be done as co-production between Scorsese's Sikelia Productions and von Trier's documentary shingle Zentropa Real. Emma Tillinger Koskoff is production for Sikelia and Carsten Holst and Louise Vesth on behalf of Zentropa Real. Shooting is expected to start next year, after Scorsese finishes shooting on the Daniel Day-Lewis starrer Silence, set to begin early 2012.

Scorcese's next film, the 3-D period drama Hugo Cabret starring Johnny Depp, Chloe Moretz and Jude Law hits theaters this November. Von Trier's Melancholia, featuring Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Alexander Skarsgard, premieres in Competition in Cannes next week.

[Zot!]

Indeed. Whatever the outside response is to one of his films Von Trier will inevitably say the opposite. When people were calling for his head at Anti-Christ he said it was the best film he's ever made AND that he was the greatest filmmaker in the world. AC is not his best film even though it is very good. This is just a sign that people are going to like Melancholia. At the press conference Von Trier will hang his head, declare it a failure and burn his prize.

Right, but while Godard is pretty much living in his own world, and deadly serious, Von Triers unique brand of self-promotion almost always comes with a nod & wink. Something like Dogme 95 is just a big prank, wrapped as a "manifesto". Some people find it insufferable, but the humor works for me.

[Tom Hagen]

Please, please, please let it be the "Sunday May 11, 1980" sequence from Goodfellas.

Obstruction #1: you may not use "Gimme Shelter" on the soundtrack, Marty.

[colinr0380]

So who's going to be obstructing whom? Is Scorsese going to be required to remake an early short like The Big Shave under differing conditions? Underwater, in front of a class of impressionable schoolchildren, that kind of thing?

It probably is going to depend on who wins the fight for the "directed by" credit! (Plus a key feature of von Trier's career has been to find ways of 'filmmaking by proxy', so I always thought Five Obstructions was an amusingly key work in showing him enjoying the luxurious Zentropa backlot whilst Leth was running around trying to make the best film he could, which was never good enough, and telling Leth of all the areas that he could have improved upon! Scorsese should be used to this after working with the Weinsteins!)

I also think The Big Shave seems the most likely candidate - considering Leth remade a 1960s short film which involved various grooming rituals and in particular shaving, they would make a good pair! And, as with The Perfect Human, it would also provide an interesting opportunity to reflect on the successes and failures of idealistic 1960s philosophies, rather than more simply play to the fans as various interpretations of beloved scenes from a film like Taxi Driver probably would. A short film would also seem more easily managable than a remake of a feature (though I assume if a feature were chosen then it would just involve a remake of key scenes, moments or images. Which could lead to some interesting debates about what each filmmaker feels is an 'important moment' in a piece of work!)

In the original Five Obstructions, von Trier challenged fellow Danish director Jorgen Leth to remake his 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each time giving him a set of strict rules, or obstructions, that he had to follow. In one version, no edit is allowed to last more than 12 frames, or about half a second. In another Leth has to shoot in a slum in Bombay. Another version is an anime. After each attempt, Leth and von Trier meet to discuss the results and von Trier gives Leth his next challenge.

I did find the description of Five Obstructions in this news piece to be a little reductive. Leth did not have to shoot one of the remakes in a Bombay slum. He was just given a brief to film in "the worst place in the world" and remembered a previous experience there, unfortunately mentioning it to von Trier! More emphasis is placed on the rule of making the location recognisable while not individualising any onlookers (the art and the artist disconnected from the 'real world'?)

And the 'anime' remake is technically not anime. It actually involves a trip to Texas to visit the animators who did the rotoscoping animation for Richard Linklater's Waking Life and (post Obstructions) A Scanner Darkly.

[aox]

Please, please, please let it be the "Sunday May 11, 1980" sequence from Goodfellas.

Obstruction #1: you may not use "Gimme Shelter" on the soundtrack, Marty.

awesome

[ianungstad]

I thought the concept sounded really interesting and went to Amazon to look at ordering the dvd of The Five Obstructions. It's long out of print and very expensive. Maybe Criterion or some company will rerelease the original when the Von Trier/Scorsese version comes out.

[aox]

I thought the concept sounded really interesting and went to Amazon to look at ordering the dvd of The Five Obstructions. It's long out of print and very expensive. Maybe Criterion or some company will rerelease the original when the Von Trier/Scorsese version comes out.

Might check your local library.

[Ishmael]

The Five Obstructions. It's long out of print and very expensive.

Might check your local library.

It's also streaming on Netflix right now if you're in the U.S. I don't know what the AV quality is, though.

[MichaelB]

I thought the concept sounded really interesting and went to Amazon to look at ordering the dvd of The Five Obstructions. It's long out of print and very expensive.

It's still in print in Britain (Amazon/Play/HMV), and MovieMail even seems to be offering downloads - though whether these are accessible outside the UK is for someone else to determine.

[antnield]

Also available as part of the Jorgen Leth: Anthropological Films boxed-set.

[Nothing]

Looks like Shyamalan meets Festen to me...

Melancholia is like a cross between Festen and M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening

:-k

[MichaelB]

You'll have people thinking that you're part of the notorious UK press cabal if you're not careful.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Variety review also mentions Festen and Shyamalan, albeit in different paragraphs...

[Nothing]

Keen readers of the Criterion forum, clearly

Amusing that Lars has blown the good buzz and probably the US release by declaring himself a Nazi

[Tom Hagen]

I'm pretty surprised that he would use his Cannes press conference as an occassion to goad the media with a bunch of nonsense about Nazis.

And to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, this deeply offends me: not so much because I find Nazis to be a sore subject, but more because I find unfunny jokes to be unbearable.

[mfunk9786]

I love this guy.

[MichaelB]

I'm pretty surprised that he would use his Cannes press conference as an occassion to goad the media with a bunch of nonsense about Nazis.

Has he ever given a press conference in which he hasn't goaded the media with a bunch of nonsense about something?

[Tom Hagen]

That was a bad attempt at sarcasm; I should have added a "so" to the surprised.

[Duncan Hopper]

Tireless-self-promoter, gossip columnist and wannabe film critic Jason Solomons didn't much like the Nazi comment.

melancholia was a #cannes palme d'or contender for about 30 minutes, then Lars opened his pinched little nazi mouth - auf wiedersehen, twat

Though even with this Nazi comment, Lars will never get even close to Solomons in the 'twat' stakes.

[Tom Hagen]

The general sentiment that I have read through the reviews is precisely what Solomons (inartfully) seems to be getting at though: von Trier may have pissed away a Palme d'Or with his press conference.

I will say that the ecstatic reviews have moved me from "I'm annoyed with von Trier as a person and deeply ambivalent about seeing his new film" to "I'm even more annoyed with von Trier as a person and wildly excited about seeing his new film."

[jbeall]

Reading the longer quotation, it seems like even von Trier realized a few sentences in that he'd seriously put his foot in his mouth, and then tried to extract it (albeit too-little, too-late). It mostly confirms my suspicion that he hasn't really progressed beyond the emotional state of a bratty teenager. But I don't suppose one has to be a fully functioning adult to make interesting films.

[Finch]

I linked to the press conference in the Cannes thread but jbeall is pretty much spot-on: Lars seemed to try to backtrack after realising that this one joke went beyond what most people would deem acceptable. Even Dunst and Gainsbourg looked very uncomfortable in the closing minutes. That said, I laughed a lot at his pranksterisms up to that point when Kate Muir's question about his German heritage came up, which in turn sparked the Nazi comments.

Amen to the Solomons comments: the Observer hasn't got a single good critic but Solomons takes the cake as far as that bunch are concerned. Insufferable twat, indeed.

edit: Guardian's account of the press conference + Bradshaw's mixed review of the film

[aox]

Reading the longer quotation, it seems like even von Trier realized a few sentences in that he'd seriously put his foot in his mouth, and then tried to extract it (albeit too-little, too-late). It mostly confirms my suspicion that he hasn't really progressed beyond the emotional state of a bratty teenager. But I don't suppose one has to be a fully functioning adult to make interesting films.

This is my impression as well.