Do Communists Have Better Sex?
A Study of Reds in Bed
What this aptly titled documentary alleges is that East Germans are far more progressive in the sexual arena than their Western counterparts. Once the mind stops baffling at why such a project would have been conceived and commissioned in the first place, the premise begins to intrigue.
Not only do East Germans partake in more sexual activities, they typically start earlier, have more partners, are more experimental, and enjoy themselves a whole lot more than, well, West Germans.
Can it be that communist East German society created a liberal paradise of free experimentation and expression? Despite the odd appearance of nudity, this is not that kind of documentary. Filmmaker, André Meier attempts to seriously analyse an interesting sociological situation. Points of discussion centre on the differing public policies between East and West to find an answer.
In proving the case, Meier stretches his research to encompass a number of sources which include archival footage, pornographic magazines and films of the region, a few home videos, as well as educational films that were state produced.
In the end, the answer to the title is a resounding maybe. But the ride will have at least been educational.
Minh Nguyen
No matter how haughty your cinematic tastes may be, this 90-minute effort from director Lars von Trier will not fail to infuriate.
In 1967, Danish documentary film-maker Jorgen Leth made The Perfect Human, a 12-minute short detailing the daily activities of a man and woman. Celebrated film-maker Lars von Trier once proclaimed Leth’s effort as perfect, and now takes an opportunity to imprint his own stamp on cinematic history.
At the beginning of the new millennium, von Trier dared Leth to recreate his past genius. The challenge: to complete five remakes of The Perfect Human. Each must conform to von Trier’s ever-changing rules - hence the title of this doco, The Five Obstructions.
The Perfect Human was essentially a study on human behaviour, but in this doco both film-makers push the original themes beyond the limits of convention - and sense.
The challenge is shot in a haphazard home-movie style, complete with incoherent chunks of inaudibility, shaky camera-work, and bad lighting. This joint effort between Leth and von Trier inspires instant and awesome levels of irritation. For a film about “the perfect film”, the effort is ironically poorly filmed.
The term “pretentious” is so often used to describe von Trier that it’s practically become a cliché, but when a description is so apt it shirks imagination.
Two minutes in and The Five Obstructions manages to elicit an unprecedented level of annoyance. Further viewing not only manages to sustain initial levels of irritation but elevates them. Dubiously lauded as a journey into film-making, this certainly succeeds in generating a very particular kind of response.
