get five people to watch The Five Obstructions

Well. I openly championed an underground movie and it took several months just to get a handful of people to watch it. My hopes of an influential career as a movie critic are dashed. But I finally did it thanks to Chris Campbell. So, done.

So far I’ve gotten two offline friends and one avid 43 Things user to rent it, and the response has been interestingly varied yet exclusively positive. Only two more to reach my goal…

I rented the Five Obstructions on a whim recently but found it riveting. Not many people have heard of it so I thought I’d spread the word a bit by trying to get 5 people to rent and watch it. The low down: it’s a documentary featuring a battle of artistic/sociological wits between two Danish directors (the more widely known of Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves fame). It touches on the subjects’ artistic perfectionism, personal aggression and passivity, and passion versus detachment during the creative process. Or maybe it doesn’t encompass all that, and is just a pretentious curiosity. Either way, if you have an interest in creative approaches to documentary filmmaking, it’s highly recommended. If I can get five people to watch it and write a few words here to let me know that they did, I’ll finally have accomplished something!