The Surrealist and Oulipo movements are significantly different. Surrealist artists created their art, whether it was literature or paintings, by tapping into their subconscious and attempting to portray it. By utilizing the subconscious, surrealist artists often had bouts of creative blocks where they were unable to tap their subconscious. Oulipo stands for Ouvroir de litterature potentielle, or the workshop of potential literature. Oulipo artists create their works based on systematic techniques or mathematical problems. Constraints or restrictions also dictate Oulipo artists’ writing.
Constraints or restrictions can be creatively stimulating and produce beautiful results. As seen in this picture of a hibiscus bonsai, restrictions during growth created an artistic and charming plant. Restrictions in writing can be creatively stimulating. When restricting a story, the author is forced to recreate the story around the new conditions. It has been both overwhelming and exciting to set restrictions on my mundane short story. Each imposed restraint creates a new and, hopefully, better version of the original story.
The Five Obstructions utilizes Oulipo’s constraints and restrictions to recreate the film The Perfect Human. Lars von Trier establishes constraints for Jorgen Leth, the filmmaker of The Perfect Human. After each restriction was established, Leth felt overwhelmed or worried about how to recreate his original film; however, once he began working under the constraints, he was able to create great renditions. In my opinion, Lars was quite harsh on Leth about the Bombay obstruction. I thought that Leth created a beautiful version of the original. I liked that the people were visible in the background, but were somewhat distorted by the plastic sheeting. To me, it gave the film an us versus them theme, or perfect versus imperfect, by not allowing the extras to be clearly seen. Leth was extremely successful in each obstruction and seemed to thrive on recreating his original film.
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