If you loved The Five Obstructions, try To Each His Own Cinema

A bridge between a film you've already seen and one most people haven't. Here's what they share, and what the second one does that the first one doesn't.

You already loved

The Five Obstructions

2003 · dir. Lars von Trier, Jørgen Leth

→

Try this next

To Each His Own Cinema

2007 · dir. David Lynch, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Gus Van Sant, Roman Polanski, Takeshi Kitano, Walter Salles, Zhang Yimou, David Cronenberg, Michael Cimino, Lars von Trier, Wong Kar-Wai, Jane Campion, Wim Wenders, Andrei Konchalovsky, Atom Egoyan, Ken Loach, Olivier Assayas, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Bille August, Aki Kaurismäki, Abbas Kiarostami, Chen Kaige, Nanni Moretti, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Theo Angelopoulos, Manoel de Oliveira, Raymond Depardon, Amos Gitai, Claude Lelouch, Raúl Ruiz, Elia Suleiman, Tsai Ming-liang, Youssef Chahine

What they share

Both films are directed by Lars von Trier, and they both carry the cerebral, playful mood tags. If that's the register that drew you to The Five Obstructions, the second film will land in a comparable space — through a different lens.

cerebralplayful

What To Each His Own Cinema is

A collection of shorts, then, each director offering what amounts to a cinematic shrug. Thirty-three filmmakers respond to the prompt of what cinema means to them. The result is a mixed bag, though at least it's reliably brief.

If you loved The Five Obstructions, try To Each His Own Cinema

The Five Obstructions

To Each His Own Cinema

What they share

What To Each His Own Cinema is

Ask ChatGPT▾ChatGPTClaudeGrokLe ChatPerplexity for a deeper bridge

Ask for a deeper bridge