Det perfekte menneske

In every sense this short is an absolute gem. It reveals something very real

about humanity. Jorgen Leth is technically a masterful director, who has never created an overly impressive feature, but this film exemplifies our obsessions with our self and the image we create for ourself in order to reach some kind of true perfection. The woman is beautiful and the actor takes this simple script and inevitably makes him seemlessly leap off the screen into the mind of the viewer. The most pertinent and important scene is a scene where he eats, the beauty

and grace in which he eats his food stays true with the viewer. Lars Von Trier criticizes his mentor Jorgen Leth, for embodying his image of perfection. Thus he lives a lone in Haiti in his depression, but his artistic touch in this film shows how human Leth is and how humanity can be embodied in absolute perfection.

This is an interesting little movie. It explores the concept of "the perfect human" through close studies of a "perfect" male and a "perfect" female. The movie asks a lot of questions but does not try to answer them. I don't feel like I fully understood the picture and it felt a bit too artistic for its own good. I chose to view it as an attempt to ridicule our conceptions of what it means to be "perfect". Some scenes were outright funny, while others were just confusing (especially in the shaving sequence). This movie is essential viewing if one plans to see Lars Von Triers "The Five Obstacles" which is a very good documentary where the director, Jørgen Leth gets to re-make his short movie 5 times but under different, more difficult circumstances. As entertainment I rate it slightly above average. As art? I don't know.

When watching this film, do not expect it to provide a satisfying ending, nor expect it to spell everything out word for word. The purpose of this film is to get the viewer to think.

Leth's framing of shots is meticulous; each and every angle is designed to draw the viewer to a more appreciative and intimate understanding of the perfect human. His heavily repetitious narration and slightly mismatched word/picture relations creates an atmosphere of awkward feelings; yet, the actors provide a warm, comical relief by doing every day things that we can relate to in sometimes silly manners. The dialogue, although brief, is heavily weighted and contributes to the characteristics of how we view man and woman.

However, "what" the perfect human is supposed to be is left for you to decide. Consider very carefully in this film the relationship between man and woman, the imperfections that contribute to a man's perfection, things man takes for granted, and what man truly longs for. This is an excellent film in which Jorgen Leth designed a question for "you" to interpret in your own feelings and manners: What do you think the perfect human is?

At first I did not know what to make of this film. I was disappointed, but it felt like I had probably missed something, like there must be some underlying message which I was most likely not interpreting correctly. I spent days trying to figure it out, and then I realized it: both critics who say this film is boring and a waste of time, and those who say it is an entertaining depiction of our human nature have missed the point.

The perfect human, as shown in it's true form in this "documentary", has no responsibilities, no space, no time and no subjectivity at all; the perfect human only knows his own needs (sleeping, eating, making love), he is constantly idle, alienated and empty. The perfect human is a profoundly uninteresting creature. From this perspective, the apparent pointlessness of the film is precisely the point which the film is trying to make: that perfection is dull, silly and undesirable. It portrays our human nature by reaching inside us as viewers (and not by leading us inside the characters of the film) and making us feel estranged from our own dynamic reality - the imperfect reality that actually makes us perfectly humans.

It is really easy. Just leave a small portion of your day to see this short film. The acting, the setting and the rather blurry theme are all great, works of a master. I learned about this one thanks to von Trier who sent Leth to a mission in order to remake this film. You can have a look at "Five Obstructions" for more details about that project and I highly recommend you the part which takes place in Cuba.

Whatever, I found the original "Perfect Human" on internet and watched it. Then I watched it once again. In a timeless and "in-the-limits-of-simplicity" setting, the viewer sees a master class art. You will question what ordinary people accept as "perfect" for mankind and how this average view lacks detail and more than detail, the dark sides of the model. If you go after such a model, you will see "how the perfect human falls".