MOVIE MENTOR PICKS UP HIS STUDENT'S GAUNTLET.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE DANISH FILMMAKER Lars von Trier is one for gamelike, crazy-making rules. He was the major force behind the austere Dogma film movement of the 1990s, and his best-known features - ``Breaking the Waves,'' ``Dancer in the Dark'' and ``Dogville'' - can be as hard on audiences as they are on their female leads.

So it seems like a perverse natural progression for von Trier, in the odd and enthralling ``making of'' documentary ``The Five Obstructions,'' to torment a role model, onetime teacher and all-around Danish national treasure Jorgen Leth, with diabolically dialectical rule-imposition.

The game went like this: Leth, who is currently the Queen of Denmark's Honorary Consul in Haiti, would remake ``The Perfect Human,'' his acclaimed, 12-minute art film from 1967, five times, each with a different set of restrictions of von Trier's choosing imposed on the production.

``Obstructions'' consists of footage in which von Trier and Leth cordially yet hotly debate each regulation, followed by Leth griping to the camera about the impossibility of it all, which is then followed by him going out and pulling off each trick in ridiculously far-flung corners of the globe (Cuba, a Bombay red-light district, Brussels, an Austin computer- animation studio). Each segment is capped with von Trier's disappointed reaction to the individual result.

Not that von Trier's unhappiness follows what might be called linear logic. You see, he wants Leth to fail, and every time the equally strong- willed older filmmaker comes back with a successful experiment - or, at least, one that cleverly fudged its way around the letter or spirit of a given obstruction - von Trier says things like, ``Jorgen, you're looking great, that's not good'' or ``I want to banalize you.''

Refusing to be banalized, Leth whips up some of the most imaginative imagery and montage to come out of modern cinema in some time; the original ``Perfect Human,'' which we also see most of, isn't too shabby, either. Leth proves himself a true visual genius as well as quite a magnetic physical subject for the camera. He gets his feelings across without ever letting panic shadow his patrician features, and is one old guy who looks great in both a tux and tropical resort wear.

As for travel-phobe von Trier, who cajoles, criticizes and plots from his Copenhagen production office, he once again proves himself the most personable sadist on today's international movie scene. He offers good food and drink to go with his impossible demands, and a heartfelt, empathetic smile with his stated desire to break down all of Leth's creative and psychological defenses. And of course, von Trier is nothing if not aware of his own deeply curdled motives.

Whatever either of these guys thought they were doing with ``The Five Obstructions,'' they've ended up making a movie like no other.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS - Three and one half stars

(Not rated: nudity, sex, language)

Starring: Jorgen Leth, Lars von Trier.

Directors: Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

In a nutshell: Filmmaker von Trier tries to assign his former teacher Leth the impossible task of remaking one of Leth's decades-old art films five times again, with five different sets of restrictions. The intellectual/aesthetic cat-and-mouse game that results is sublime. In Danish and English.