The journey to happiness
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The journey to happiness |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2004 |
| length | 73 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wenceslas Storch |
| script | Wenzel Storch, Matthias Hänisch , Iko Schütte |
| production | Wenzel Storch, Ralf Sziel |
| music | Diet Schütte |
| camera | Wenceslas Storch |
| occupation | |
| |
The Journey into Happiness is a surrealistic film by Wenzel Storch from 2004. Characteristic features are backdrops designed with great attention to detail, a brightly colored choice of colors and the crossing of numerous limits of good taste.
action
As an introduction, two flashbacks are shown. In the first, little Gustav saves his friend Knuffi, who broke into a frozen lake. In the second, the grown-up Gustav and Knuffi live together in a remote house. One day young Eva moves in with them. Both fall in love with the girl who chooses Gustav and moves away with him.
In the present, Gustav and Eva have had children and are sailing the world on a ship shaped like a snail. There are also natives of unnamed regions on board, which scientists consider to be long extinct, and several anthropomorphic animals who work as sailors and officers on the ship. The ship reaches a small island that is not shown on any nautical chart. The animals on board explore the island and do not return, whereupon Eva goes in search of them.
Meanwhile, two of the island king's henchmen discover the snail ship and gain access. You take part in a screening of the on-board cinema, but have the children's film shown there exchanged for an advertising film that announces the island king's upcoming birthday party. Meanwhile, on her search on a dirt road, Eva meets some young women who are waiting to be admitted to the king. The king's two henchmen come by in a car and take everyone to the king's birthday party. On the snail ship, the children discover an old photo album in a treasure chest and learn something from Gustav about the time their parents met and the failed love triangle with Knuffi.
The missing animals have now arrived at the island king's castle and are talking about the cultural artefacts that remind them of the late Baroque and stink of urine. The car with Eva and the ministers reaches the castle. Eva sets out on a tour of discovery through the apartments and finds out that the king is Knuffi. The animals are arrested by the ministers because they cannot produce tickets. A hamster manages to hide and the bunny escapes them at the last minute through Eva's courageous intervention. Eva discovers a couple of crackling frogs and puts them on some of the quail.
Eva meets King Knuffi and is led by him into the "piss booth" of the Propaganda Minister. There they meet Clementine and the King of Gourmets, who has come to the birthday party with other nobles. Clementine exchanges his brain so that he becomes a submissive subject of King Knuffi. The ministers give King Knuffi a little toy that shows how Knuffi once broke into the ice. At the table, Knuffi and Eva are vegetarian. The nobles grab their meat and explode through the quail that is equipped with firecrackers. Eva moves away in the commotion and Knuffi, who wants to look after the fireworks, kicks the king of gourmets on the face. Back in the snail ship, the victory over the tyrant is celebrated with the hit “Tellerlip Girl” (sung by Max Raabe ), which is performed by the on-board band and storms the hit parade of the Society for Threatened Peoples .
Knuffi is saddened that Eva has disappeared again and decides to have the whole kingdom searched for her. Gustav and the crew try to leave with the snail ship, but the engine does not start. This is how the king's henchmen gain access to the ship. The first officer tries to deter the intruders but is eventually overwhelmed by the propaganda ministers. They comb the ship and Gustav lures them on the wrong track so that Eva and the children can get to safety. After an unsuccessful search, the ministers instead bring some old hag to the king. But Knuffi rejects this. Now the ministers try to put Eva's dress on one of them and sell it to the king as Eve.
The ministers discover the children sleeping in the meadow in front of the ship and wake them up with a disgusting shower of urine. Then they are dragged into the castle. Eva runs after them. Back at the castle, Knuffi is happy that Eva is back. He immediately gave her a nightcap. Eva is put to bed by Knuffi. The bunny has also lost its way into the bedroom and has taken some of Knuffi's nightcap. The bunny jumps on the furniture and merges with the cuckoo clock to form an oversized hybrid creature. Knuffi wakes Eva and has the hybrid be brought to his science department. Then Knuffi goes on a carriage ride through his lands with Eva. When Knuffi arrives back at the castle, the ministers greet him with swastika armbands. They have now found out that they can use the bunny as a time machine and have made a detour to the Millennium . The king is very interested and would like to be brought to the time machine too.
Gustav and the crew storm the castle. Just as they burst in, they just see how Knuffi and the ministers disappear with the time machine. Back in the ship, Eva wants to repeat building the time machine with Gustav. The children have a nightcap from Knuffi's Castle. The snail ship comes to life from the smells of the nightcap and rapes a standing church. The merger of the snail ship and the church creates another time machine. Gustav and Eva travel back in time and keep little Gustav from saving Knuffi from the ice.
History of origin
The film took eight years to produce and was carried out with minimal funding. Some of the special effects were created by Splatter director Jörg Buttgereit , while Christian Keßler worked on the script .
The film was supported by the FilmFörderung Hamburg GmbH , the film funding of the State of Lower Saxony, the cultural film funding Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art and the Friedrich-Weinhagen-Stiftung Hildesheim.
reception
Filmtipps.at describes Sommer der Liebe as “the first independent equipment film in German film history”, which comes up with a “crazy splendor of colors and equipment”. The magazine denied Storch the qualities of a good director, but gave him credit for the fact that his “naive dilettantism” produced an “inimitable mixture of seemingly harmlessness and disrespectful humor”, which amazed the viewer continuously.
- critic.de: “Storch [...] translates his personal fantasies into pictures in such an inimitable way that hardly any filmmaker has succeeded in over 100 years of film history. [...] The Journey into Happiness is a film that needs to be watched over and over again. Maybe at some point he'll reveal his secret. "
- Maria Holzmüller in the Süddeutsche Zeitung : “The commitment and passion of all those involved are honored - in the end, after the enemy king with a swastika band has escaped over a rabbit time machine, the question that arises after every excess is: Was that really necessary now? "
- kino.de : “Weird, psychedelic and amusing adventure that was positively received at various fantasy and independent film festivals. The makers Wenzel Storch and Matthias Hänisch have already been labeled 'Terry Gilliam on Crack' by the critics. "
- Ekkehard Knörer in the taz : "Wenzel Storch's films are the most opulent Arte Povera imaginable. Unlike the two previous films shot on 8 mm, The Shine of These Days (1989) and Summer of Love (1992), Storch had for Die A journey into happiness thanks to funding, benefit (from Max Goldt and Wiglaf Droste, among others) and bank credit (he is still heavily in debt, that's why) an almost decent budget. He and his employees worked on it for a total of twelve years. And indeed: The amazement at the interiors of this fantastic world never ends during the seventy minutes that the film lasts. "
Web links
- The journey to happiness in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Trailer on YouTube
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Filmtipps.at: The journey into happiness. Retrieved November 23, 2019 .
- ↑ Die Reise ins Glück on kulturserver-hildesheim.de, accessed on August 14, 2013.
- ↑ Die Reise ins Glück on critic.de, accessed on August 14, 2013.
- ↑ In the brainwashing facility on sueddeutsche.de, accessed on August 14, 2013.
- ↑ Die Reise ins Glück on kino.de, accessed on August 14, 2013.
- ↑ Ekkehard Knörer: dvdesk: An everlasting flea market of the imagination . In: The daily newspaper: taz . March 12, 2009, ISSN 0931-9085 , p. 14 ( taz.de [accessed December 9, 2018]).