Original title: Die Reise ins Glück

Self-taught director Wenzel Storch once made a living drawing cartoons and comic books while high on LSD, and he has brought this sense of the surreal to his epic work of obsession, JOURNEY INTO BLISS, a wild mix of animation and live photography that took ten years to make and left Storch deeply in debt. Two years alone were spent building the 23 sets, including a castle façade.

The film deals loosely with the adventures of the grizzled Gustav who captains a ship – a giant floating ‘snailboat’ – with a crew of talking animals and lumbering sailors in blackface. It unspools like a perverse children’s story book, all at once cuddly cute, grotesquely obscene and beyond absurd as normal narrative logic shatters, giving way to an episodic, free-associative structure that one critic likened to “cinematic memory association.”

Yet according to some, Storch has created an oddly unified vision that holds together in some strange way. “Never confusing, just non-sensical,” notes reviewer Jeremy Knox, who attended the sold-out screening at Montreal’s FantAsia film festival.

With sets and costumes that are a marvel of imagination and inventiveness, the film is always visually engaging. The psychedelic effects are supplied by Jörg Buttgereit, the director of NEKROMANTIK, who also lends an inspired performance.

Directed by Wenzel Storch
Written by Matthias Hänisch, Christian Keßler, Wenzel Storch

Cast:
Jürgen Höhne
Jasmin Harnau
Holger Müller
Jörg Buttgereit
Jeanette Eisebitt
Matthias Hänisch

Special effects supervisor: Jörg Buttgereit
Special effects: Michael Romahn, Marcel Caspers
Music by Diet Schütte, Max Raabe

2004, 73 min.