Doris Dorrie’s “Enlightenment Guaranteed” is screwball farce and ironic social comedy, an industrious, volatile mixture. The film has a three-part structure, opening in Munich and shifting to Japan for its middle and concluding sections. The story focuses on two middle-aged brothers lurching toward some solidity and emotional grounding.
Uwe (Uwe Ochsenknecht), a salesman of kitchen furnishings, is unhinged by the sudden, unexpected departure of his wife and their four children.
Uwe’s brother Gustav (Gustav Peter Wohler) is a Feng Shui consultant whose life is largely governed by concealment and diversion. Alarmed at his brother’s extreme sadness, Gustav invites him to participate in his long-scheduled retreat at a Zen monastery outside Tokyo.
On their first night together in Tokyo, the brothers get extremely drunk, are unable to find their way and become disoriented in an alien, impenetrable environment. The brothers soon are deprived of their money and their bank cards and, left to their own devices, they resort to larceny to feed themselves and find a place to sleep.
Momentarily separated, the brothers are saved through the intervention of an “angel,” a German emigre (Anica Dobra) living in Tokyo who helps them resume their spiritual pilgrimage.
Back at the monastery, the brothers’ painful realization of their faults and limitations unfortunately lacks the dramatic weight to give the earlier material any definition or shape. The storytelling is too often sluggish and unexciting, and the film too often reiterates social and cultural presuppositions about Japan instead of challenging or subverting them.
Shot on digital video, the film has a bleary, undistinguished look that is further undercut by a recurring formal device: The point of view frequently shifts through the frame of Uwe’s mini-camcorder, but it adds little in perspective, balance or analysis.
“Enlightenment Guaranteed” is fun, but it’s too crudely illustrated to have any significance.
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“Enlightenment Guaranteed” ((star)(star) 1/2), in German with English subtitles, opens Friday for a two-week engagement at Facets Multimedia, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave.; 773-281-9075. No MPAA rating (language, sexuality, brief nudity, adult situations). Running time: 1:45.
