HEIMAT 1 Movie Review

Heimat-Eine Deutsche Chronik

Sixteen hours, with barely a single memorable moment. Director Edgar Reitz's multigenerational family soap is intended as nothing less than the history of modern Germany, seen through the eyes of its central character/cipher, Maria (Marita Breuer), who had the symmetrically good fortune to be born in 1900. From the vantage point of Maria's little village, childhood blooms into young womanhood while romance, family obligations, and all those pesky wars keep everybody hopping. About six hours into Heimat (the high-steroid word for “homeland”) you realize that it's going to be all buildup and no payoff; when the Nazis finally pass through as just one more speed bump on the road to the ‘80s, you simply sit back and stare at this thing with the same interest you'd feel for a local access/cable TV city council meeting. (The switching back and forth between black-and-white and color seemed arbitrary to me at first, until I realized it was probably tossed in just to add some mystery to the interminably dull goings-on.) The musical crescendos cue you in to the importance of certain scenes, particularly the ones that are not important. Originally filmed in eleven parts for German television.

NEXT STOP … Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, 1900

1984 924m/C GE Marita Breuer; D:Edgar Reitz; W:Edgar Reitz, Peter F. Steinbach; C:Gernot Roll; M:Nikos Mamangakis. VHS FCT