NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Heimat - Eine deutsche Chronik" is a German mini-series from 1984, so this one will have its 35th anniversary soon. It was made by Edgar Reitz and this is his career-defining work, not just this one here, but also the two mini-series he made as sequels as well as the fairly recent really long movie about Sehnsucht/longing. But we talked and will talk about these on other occasions. Today lets focus on this one here. It consists of 11 parts with an average of 80-90 minutes perhaps. The shortest chapters run for under an hour, but the longest run for over 2 hours even. German film buffs will recognize a name or face here and there maybe, but there's really no big names in here, actors who were known crucially for their work with Herzog, Fassbinder, Wenders or Schlöndorff. But that's just a statement, that is not supposed to discredit this mini series in any way. Nonetheless, I must say I was rather disappointed by the overall outcome. From the episode list, you will see by the years listed in there that it spans over a duration of over 60 years. And according to the description on IMDb, it is about a character's life who was born in 1900: the character of Maria. But this is only partially true. There are massive, very lengthy segments that do not involve her character whatsoever, even if it may be about her family members for example.The only episode I kinda enjoyed was the second. Afterward, it went south quickly and stayed there until the very end. Which means there were major lengths on many occasions. Not even the parts about the years of World War II were interesting. The general idea that people struggled with their everyday lives too, with work, with love, with death, with money, with family was introduced and that these issues were maybe much more important for them than the War while when you hear about the 1930s and 1940s, then everybody says immediately oh yes Hitler, the War, the 3rd Reich etc. but people had the very same problems as we do today. Sadly this approach was taken, but not elaborated on here convincingly. Back to Maria: With her in the center of it all, this could have been a defining mini-series about the average person, but sadly it moves away too frequently from her and when it moves back or stays on her life, then it is also rarely on a level that I would approve of in terms of cinematic quality.Another aspect I personally found really distracting was Reitz' switching between black-and-white permanently, especially early on. Later on, there are also entire chapters that don't change and stay one of these creative choices from start to finish. But in the first few episodes I found it really random and annoying and I wonder if there was any logic to it. Completely aside from that, I think that the entire project resulted into an outcome of mediocrity and this refers to writing, acting and several other production values too. It is never on a level of failure, but it's way below goodness too. To me it was sadly never a memorable or even inspirational I must say. The overall bleakness or the fact that very little happens are not at the core of the series' struggles. It's perfectly fine to include it the way Reitz did, even appreciated at times when it helps the realism component. However, if doing so, you need to deliver in other fields and areas that somehow justify the existence of this story. And to convince me that the characters at the center of the action deserve a film that centers around them. I don't think this was achieved here. And that's why I give it a thumbs-down. It's clearly superior for example compared to Reitz' most recent addition to the series. I don't recommend checking out "Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany". Or only see episode number one and if you don't really love it, then stop right away as it is certainly not getting better afterward, rather worse. Save your time and stay away from this one.

lamitim I spent a year as an exchange student in the Hunrueck area of Germany (where the series opens). I both laughed and cried as I heard the accents and idioms that were used. They have not changed since the early 1900's until my residency there. The outside scenery shots took me back as well. The outside scenes to be back to the Germany that I remember with "Fernweh/Heimweh. I would like to point out one error in the englich subtitles. They make reference to a bucket of "berries" while the spoken word in the audio uses to local idiom "Krombeeren", a.k.a. potatoes. A great series. I am glad that winter is coming so that there will be plenty of nighttime hours to see Heimet 2. Gruess Gott!

Max_cinefilo89 Recounting the lives of the inhabitants of a German village from 1919 to 1982, Edgar Reitz's epic miniseries Heimat- A Chronicle of Germany is a stunning showcase of film-making at its finest, a fifteen-hour masterpiece, unequaled in European cinema.The story begins with Paul Simon's return to Schabbach, the village where he was born, at the end of World War I. The conflict has left its marks on him, but no one notices this until it's too late: the first episode ends with Paul leaving Schabbach in 1928, without telling anyone.We will subsequently learn he has become a successful businessman in America, although this aspect of the plot is covered sparingly, the director being more interested in the Scabbach community, where life revolves around Paul's wife, Maria (Marita Breuer). She is the heart and soul of these eleven episodes, watching her sons grow up, her in-laws get old and the world change radically: over the course of fifty-four years, she will witness war, poverty, family crises and much more, always trying to remain calm and controlled.Reitz's brilliance lies partly in the story he tells (the history of an entire nation seen through the eyes of common people), but most of all in the means he employs to tell it: on the surface, Heimat looks like an ordinary TV miniseries, but in fact the director delivers a fifteen-hour art-house film, as testified by the techniques used to bring the story to life: what mainstream television product would feature so many black and white/color transitions (dictated by emotional reasons, rather than narrative), ambiguous characters (especially Maria, whose increasingly cold behavior has a devastating effect on her son Hermann, as we will see in Heimat 2), unconventional themes (adultery and sexual initiation were still taboos on the small screen in 1984) and bizarre fantasy sequences (one might even be entitled to think Reitz began the TV revolution given US form by David Lynch's work on Twin Peaks)? And let's not forget the unreliable narrator (every episode is introduced by Glasisch, the village fool), who makes the viewer unable to interpret the Heimat cycle in only one way. I also have to point out that the title is ironic: the people portrayed in these episodes struggle to find a home-country (that's what "heimat" means, although the translation doesn't fully live up to the significance that word has in German), but are destined to fail on one level or another: they can only find a temporary home, which will eventually vanish along with them.For all the reasons listed above, Heimat deserves to be seen: those wondering if there still is a difference (in terms of quality, if not even success) between big and small screen really ought to give this intense opus a look.

Tabarnouche I can only echo the preceding comments: See this film. I would add some ifs, however: See this film if you appreciate good direction, consistently solid acting, and discriminating characterizations; if you savour cultural subtleties; if you find 20th-century European history fascinating; if you think the dynamics of community life have much to tell about the human condition; if you've ever wondered what it meant to be German in the 1920s, '30s, & '40s (although the film covers 1919-1982); if you can't quite understand how Nazism could have gained acceptance and then pre-eminence in a northern German village far removed from Berlin and full of the usual diverse personalities; if you want to put a human face on the monolithic histories about war and propaganda; and if your attention span is longer than that required by the average Hollywood production (the film runs to something like 16 hours, in 9 videocassettes).Heimat is a superb cinematic chronicle of social and political change in human enterprise, a Bildungsroman of a community. You will not forget it.