Heimatland

I thought the premise had promise at first. Switzerland is experiencing a natural disaster which threatens the entire country, all at once. How do different factions of society cope? The film has multiple plot threads which reflect various parts of Swiss society, but the involvement of multiple directors results in zero plot cohesion. This, combined with the abrupt ending prior to the storm actually hitting, means we don't really learn anything about Swiss society at all. Natural disasters as a framing device for social commentary can work well, but the director has to take an editorial view. This movie ultimately doesn't really say anything, other than possibly pointing out the drawbacks of not being an EU member.

Starting with a sex scene the way this movie does shows me no one has confidence in this movie so they need to do something to grab your attention. I hate when movies rely on cheap nudity to get attention. And they'd be right to have no confidence in this film. The characters are so uninteresting I've forgotten them all already.

The other great crime is the fact they have made impending disaster in this film boring. It takes a rare Lack of talent to make incoming disasters boring but they've achieved it here.

Not a good look for Switzerland here, all I can think is they're boring but hedonistic. Don't waste your time.

This is a quasi-good film about nothing.

I really do not like commenting on other reviews, but the crud about how they admit the movie is slow, without purpose or connectivity, yet give high praise because it talks about Swiss society? And the rest of us are supposed to know this and some how relate? ... and the parts that the director never connects up, like the genesis of the mystery cloud, about how the different conversations connect up, etc? OK, maybe there is a small group of viewers in Switzerland that might actually finds the 'artistry' of this meaningful, but the rest of the viewers of this movie are stuck in a cloud of WTF.

Despite being slow sometimes (it may have been the reason for so many bad rating for this nice film), this is a very innovative and clever film from Switzerland. Indeed, it is a movie that criticizes the country's comfortable place and widespread cynical positions throughout history until nowadays. Besides the social political issues, it is also an interesting film in the way it has been conceived and organized: made by ten different directors, it does not show the bizarre upcoming storm that will devastate Switzerland (an no other place!) from a single perspective, but showing several interesting characters, such as a couple in crisis, a football ultra who supports Young Boys, a Croatian cab driver, his family and a rich passenger, a manager of a supermarket dealing with chaos due the fear of shortage, a mother and her daughter, followers of a fascist agitator, a policewoman with a taint in her recent past, a worker in an insurance company, an old woman who lives alone, and so forth. The flaw in the film, more serious than an initial sluggish pace, is that, among these various parallel stories (some o them quite violent), not all of them are well developed and some of them have confusing or non-existent ends.

Dark moody and no fun it makes me wonder if any Swiss are happy. I wish I could take my time back and suggest you avoid this one.