Heimat: Chronique d'un rêve

Not only a song title, but also a dilemma many people in villages might face. There's always reasons that will feed into both sides of the argument (or the decision on what to do). This movie has been considered and called "boring" by some. And I wouldn't blame anyone saying that, because the pace of the movie is really slow.

It takes the time to introduce the characters and it also takes the time to make the evolve (or devolve). The journey might not lead always where you expect it to go and "rules" (unwritten ones) defy feelings many times. But some things can obviously not be changed. So the characters do have to go with the flow of things. Melodrama that could be easily avoided ensues, but that's life isn't it?

A cinematic recapitulation of his canonical Heimat (roughly can be interpreted as "homeland") mini-series (three chronological installments encompassing a totol 30 episodes, released in 1984, 1993 and 2003 respectively), which conscientiously survey the shifting ethos of Germany from mid-19th century till the millennium through families dwelling in a fictitious Hunsrück village called Schabbach, octogenarian New German Cinema veteran Edgar Reitz's latest edition marks his first feature film in 35 years, on top of its whopping 225-minutes running time.

HOME FROM HOME is au fond a prequel, sets its time-frame precisely from 1840 to 1844, and the cynosure here is a geeky adolescent boy Jakob Simon (Schneider), the youngest son of a blacksmith family in the village, who is not cut from the same cloth like his peers, for example his elder brother Gustav (Scheidt), and is often called on the carpet by their parochial father Johann (Kriese) for shirking day-to-day drudgery. Jakob is an avid bookworm and is weaned on the vast world purveyed by other people's words and imagination, he begins to envisage a life beyond his home-bound hardscrabble status quo (the area is constantly plagued by crop failure, harsh weather and pandemic illness), specifically, to emigrate to Brazil, for that purpose, he even masters the language of a particular tribe of South-American Indian, and often effuses about it with sheer elation, say, in front of Jettchen (Bill), the corn-fed girl he cottons to.

Little does Jakob know, what kismet lays in store for him is diametrically opposite of that ideal, the Grim Reaper sporadically assails the family either by abrupt fits or after a chronic affliction; Jettchen, who takes a jollification-addled fancy on Gustav, a hammer blow directly precipitates Jakob's self-inflicted prison stint, ends up becoming his sister-in-law; but the last straw renders Brazil a castle in the air is the filial duty that befalls him when Gustav and Jettchen pre-empt his own pending migration, a muddy fraternal grapple turns out to be the best solution to blow off their steam.

Jakob stays, and life continues with its unchanged pace, he settles for Florinchen (Lembeck), Jettchen's comely thick-as-thieves friend he likes but not exactly loves, his erudition finally earns the respect from Johann, who also mends fences with Lena (Fouché), his daughter, Jakob and Gustav's sister who has been cut off from the family because she marries a man of a different religious persuasion, in the end of the day, Reitz's time-honored sense of perspective about life, time and humanity hits the mark with distinction.

Sensibly and relentlessly, Reitz adopts a sedate rhythm to the meandering narrative and characterizes a lyrical nostalgia (enhanced by Michael Riessler's protean score conveying emotions with high fidelity) which beautifully pervades this saga from stem to stern. The film is shot in an aesthetically mind-blowing monochrome (which anticipates Ciro Guerra's mesmerizing EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT 2015, that could be providentially welcomed as an otherworldly answer to Jakob's unfulfilled longing), which is ingeniously if economically interspersed with eye-catching polychromatic touches: a golden coin, an agate keepsake, a German flag, fire blazing a horseshoe, the tail of an arcing comet, two varicolored garlands, roadside blue berries or other floral variations, all pregnant with Reitz's divine acuity of discerning and accentuate beauty in both sweeping landscape and quotidian rigors with his reductive idiom. Thematically, HOME FROM HOME adheres to Reitz' humanism precept which precludes it from degrading into an eye-level pastoral, and incontrovertibly, he has been inculcated with the same humble naturalism which is in the veins of his coevals like Jan Troell and Ermanno Olmi, while anchoring this film in the signs of its time like diaspora, privation and disillusion, Reitz tops it off with a well-earned serenity to patch up with the aftermath of a dashed dream and bereavement.

Although the film is not necessarily an actor's showpiece, and newcomer Jan Dieter Schneider's central performance is a bit of a curate's egg, one real trouper should be name-checked, the leading actress in the first Heimat series, Marita Breuer, understatedly returns as Margarethe, the hard-working and loving mother of the household, and feeds this estimable roman-fleuve an affecting sentiment that echoes its auteur's own monody towards mortality and permanence.

Sometimes a movie has to take four hours. If you stay that long, you not only learn to know the characters, they get under your skin.

A Prussian village. Not boiling yet, because 1848 revolts are some years away, but there are signs. So far people just emigrate, to Brazil in this case, leaving centuries of traditions behind. A sign of something arriving. The minds aren't satisfied.

But the main story is about the village, as a small society and universe there the borders are too close. But the film is anyway focused on individuals. Trying to get shelter from the storm. Which goes on in their souls

I won't write a long panegyric here: I can just say that if you liked the other "Heimat" installments, you will like this "prequel" as well. And if, like many viewers, you watched the previous films with an almost religious devotion, you will feel the same way about this one (actually, two).

Somehow Reitz has found the secret of putting his viewers deeply into the situation to the point where you really do feel "you are there" -- and he can do this whether the setting is contemporary, early 20th century or, as here, in the 1840's.

The first installment is admittedly a little long, but there is ample payback in the second, which seeing the first is necessary in order to set up the situation.

Way back in 1984 German director Edgar Reitz directed a TV miniseries called Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany. (Heimat meaning Homeland.) This 15 hour long miniseries became the first part of his Heimat films. In these films he would try and tell Germany's history through characters in the small fictional town of Schabbach. He would later add two more TV miniseries and two films to his massive series. The most recent edition to the Heimat story being Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision.

For the newest edition to the series Edgar Reitz decided to take the story all the way back to the beginning, specifically the town of Schabbach in the mid 19th Century. Which is the farthest back in time any Heimat film has taken place. The film mainly focuses on the story of Jakob, (played by Jan Dieter Schneider in his first thematic performance, and it's a great debut.) a young member of Schabbach who has dreams of leaving his small poor town and emigrate to Brazil. But unfortunately for him he keeps finding himself unexpectedly detained. And as the years slowly go by he becomes less and less hopeful of ever leaving Schabbach.

I should mention this before continuing the review, you don't need to see all of the other Heimat film before you see this one, it's a prequel and for the most part not connected to the other films at all. So don't let the Heimat series massive length deter you from watching Home from Home Even though Home from Home is much shorter than most of the other installments to the Heimat series, it is still a very long film. Home from Home clocks in at nearly four hours long but it doesn't feel nearly that long. The film is slow paced, but it never feels boring because it's able to enchant the audience with its likable characters and simple and relatable themes. We follow Jakob and his family through all there different toils and troubles that they are faced with, whether it be the difficulties of planting and harvesting seasons, oppression from the rich Barron, or finding new love. By the end of the film we are incredibly close to these characters and feel a deep personal connection with them, nearly every single character has there own private scene, so the audience can't help but feel part of the small town of Schabbach There are also several different scenes or objected that reused or referenced throughout the film, giving the film a nice since of cohesion.

The cinematography, while being amazing for most of the film, does have some weaker parts. Home from Home is mostly a black and white film, but there are a few objects throughout the film that are in color. (Like the girl in the red dress from Schindler's List.) And sometimes this really works, and other times it doesn't. Sometimes it just looks really out of place and really just come across as an eyesore, the coloring is really sloppy and does not fit with the rest of the film. Not to mention that sometimes it's completely unnecessary, so you end up wondering why it was still in the final cut of the film. But the soundtrack is luckily consistently good throughout the film, and fits Home from Home perfectly.

While you're watching Home from Home you don't realize the effect it's having on you. But when it's over, you'll find it's difficult to get Home from Home out of you're head. You'll find yourself mulling over the characters and events constantly, and you'll find that you miss the characters and will want to return to the film just to relive the moments. And as I aid before you don't need to see the other Heimat films before you see this one, so do yourself a favor and check it out

8.3