Interesteg What makes it different from others?

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

talula1060 Heimat started out strong painting a picture of a small Rhenish town right after WWI. It went through the battles inevitably fought between the old and the new and how this affected the Simon family and their friends. It was totally refreshing to see how a typical German town coped with to works wars, depression, social, political, and economic changed and finally the onslaught of the modern age. This series was less about the events of history and more about the relationships of one family. This is both a strength and a weakness. I think there were quite a few important omissions that would have absolutely affected a small town in the Rhineland not least of which would include the remilitarization of that area as well as various economic changes made in the area during rearmament. The series deals with none of these things nor does it give more than a cursory mention of any of the restrictive social policies of the Nazis. That is forgivable if this particular town had no members of any restricted groups, but this seems unlikely. Since Reitz was all about telling a true story of a real German town, these omissions seem even more glaring.The series really lost its way midway through its 11 episodes when it moved away from the core characters. Reitz dedicated the longest episode to one character who we really had never met before beyond a few scenes when he was a toddler mugging for the camera. The character of Hermann would eventually go on to become the focus of the sequel to Heimat, but the director didn't know that when he subjected us to over two hours of a pubescent Hermann's face as he receives his first hand job, modern jazz fan Hermann singing entire songs in his high, squeaky voice, and sensitive, educated Hermann sighing at the provincialism of his mother and her generation. He's supposed to represent how much the town has changed in 20 years. Modernism vs traditionalism is a common theme in Heimat and is shown in a variety of ways prior to Hermann's episode. But I didn't know this character and so didn't care about his love story with a woman who had come to the town to marry his brother. And that's another thing. The actress was in her 30s when this was filmed while the actor was only 16. This was the first episode we see any nudity taking the form of the 16 year old actor running around nude, undressing in front of his elderly mother, or else lying in bed nude with a 30 year old equally nude actress. I'm not sure if German film studios recognize how creepy this is to the viewer but i think the director could have sacrificed a bit of realism by not showing nude children in bed with nude adults.Other pet peeves? Way too much time was wasted pointing the camera at a variety show featuring magic tricks and barbershop singing by the townspeople. I fail to see how more than 5 minutes of this advances the story or the idea of Heimat. It was self-indulgent on the part of Reitz and painful for the viewer. The black and white vs color switching back and forth? I've no problem with emphasizing certain scenes, but I felt the quality of the film was such that it made the color looked washed out and the black and white look fuzzy. In addition, it seemed rather heavy handed of Reitz to change color mid scene back and forth. Speaking of heavy handed, some of the acting was extremely overdone and hammy. I'm talking to the actors playing Paul (adult) and Lucie. Paul looked and acted like a bad impression of Franklin Roosevelt and Lucie spent lots of time posing for the camera and also talking way too close to people. These things could and should have been fixed by Reitz because they constantly remind the viewer they are watching actors which totally ruins any realism that was built up. One other annoying thing about Heimat is its confusing casting of new actors as characters age. It might be acceptable if they were consistent about it. However, while Maria, Pauline, Kath, Eduard, and Glasich are always portrayed by the same actors, other main characters such as Ernst, Anton, and Paul change, some several times. In one episode Anton is played by a 20-something actor while in the previous episode (set four years prior) he was only 12. Ten years goes by and they've got an actor who looks about 50 playing him. All very confusing and completely breaks any connection a viewer might have with the characters. Since many of the actors were changed when their character left home for awhile, it could be Reitz' intention to show how much people change when they leave home, even temporarily. That may be, but as a viewer I would have loved to be able to recognize the characters from episode to episode. That was really the fundamental flaw of Heimat. Because the title is supposed to describe that feeling we have for our homeland, our roots; that is meant to include the people who live there. Of course the director should do his best to help us care about these characters and their connection with their homeland. But that's really where the series fails unfortunately.

gavin6942 The series (11 episodes) tells the story of the village of Schabbach, on the Hunsrueck in Germany through the years 1919-1982. The central person is Maria, who we see growing from a 17 year old girl to an old woman, and her family."Heimat" has faced some criticism for its selective interpretation of German history, with some writers noting that there is limited treatment of the hyperinflationary spiral of the 1920s, the Great Depression, or certain aspects of Nazi history such as the Holocaust of World War II. But we must remember, even with so much running time, not everything can be covered, and this is from one perspective.Frankly, this is an admirable series because few countries in the Western world had such a turbulent 20th century. We could argue that France and Poland also did, or maybe Spain, but none of these compares to Germany. To go from being seen as the most evil place on earth to normalized relations is quite a shift, one that no other country has managed.

tieman64 Some trivia: with "Heimat", probably the most ambitious project in post-war German film history, Edgar Reitz became one of Stanley Kubrick's favourite film directors. As Kubrick was fond of both scope and minutiae, it comes as no surprise that the attention to detail and the amazing narrative breadth of Reitz's almost 1000 minute long film roused Kubrick's admiration. He saw all of it in his private movie theatre and hung his favourite film still from the film (of Maria's coffin on the rainy street in Schabbach) over his office desk. Kubrick even contacted Reitz in the 80s to ask him about his set designer Franz Bauer, whom he considered for "Aryan Papers" (Kubrick's unmade Holocaust project).When, years later, Kubrick had finished the filming of "Eyes Wide Shut", he expressed the wish that all dubbed versions of his film in the most important European countries be supervised by his favourite film directors: in France by Patrice Chareau, in Spain by Carlos Saura, in Italy by Bernardo Bertolucci, and in Germany by Edgar Reitz. At that time Reitz was busy preparing "Heimat 3", yet after Kubrick's untimely death he bent to Kubrick's wishes.The final "Heimat" film was released several years after Kubrick's death. With its release, and a now combined length of 53 hours and 25 minutes, the trilogy became one of the longest series of feature length films in the history of cinema.The first "Heimat" film, subtitled "A Chronicle of Germany", takes the form of a family saga set in the fictional South Western village of Schabbach in the years prior to World War 2. The film traces the lives of families, farmers, mayors, tradesmen, shop owners, politicians and soldiers, but primarily focuses on the fortunes of the Simon clan, who pull themselves out of the humiliating defeat of World War 1 and witness the rise of Hitler and the entry of their country, not only into the Second World War, but Germany's post-war economic boom.Being a backwater town, Germany's conflicts and larger historical events are only glimpsed in fragments by the villagers. The gossip of neighbours, messages on radios, the appearance of Nazi armbands, allusions to the Final Solution and a subtle scene in which a boy on a bicycle observes a concentration camp being constructed, all hint at unseen horrors.The film is largely shot in black and white, though colour sequences do increasingly pop up, most notably during Germany's first colour television broadcast, which our humble villagers witness with great fascination. Spielberg would borrow similar techniques in "Schindler's List"."Heimat 2" and "Heimat 3" are equally epic. While "Heimat 1" moves from the small town life of 1919 to the social unrest of the 60s and 70s and finally to the relative stability of the 1980s, "Heimat 2" largely takes place in the late 60s and 70s, whilst "Heimat 3" centres on the late 80s and 90s and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Unsurprisingly, "Heimat 3" focuses on a composer-conductor rebuilding a dream house whilst the Berlin Wall comes crumbling down, a gesture which epitomises the overriding theme of the entire trilogy. With the word "Heimat" meaning "homeland", and with the trilogy packed with shots of abandoned factories, discarded US bases, apartments and crumbling walls, the chapters, and the final episodes in particular, are all about collapse, abandonment and rebuilding, Reitz primarily concerned with the idea of rebuilding homes and reclaiming Germany (and the German identity) from nationalistic ideology (and later the threats of Globalization).What's most interesting about the trilogy, though, is watching how the Simon clan changes over the decades, humble villagers becoming industrialists, aviators, arrogant playboys etc. Unsurprisingly, these characters are also used as entry points into other topics, like one character's narrative symbolising an influx of Russian immigrants, another the effects on reunification on East Germany and others the effects of Western capitalism on German heritage.Like "The Wire", the "Heimat" trilogy is ultimately one of those rare projects which captures the scope of Balzac and Dickens. It serves up the vast universes expected of great 19th century novels, with its Balzac-like focuses on inheritance, complex character juggling, money flow, boardroom dealings and the way the world changes (and stays the same) with time. Where the "Heimat" trilogy differs from such fare, though, is in its mythical scope, Reitz paying attention not only to his characters, but the very heartbeat of the earth. For all the drama on display, he is always inserting moments where natural phenomena (earthquares, storms, eclipses) utterly dwarf his cast, lending the series a unique tone, a strange blend of realism, documentary, social comedy, melodrama, mysticism, and German Romanticism.9.5/10 - "Heimat 1"8.9/10 - "Heimat 2", "Heimat 3"A work of extraordinary ambition. "Heimat 1" and "Heimat 2" are the best of the trilogy, though the scope of "2" necessitates that its themes be handled in a somewhat superficial manner (notice the lack of minorities etc). "Heimat 3" ends strongly, but is hampered by its short length.

tom-hellemans You can only appreciate this series if you like the German tradition of very slowly moving, but brilliant novels, like 'the magic mountain' (der Zauberberg) by Thomas Mann. Don't expect any form of action: it's real life, looked at through the eyes of real people, and there's no heroism, just life and the things it does to all of us. I had the habit of watching at least one or two episodes each week in winter, and I think this is the way to enjoy the series; watching the whole thing in - let's say - one week, would ruin it and make it boring. The way music is integrated in the series, and even becomes a theme in the second series, often triggered something; it's like Marcel Proust's 'a la recherche du temps perdu': the emotions shown, the feeling of time moving on and never coming back and history being written without you being able to change a single thing doesn't make you happy, but gives you a mild feeling of accepting things just the way they are.