Heimat 3

There’s nothing quite like the warm sense of self-satisfaction gained from watching a 13-hour German art-house movie. Fortunately, this third installment of Herr Weiss’ soap-operatic examination of post-war Germany is a rewarding piece of film-making.
With its epic, tragicomic cycles and unhurried character development – too behemoth for TV, too Aaron Spelling for literature – it's difficult to imagine Heimat 3 succeeding in any other medium. Divided into six parts – which work more or less as stand alone films – the film begins elatedly as the Berlin Wall tumbles down, bringing the nouveau elite Simon clan into contact with the (somewhat caricatured) gullible 'ossis' (East Berliners) for the first time.
The euphoria continues as Jurgen Klinsmann steals the World Cup for German, but few hours in, the tone becomes extremely Thomas Hardy. That’s only fitting; between multiple traffic accidents and suicides, Heimat 3’s death toll starts to rival that of most samurai movies.
It hardly needs to be said that the scale of the entire enterprise is similarly breathtaking. Using catchy narrative hooks Reitz teases out issues relating to local, post-Soviet and global identity, human frailty, teutonic romanticism, capitalism, creativity and NATO. “I’ve done it”, gasps Hermann Simon (Arnold), the chronicle’s central character, as he composes his Millennium Symphony. Edgar Reitz must know just how that feels.

Running Time 675mins. Cert IFI Members. Opens June 17th.