Heimat 3 - A Chronicle of endings and beginnings

The Heimat films are filmmaker Edgar Reitz' lifelong project. Now he has reached the third, and perhaps last, film about the 20th century history of the Germans. Heimat 3 starts in Berlin in 1989 with the historical fall of the wall where, after 17 years of travelling around as a conductor, the protagonist Hermann meets the love of his youth, Clarissa Lichtblau, who now is a famous singer. They settle down together in a small house in Schabbach, the village where Hermann was born. But settling down proves to be a hard task when the only life you know has been a rootless one.
Reitz successfully captures the limitlessness that the Germans felt after the wall was torn down and the Soviet Union fell. Old acquaintences from the previous Heimat films turn up, as well as a new gallery of people, all seeking their luck in the new reunited Germany. The Heimat episodes have more often been compared to great literary classics than to other films, and Edgar Reitz here crowns his trilogy with an utterly refined narrative technique that says more about the development of Germany than most history books do.

MARTIN HALLDIN