Heimat II: A Chronicle of a Generation (1992)

Pioneering German filmmaker Edgar Reitz follows up his groundbreaking Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany with the astonishing 13-episode, 25-hour saga HEIMAT 2: CHRONICLE OF A GENERATION. Beginning in the year 1960, HEIMAT 2 follows Hermann Simon, who leaves his village of Schabbach to settle in Munich. Over the next ten years, Hermann becomes a talented musician, falls in love with an enigmatic cellist, struggles as an acclaimed avant-garde musician, and marries the girl next door. As in the original HEIMAT, this deeply personal tale is set against a backdrop of turbulent historical times—the decade of the Sixties in this case. Hermann, like many young Germans, is shaped by the political turmoil of the era, influenced by the artistic explosion in Munich, and bewildered by the aftermath of such a tumultuous decade. Epic yet intimate, entertaining yet bittersweet, HEIMAT 2 offers a riveting portrait of a generation caught up in the most amazing decade of the twentieth century.

 Very Good With Some Shortcomings
After watching 25 hours of this in the past week, I have somewhat mixed feelings. I dearly loved Heimat 1, it is the best made for tv film I've ever seen & probably 1 of the top ten films of all time for me. I've been really excited to see this, & it mostly didn't disappoint.

Because of the length, I'm not going to give a detailed plot summary. For those who've seen Heimat 1, suffice it to say that it starts with Hermann leaving Schabbach, & goes to the late 60's; focusing on Hermann & his group of college age friends in Munich. One thing potential viewers should be aware of is that much of the plot revolves around the 60's German New & Electronic Avante Garde Classical music scene & Avante Garde film scene. If you despise Avante Garde & Electronic classical music, this may be hard to sit through as there is quite a bit of it in the foreground of the film. While I would not personally purchase a music cd in this style it worked for me in the film, but it might not work for you.

Through the first 1/2 - 2/3 of the film I remember thinking that Edgar Reitz is a genius & wanting to find out what other of his work was available. His characterizations are wonderful; I felt that I knew these people & could relate to them & their issues. Unfortunately, I felt that the series started to go downhill after the episode with Reinhard's death; it turned into a bit of a soap opera, which Reitz had previously avoided in both this & Heimat 1.

The last 2 episodes are not worthy of the rest of the series. Episode 12 is especially bad; Reitz seems to have an ax to grind against the German leftist anti-war movement of the late 1960's & uses an entire 2 hour episode to paint the German anti-war left as drugged out inconsiderate idiots. All of these particular characters come across in the series as a whole & especially in this episode as very unlikeable people. I've never been to Germany, so it's possible that this is an accurate portrayal of what occurred there; however I can tell you from personal experience that while their were some people in the anti-war movement in the USA who did fit his description; it is not at all an accurate depiction of the anti war movement as a whole in the US. I was young enough to only be on the fringes, but episode 12 is definitely not what I saw here; the series would have actually been superior with this episode left out as there is little plot, just a 2 hour depiction of the left as idiots. I find it a bit ironic that the left is likely to be the main audience for this film!

I also felt the final episode #13 was a bit on the weak side, including the ending (which I won't give away).

Despite the criticisms above, the first 1/2 - 2/3 of the series is a work of genius, with wonderful characterizations & a gripping story - I missed quite a bit of sleep because I didn't want to stop watching!

Briefly on the technical side: Facets seems to be a company with a great mission & horrible execution. On the + side, this is the highest quality dvd I've seen from Facets. On the minus side, the transfer is of really mediocre quality. The video is unnecessarily compressed for a dual layer dvd - each disc averages around 4 hours; my player showed the bit rate as constantly being below 4 mbs. There are some artifacts, some pixelization & lots of grain. I wouldn't be complaining as much if this was a $30 set, but Facets is charging $135 list price for this (Thank God for Netflix; I would be furious about the lack of video quality if I had bought it!). There's one other problem; all too frequently the white English subtitles are superimposed on a white background & are almost completely illegible.

For those with multi-region players who wish to own this, I would suggest purchasing the UK Tartan edition from Amazon.uk; even with international delivery it's less expensive then the Facets & much better quality.

To sum up, while I've focused a bit on the negatives, I highly recommend this series; at least the first 2/3's is quite captivating. May 23, 2006

 Facets fails again!
I had high hopes that this time Facets would do a better job with the sublimely wonderful Heimat series! I even called them before ordering and asked if this time the quality of the tranfer would improve substantialy, and they assured me it would! The 1st series was almost unwatchable, fuzzy, washed out very low bit rate tranfer. This time its a little better but not a whole lot, there is still room for lots of improvement. Gone is the yellow subtitle and you get white subtitles which when in B&W scenes makes the text hard to read. Plus no option to turn off the text for those that understand German. The last straw though was when I popped in the 2nd dvd only to find an infomercial for a Christian old folks community!!!!!! And nothing else!!! What do they do buy up old low quality used DVD's and record over them?? I'm callling mon morning to demand another copy shipped UPS at their expense. For those yet to buy the series get the Tartan version from Amazon Britain, and make sure your machine can play the different region DVD!! From what I hear their transfers are 1st rate, I just wish my high end Marantz (which does SACD, and DVD audio too) could play region one or I'd have done the same! This is the last purchase from Facets for me which is too bad because on paper they do look worth supporting!!

--Mike May 21, 2006

 Ten Stars, incompatible with the rating spectrum.
This movie is long, but taken in secquential doses either from front to back or as I watched it first, because the library happened to be stocked in that order, back to front.

Firstly, this is a movie to describe the catacylsmic conflict between the status quo and my parent's generation, their ideology and the Establishment, their feelings, and their desires, and their tragedy, as we all have generations, theirs was one epic situation, the 60's and 70's, though they have been very well stamped on and defeated, still live on, in certain respects, and I doubt, very much so that they stock this in the shelves of hollywood video, or blockbuster, but if you want to buy someone a gift, and they have not been out of the cave to see the light yet, here is a movie, that will show them, in ideology, or at least in restrictive and quanitfiable mediation, a slice of heaven, and a somewhat accurate portrait, of a righteous generation, sticking at least in the film, to old testament values, and also new ideas and freeform expression, in very unidolotrist language, and forms of heroics that superceed the action, action, action, that you see everywhere else, on tv, in movies, and everywhere, there is to be. May 5, 2006

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