Heimat

I have just finished watching Heimat 3. Edgar Reitz, the director, sees himself as a storyteller. I wonder if storytelling can fill the place of religion. For me it can and does. I don't need meaning any more but I like to see a story unfold and if I am surprised at some of its twists, well so much the better. The steady evolution of new situations pulls one on into the future.

The three Heimat films (the series title was apparently an ironic reference to the heimatfilm genre of the 1950's with their rural settings, sentimentality and simplistic morality) make a story that has nothing to do with religion, politics, art, culture, nature, the cosmos, or any other grand human theme. It is purely a story. Tragedies occur and are given their moment but the moment passes and another moment arrives which has little or nothing to do with what has gone before. That is important to me. There are no universal truths drawn out of events. They happen. They pass. Some have consequences; Many have no consequences. Sometimes the characters find meaning and truths along the way, like Hermann who says: 'In the end it is family that is the strongest.' But the observer is left understanding that this is only Herman's truth and that they have to find their own.

The grand themes fires our lives; sometimes we choose to ride one, to make it the steed which takes us through our life; art maybe, or politics, ecology, conservation, fighting poverty. Some of us choose a less noble mount like running a bookshop. The animal has energy of its own and carries us when we flag. Occasionally we are in control. More often not at all.

The span of time covered between 1918 - 2000 saw some terrible events in the world and a few wonderful ones. Not everyone's lives where directly touched by these events. Occasionally during the first Heimat there is a glimpse of the horrors but they affect almost none of the characters on a personal day-to-day level. That is the truth. For the majority of human beings big things happen to others and are suffered vicariously. When they happen to us they are less big because they become the same size as ourselves.

Or because we are only one small part of what is happening.