Homeland

KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA TIMES

“With a film, sponsored by West German TV, and having a playing time of some fifteen hours (no – this is no misprint) you would be excused if you thought it the German reply to ‘Dallas’ or ‘Dynasty’.

But not so: HEIMAT (Homeland), now on an exclusive West End run, happens to be something quite memorable.
Not only the longest film ever made it is also one of the most remarkable. Set in the fictitious village of Schabbach, in Germany’s heartland, we follow the lives of its inhabitants from the country’s defeat in 1918 right up to the present decade. The story of Schabbach is, in its way, the story of Germany’s history this present century, and in its humanity, its fair mindedness and its percipience the film is utterly engrossing.
If its enormous length seems sprawling and shapeless it is the sprawling shapelessness of life itself which is reflected.”

KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA TIMES, 15.Februar 1985