Homeland films & war films

Blossoming landscapes and clean water above an ever-blue sky. Kitschy, idyllic images in an intact world. Retarding plots about themes such as friendship, love and family. All very flat, very predictable. As predictable as the happy ending after a few intrigues and adversities in the middle section. I'm talking about home movies. There is hardly a movie genre that fascinates and interests me less. Actually. Maybe that was arrogant of me. Why did so many people watch home movies, especially in the past? A search for clues.

There are hundred-year-old propaganda precursors such as the popular movie. That is true. There is also the modern Heimatfilm of the 1970s. It's a bit more permissive in the wake of flower power and the sexual revolution. That's true. The traditional German Heimatfilm, however, was made directly after the Second World War. The genre was born in 1947 and had its heyday in the 1950s, immediately after the darkest chapter in German history. I find that extremely fascinating. Isn't that a supposed contradiction? After all, the wholesome Heimatfilm world shown did not reflect the broken world of post-war Germany at all.

Germany after the unspeakable Nazi era. It was a time of shame and guilt, a time of reappraisal and denazification, but also a time of the women of the rubble. A country that had been morally and actually destroyed had to be rebuilt brick by brick. It was no use. People were forced by reality to achieve modest sustainability. That wasn't just an advertising slogan. To this day, my mother, defamed by WDR as an environmental pig, is unable to throw away even the most broken things. There were no discussions about quotas for women, 30-hour weeks, gender-appropriate language or saving a distant future world. People had other, existential concerns in the here and now. The focus was on saving the present world. A roof over their heads, enough to eat, a minimum of prosperity and dignity. Life was arduous and was driven by the hope and dream of a hopefully better world for themselves and their descendants. At some point.

"I want my children to have a better life one day." 

This world, this utopian better world that people longed for, was shown to them in the Heimatfilms. The longer you think about it, the more you realize that it is not a contradiction that the heyday of the Heimatfilm was in the 1950s. It was just a logical consequence.

When did interest begin to wane and when were hardly any Heimat films made? In the 1960s. Germany was reaping the rewards of its economic miracle. A modern kitchen appliance, a television, a first vacation in Italy. Things big and small were perceived as luxuries. So at the very time when the beautiful, idyllic dream was gradually becoming reality, nobody wanted to see this beautiful, idyllic dream on the big screen. I find that fascinating. Do people always long for what they don't have? Do they take it for granted when they have it?

In 2023, there are hardly any home movies left on German screens. Instead, war films in a continuous reality loop. And the wars are getting closer. The many wars against terror were followed by the war against the virus. The war in Ukraine is now being followed by a looming civil war in France. Even on German streets, as recently in Essen, there is now talk of civil war-like conditions. A media information war hovers over every single war, a war for the sovereignty of opinion. Who is the victim, who is the perpetrator, who is to blame? Is it the migration policy, is it migrants unwilling to integrate and ready to use violence, or is it evil right-wing extremists who generally stir up fear and resentment against foreigners? Depending on what your personal judgment is, you will find media that will reinforce it. At least for the time being, because censorship and protection against false messages and false images are progressing day by day.

Are you, like me, tired of these terrible images, regardless of who is to blame? These images of massive violence from Ukraine, from Marseille, from Parisian banlieues. Many of these images are softened and pre-washed by embedded journalism. The knowledge that I am only being served a filtered truth makes it even worse. Above all, I am tired of the violent images and films that I see every day in real life. Unfiltered on German streets, in German train stations, in German pedestrian zones. 

Is there any hope? I fear that it will have to get worse before it gets better. And then? Then people will get back to work. Rubble men and women. Without an app and with their own hands. It's no use. Problems like gender-speak and saving the climate in 2050 will fade into the background. And on the only free evening when people don't fall into bed dead tired, they look forward to a movie about their home country. Who knows if I'll live to see it?

So I'm already approaching the supposedly cheesy Heimatfilm genre with the "Miracle of Bern". It doesn't have to be "Green is the Heath". The German World Cup victory in 1954 may not be a Heimatfilm, but the event took place at that time. Why were the Germans so proud of Fritz Walter and co. just nine years after the Second World War, while they swapped German flags for rainbow flags ninety years after Hitler's seizure of power? Fascinating.