Heimat - Fragmente on AllMovie

In the tradition of Giulietta Degli Spiriti (1965) and A Safe Place (1971) comes Edgar Reitz's Heimat - Fragmente (2006). This avant-garde drama carries the viewer on a surreal, visionary trip into the subconscious of a young woman, Lulu, actively searching for something elusive that she refers to as "the old future of childhood." Reitz depicts this search in forty dreamlike "sketches," intercut with sequences that visualize the dreams and realities of women over the course of an entire century - venerable characters from different time periods such as Marianne, Renate, Evelyne, Helga, Ms. Cerphal, Clarissa, Olga, Maria and Lucie. As Lulu summons "ghosts" from the past, events play out before us, pulled straight from the history of Lulu's family, such as war episodes involving her uncles, the removal of a cow from her grandmother, Maria's, farm, and the romance that develops between a little boy, Hermann, and his childhood sweetheart, Klara. Moreover, Reitz adds a fascinating twist by actually placing Maria in these episodes - she becomes a series of characters, from an infant in pram to the little Klara, waltzing arm-in-arm with Hermann. The director saves the most arresting development for the end of the picture, however - as the daily world that Maria returns to is not quite what she anticipates.