FILMEX REVIEWS

‘HEIMAT’ (‘HOMELAND’)

West Germany, 1984, 15 hours, 32 minutes 1 p.m., concluding 1 p.m. Sunday, Four Star Theater, 5112 Wilshire Blvd. Only the first 3 1/2 hours of Edgar Reitz’s splendid saga of the life of a Rhineland village family from 1919 to 1982 was available for preview, but it’s enough to whet the appetite for the rest. Although not as venturesome in style as Fassbinder’s 12-hours-plus “Berlin Alexanderplatz” and marred by a distracting switching back and forth between black and white and color, it does use its length (probably record-setting) to provide its straightforward narrative with the psychological nuances usually possible only in a long novel. Especially effective is Reitz’s depiction of the gradual rise of Nazism, seducing the multitudes with its appeal to national pride buttressed by a revitalized economy. RECOMMENDED.