‘Heimat’: The 15-hour epic that left Stanley Kubrick staggered: “I’ve never seen anything like it”
In an age of increasingly shortened attention spans caused by the influx of short-form content that we’re all consuming on a daily basis, it’ll surely take a lot of convincing to get someone to watch a film that’s 15 hours of runtime. Many people seem to struggle if a film is over two hours these days, but Stanley Kubrick was no stranger to incredibly long films; in fact, he relished in them.
If the filmmaker had lived to see the dawn of TikTok, Instagram reels and the bottomless pit of AI-generated slop that clouds the timelines and homepages many of us endlessly scroll through, we’re sure he would despair. I mean, 2001: A Space Odyssey is pretty solid proof of how Kubrick would perceive this new era of technology, where our brains are being fried by the stench of meaningless digital landfill, subsequently leading to a decline in people who are genuinely interested in watching long and perhaps challenging films.
Kubrick was always down to watch a long film, whether it be Abel Gance’s five-and-a-half-hour-long Napoleon or Edgar Reitz’s 15-hour epic Heimat, which he once claimed he’d never seen anything quite like. Emerging in 1984, the first part of the series (which Reitz has continued to work on for several decades) was divided into several episodes, but together it stands at a whopping 15 hours. Knowing Kubrick’s dedication to the medium, we wouldn’t be surprised if he’d put aside a whole day to watch the feature in one go.
Heimat spans German history from 1918 to 1982, although the other entries in the series chronicle life as far back as the 1840s and continue into the 2000s. A project of epic proportions, Kubrick was mesmerised by the sheer scale and depth of the film, which centres on the life of a character named Maria as she lives through an incredibly tumultuous time in German history.
In an interview with 032c, Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s producer, explained how the movie affected the filmmaker. “Heimat is the greatest post-war German film. I saw it with Stanley, and I remember him turning to me after it was finished and saying, ‘I don’t believe it. Did you see that? I’ve never seen anything like it’. Unbelievable’. Edgar Reitz was a pioneer of what’s happening now with television series. It endures because it’s great art.”
Kubrick never made a film as long as Heimat, although he made several features that clocked in at over three hours, like Spartacus and Barry Lyndon. It would’ve been fascinating to see the director attempt a project as lengthy, which blended television and cinema to create an unforgettable foray into the human experience, a theme that he was captivated by.
In another interview, Harlan revealed Kubrick’s obsession with the film, and the central concept, explaining, “Stanley was completely taken by Heimat. The idea of telling such an ‘impossible to tell story’ through the eyes of a bunch of simple villagers he considered completely new and brilliant. To show ‘heaven’ convincingly and without special effects on the top floor of a country inn and have the dead people observe ‘us’—he was deeply moved.”
Every scene of the film seemed to have moved him, including details about its making, as can be expected of a director of his calibre, analysing with his mind. Understandably, he took inspiration for his attempt at making Aryan Papers, which ultimately did not come to fruition under him. As Harlan explained, “There are a number of other scenes like that. He was so taken by it that he hired the art director and costume designer for the preparation of Wartime Lies [which became Aryan Papers]. There are some specific scenes we saw together again and again [having videotaped the BBC Two broadcast] and I remember it all very well.”
