|
When did you know you were going to tackle HEIMAT 3? Was it already during HEIMAT 2?
- Directly after the television broadcasting of HEIMAT 2 I was full of enthusiasm. I wanted to carry
on, to make use of the flow of storytelling. I have felt it very intensively the year HEIMAT 2 was
acclaimed all over the world and wanted to carry on working right away. The many encounters
with the public, the exultant critics, thousands of newspapers in which complete strangers have
entrusted me with their life stories, that has all been so inspirational that I was writing new
stories during every free minute. It wasn’t long before I had gathered enough material for a third
HEIMAT and I felt compelled to carry it on. These creative impulses had to endure a hard test,
however, as it took a whole 9 years before I could get the money together to finally be able to
start with the filming. One thing was clear from the start: that I wanted to go back to the main lo-
cation where HEIMAT had begun, namely to the Hunsrück.
So the location was the impetus for HEIMAT 3 more than a specific historical phase?
That is surprising for a film-maker who made such a discovery of the chronicle for
the feature film.
- There is a close link between place and time. As soon as I describe a place, I come into contact
with its history. In that respect every location is a historical place. You just have to view it from
the narrator’s perspective. The interest in going back to the periphery of the Hunsrück, not right
into the centre, mind you, was there from the start. But there was a certain timidity and a sub-
stantial reluctance: what had happened in these places that were once so familiar? How was
new, contemporary history reflected in things there, in the people? The historical event that had
changed us all, the fall of the Wall in 1989/90. I found it exciting to explore this history not just in
Berlin or in East Germany for once, but in a place in West Germany and yet one which is com-
pletely different from the image of West Germany which everyone seems to know.
Indeed, the virtual place in HEIMAT, Schabbach, is not exactly the centre of world
events.
- And yet Schabbach is the centre of the world. The question as to who are the people, the pro-
tagonists of world history who actually turn the wheel of history is unanswered. The history
books maintain that it is the politicians, those in power or the great intellectuals, those people
who are the front page of the newspaper. I have my doubts about that, I don’t believe that they
are really the motivating historical force. They are indications of something, they are manifest-
ations of general circumstances. Election results, for example, even the election of the American
President, are not the triumph of people, but rather the visualisation of ambiences and general
moods, perhaps also the effect of capital. We would all like to be otherwise. We want individuals,
such as artists for example, to be able to change the world. That is a yearning, but the real
history is made by other, anonymous forces. And that is why the fictional Schabbach is a place
in which one can observe what moves the heart of the world. The big issues do not usually play
a role here but one can observe the moods that people are subjected to.
Walter Höllerer once said: the provincial is a possibility. Would you agree, or is the
provincial today really just the provincial and the music really plays in the metro-
polis?
- That is in fact the theme of HEIMAT. In the decades which I talk about in the film, the people knew: we live in a village, we live a part of the world which appears to be the 'back of beyond', the major world issues don’t affect us. And as a result some of the individuals in these villages got itchy feet. Then one day they head off into the world, they want to see the world and only seldom do they return with their new experiences. The village remains behind, lost in a dream. HEIMAT 2 is about the life of the young people who have run away from the provinces to the big cities where they form small cult communities amongst themselves, circles of friends in which they characterise each other, displaying or imparting survival skills. The provinces are the zone that one runs away from, the city is where one encounters a lack of borders. Now, with HEIMAT 3, I had to ask myself the question: do the provinces actually still exist? They certainly don’t exist in the classic sense anymore. One doesn’t even find a lack of borders anywhere anymore. One finds mundane ignorance to the same degree in towns and in villages. It is no longer a question of the place but the person. That has actually meant the end of the provinces. In my experience, despite its simplicity, somewhere like the Hunsrück is actually a complete unknown. There are still the many unmistakeable ambiences, buildings, habits, faces, smells, dialects, place names, sentiments, family histories. These are all deep inside the soul of the hidden realities which don’t appear in the media and which I therefore wanted to track down in my work on this film.
Where is home then, if there is just ubiquity everywhere these days?
- In dialects for example. One would think that dialects are actually dying out, but they are not.
One hears a wide variety of German idiom in HEIMAT 3, particularly Saxon, Hessian, Bavarian
and the Low German of the Hunsrück of course. It is no longer like it was when I was young,
when - like Hermann Simon at the start of his student years - one made the effort to learn High
German as soon as one left the Hunsrück. Today the Hunsrücker goes out into the world
speaking his dialect. I think that has to do with the need to find a sense of belonging in a place in
which one really doesn’t belong. I have experienced that with East Germans in particular, who
really began to develop their Saxon only after the fall of the Wall, for example. Home no longer
refers to the place where one has one’s roots but rather to the time in which one lives.
Where were you when the Wall came down, how did you experience it?
- In autumn 1989 I was in the middle of filming HEIMAT 2. On the evening of 9 November I drove to a casting meeting with an actress. When I went out onto the street afterwards and started walking home through Schwabing, I heard the boisterous voices singing Deutschland über alles in a student fraternity building. They were singing the allegedly nationalistic first verse, something which no one would have dared to do before. At that moment I was somewhat afraid. One had no idea that the Neo Nazis would appear in East Germany of all places only a short while later. The fall of the Wall had direct consequences for my ongoing filming. There is a sequence in HEIMAT 2 where my protagonists are traveling along the transit route through the GDR to Berlin. Every one of us had made this trek countless times and we knew the absurd controls and harassment with which one was confronted en route. I had planned to describe such a journey through the DDR in the film. I had actually filed the request for filming permission with the DDR authorities only weeks before. Somehow I just had the feeling that, against all probability, they would let me film along this route. As the planned filming date drew nearer, the Wall fell. A short while later I was able to carry out the filming on the motorway to Berlin without any permission at all. We really filmed at the crossing points. Officials who, only a few weeks earlier were part of the border control searching West German cars, now acted as extras. I was able to put the same border officials in their little booths and have them control the vehicle convoys, which we had drive up for the film.
Initially you worked alone on HEIMAT and then together with co-author Peter Steinbach, you wrote HEIMAT 2 alone and for HEIMAT 3 you have again found a co-author, Thomas Brussig. What led to your working together and how is it working out?
- I had been looking for a suitable co-author for HEIMAT 3 for a couple of years because I could see that I was going to touch on experiences that went beyond my own personal horizon, particularly as concerns the lives of people in East Germany. For a narrator there is no better means of control than one’s own experience, there is no book or information source in the world where one can get the details one needs for making films. I was then offered a position as visiting professor at the Babelsberg Film School in Berlin running courses in Dramaturgy and Script Writing and Thomas Brussig was one of my students. I heard that he had already published a successful book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading Heroes Like Us during a train journey. It was very opportune that, the previous year, the film school had arranged a screening of HEIMAT 2 in Potsdam. Thomas Brussig was one of the organisers and therefore knew and loved HEIMAT 2. He was immediately very interested when I approached him about working together on HEIMAT 3 even though, at that stage, it was still very uncertain as to whether I would ever be able to make the film.
Given that there was a family at the centre of HEIMAT and a group of friends who became a kind of surrogate family was the focus of HEIMAT 2, what is the focus for the characters in HEIMAT 3?
- In the course of HEIMAT 3 it becomes clear that family has a stronger bonding force than any of us had assumed. I think this is something which has been recognised all over the world following the 1970’s. There was a time when we said that work was the bonding factor. But when you look at it closely, you realise straightaway that it is a question of economic success and money. And these days if we ask ourselves, which are the relationships in which money plays no role at all, then there is little other than the family. Hermann and Clarissa are a couple out of the 60’s and they see their relationship as a free partnership. They never marry but in the end they still become part of a large family.
Yes, it sounds conservative but it is perhaps more real than we want to admit.
- When I tell a family story then I know that I am going to be understood all over the world. Everywhere, be it in Africa or in Japan or with the Eskimos. As soon as I say: this is the daughter of this father or this mother and that is why they do care what happens to her, that is something that everyone understands. Everyone knows what family groups are. We are encountering a fundamental law of human relationships.
Hermann and Clarissa are not really the main figures in the story. They are perhaps something like a narrative opportunity but the fascinating thing about HEIMAT 3 is that the two casts from the previous films, HEIMAT and HEIMAT 2, are mixed together to a certain extent. Does every part have its own key figure or how have you tackled that?
- I would rather leave it to the audience to choice their favourite out of the many figures in the narrative. I don’t think it is always the individual figures who become the episode heroes in HEIMAT 3, rather the couples: Hermann and Clarissa, Gunnar and Petra, Hartmut and Galina, Tillmann and Moni, but there are also the lonely figures, such as Ernst, or Anton, the young Matko or the wonderful Lulu. On New Year’s Day 2000 she goes on a short hike with friends along the banks of the Main in Frankfurt. Something insider her asks whether there is anything else worth having besides prosperity and security. Her partner wants to know what role love plays for her. But Lulu doesn’t seem to know what love is. Her child is musically talented and there are hopes for him at least but Lulu is completely at a loss. HEIMAT 3 ends with Lulu in tears. She has just turned 33, that is, the age which Hermann had once called Christ’s Age. I would really like to have had an answer to the questions Lulu asks of the world and would like to have allowed her a smile.
How do you do the casting? Are you taping it? Do you use a casting agency?
- I have built up my own casting agency, so to speak, with Petra Kiener, who has been on my staff and my advisor for many years. Ms Kiener has done a phenomenal job with HEIMAT 3. She worked with agencies, theatres, drama schools and with colleagues, presenting the roles to be filled to them. For months she had photos and videos sent to her, she made appointments to meet with hundreds of actors. One has to remember that there were 93 speaking parts alone to be casted for HEIMAT 3.
Which were the roles that were particularly difficult to cast?
- Tobi, for example. Just from outward appearances, with his long red hair, a latter-day GDR
hippy. It was also very important to me that the dialects spoken are authentic, that the actors
really were from the required language area and also had a natural relationship to their dialect.
For example Gunnar, who also had to appear as a Honecker mimic! I held extensive screen tests in Autumn 2001. I also employed a small team, including a costume creator with a wardrobe. Thomas Mauch was doing the camera work. We dressed the actors according to their roles and had the makeup artist develop the role profiles. I wrote specific scenes for the screen tests because I did not want the scenes from the script to become tired in advance. A number of casting activities also followed later in the Hunsrück. In addition to the speaking roles which we casted with professional actors, there were still another 150 or so other roles for which I as able to get characters from the neighbourhood. The Russian Germans, in whose language I was especially interested, were particularly difficult because they spoke an adventurous mixture of Russian and German. The 14- year old Matko, who has a significant key role to play Part 5, also had to be casted as authentically as possible. Different screen tests were held for over a year just for this role until we finally found the right Hunsrücker youngster in Patrick Mayer.
When did it become clear that Clarissa, Hermann, Anton and Ernst would again be played by the same actors who had played them in HEIMAT or in HEIMAT 2?
- Actually, the demands of the Clarissa role can hardly be cast by any actress other than Salome Kammer. She plays a singer and has a series of appearances in which she sings live. If one is going to show Clarissa’s appearances in opera houses, concert halls or even on smaller stages, then it is only going to be authentic if the actress can command all of these. It was also logical, therefore, that Henry Arnold would be her partner again. The seventeen years that had to have passed between the film sequels provided a challenge for makeup artist Paul Schmidt who had already done a wonderful job with Marita Breuer in the role of Maria in the first HEIMAT. Michael Kausch and Matthias Kniesbeck were in fact twenty years older since HEIMAT but that was not nearly enough. According to the script 40 years had to have passed! I could spend days telling you what Paul Schmidt, the costume creator and the actors undertook to achieve the signs of their life and role stories. All of this took place long before the filming started and was part of the casting decision.
What was it like in the end to have the actors from HEIMAT and HEIMAT 2 together on location?
- It was as if no time at all had passed since the start of HEIMAT, as if everything had to be as it then came. The actors got on with one another immediately and found the way back into their roles very quickly. One knew who the characters one is acting was as a child, how they grew up, how their mother had treated them, they had all this knowledge with them. They were playing a life role.
Where do you feel most comfortable as a filmmaker? On location, in the editing studio, at your desk writing the script?
- I have a particular fascination for the filming. To a certain extent it is an existential highlight and I feel that I myself am in top form when I am filming. That may be because one is faced with very different demands when filming. The interaction with people plays a very fundamental role for me. When I arrive on location, I am assailed with questions from the staff. The actors have questions about their roles, costumes, the location, their partners. The technical staff, the camera team, every one has their questions. And one has new ideas and solutions while answering these questions that one would never have thought have while writing the script or during the filming preparations. A film team is a tremendous apparatus which is in a position to move mountains. That is why it is always so sad when the filming comes to an end, even after 250 days. The last day of filming is the end of many dreams. To be able to start editing, one first has to learn to say goodbye to these dreams. One views the prototype from a distance. Of course you do remember the euphoric days. But that is exactly why it is important to cut the filming and the memory strings before the editing starts. Only then can one succeed with the harvest and the montage of the filmed images. The writing of the script can also be a very enjoyable and satisfying work period. Unfortunately, it is the part of filmmaking in which far too many people try to get involved.
HEIMAT is set in Schabbach and practically nowhere else. HEIMAT 2 is set in Munich and almost nowhere else. Does HEIMAT 3 also have such a location?
- The location of HEIMAT 3 is the Hunsrück and surrounds. Geographically the Hunsrück ends at
the Rhine, where the Rhine rift begins. Geologists talk of a gorge cut through the slate mountain
by the river. It is a very definite geographical border. And the house which Hermann and Clarissa
acquire and which forms their new base is right on this border, with its back to the Hunsrück, so
to speak. And yet Schabbach is only a footpath away. And what Hermann originally planned as
a definite boundary, as an opening to the Rhine Valley and its culture, becomes more and more
blurred over time, gradually becoming a return to the Hunsrück. So one could say that HEIMAT 3
is also set in the Hunsrück again. The view over the Rhine is the view of the world. For me, the
Rhine symbolises the current of the history which has always flowed past the Hunsrück, which
has always scratched its surface somewhat but which has not completely defined it.
As Zuckmayer wrote in The Devil’s General 'the Rhine is the great melting pot, the winepress of
Europe, where the cultures have mixed for centuries'. The river which joins the people of Switz-
erland with the Netherlands and the North Sea, with all the downsides of the modern age: noise,
traffic, destruction of the environment. I definitely did not want HEIMAT 3 to dangle an idyll in front of our eyes with a return to the untouched dreamland taking place.
Many would-be idylls turn out to be deceptive, even Hermann and Clarissa’s togetherness. Even the house itself starts to retaliate later on in the film.
- There is a house which plays a role in each of the HEIMAT sequels. In HEIMAT it is the house
with the blacksmith, the Simon family’s house which becomes more and more a place of en-
counters, reunions and farewells. The kitchen with the beams where one can sit and recover
from life’s odysseys. This is the centre of the world. In HEIMAT 2 it is the villa 'Fuchsbau', a place of joint departures, dreams and despair and in HEIMAT 3 it is the 'Günderrode-House', a place of creative disorder, of regeneration, the attempt at lasting love. I have often found that such a house can mean home as well. The act of building a house is an ancient activity.
How have you worked with colour and b/w this time? HEIMAT used colours very intuitively, colours accentuated magical moments. HEIMAT 2 was more matter of fact in that it made the night colourful and the day black and white. How is it in HEIMAT 3?
- What I do reject is the notion of black and white being just a lack of colour. In HEIMAT 3, there-
fore, I have restricted myself to a few interconnected black and white complexes. They appear
only when the scenes move into the realm of the universal or contemporary history. Scenes
dealing with the fall of the Wall, for example, with historical events or people in borderline situations, moments which are detached from the activity. There are such scenes in Parts 1 to 4.
At the beginning of our discussion you said that, at the start of the planning for HEIMAT 3, you felt a certain reluctance to go back to the Hunsrück. Where did that come from?
The fact that the Hunsrücker identified with HEIMAT so much and that HEIMAT had become their
national epic so to say, is due to it having gained worldwide recognition. What has always fasci-
nated us is this beautiful landscape. It speaks its own language, infects you with a certain spirit.
Also the ways and means with which the Hunsrücker have had to defend this landscape from
the living areas over the centuries still attracts people. Yet I could not live there forever.
I have since become a city person and enjoy the locations in my films from a distance.
|
|
