La ignición creativa en Heimat, de Edgar Reiz

Abstract

Edgar Reiz’s Heimat, a German chronicle, is a pioneer auteur tv series. Its historical importance stems from its creative ignition and the grafting of modernity in the classic story structure. This article focuses on the first sequence of the series, The Return of the Warrior, as a reduced model for the series as a whole. Its significant features are: the hypotactic story, the preponderance of catalysis and the abundance of clues. It procedes with the analysis of the story of the first chapter and its homology with that of the first sequence through the main figure of the hero, which cuts across the entire series. Heimat is based on the notion of “it happened”, hence the presence of photography and of the photo album as a reduced model for the story in the present perfect. A small detail: flies colonize Heimat. Is the flies’ genocide a metaphor, or is it a metonymy? The intimate chronicle becomes an anthropological document.