Home (2008)

Even though there are points of reference to other movies (some of Michael Haneke's early work, for example) in Ursula Meier's Home, it stands its own ground, it establishes a world of its own: a world which at the same time feels completely familiar and like it could have taken place on a distant galaxy. This is, I think, one reason why you should watch this movie. There are others as well.

A family lives next to a multi-lane freeway which is about to be opened. There are vast fields and throughout the film, the camera never strays from the close environment of the family (with one crucial exception). This makes for a very tight film about some very tightly knit people. They play together, dad goes to work, the teenager sunbathes under a gray sky and the two younger kids go to school. Their yard extends to the freeway and all kinds of belongings are scattered there. But the threat of the freeway looms over them. It begins with the asphalt, the workers. And then one day, cars speeds past their house (as the local radio celebrates the opening of the freeway) and the noise starts to get exceedingly intolerable. Home is one part sociological drama and one part horror movie. Like Todd Haynes' Safe, it places its complex of ideas within how people experience their surrounding world; the malaise they feel is placed within that experience. It may seem like a silly statement, but I think movies very rarely pay this close attention to experience (even though this is by no means a "realistic" movie) in the way Meier does. I mean, the entire subject of the movie is the main characters' relation to their lived environment (and that relation is intertwined with their relation to each other). This relation is captured in seemingly ordinary scenes (two kids running across a heavy trafficked freeway) and scenes that leave the ordinary, but still holds on to the level of experienced (it never transcends the family members' own perspective). The result is claustrophobic in an almost tactile sense; you can almost smell the asphalt and the traffic and your ears react to the noise. The basic question dealt with here is, of course: what is a home? Even though I have probably seen a hundred movies about people alienated from their home, people returning home, or people struggling for their homes, Meier approaches the theme from a rather unfamiliar angle, and her attempt is, I think, successful: she has made a movie about society, but also about where society comes to an end - in some ways, Home has the feel of a movie about the apocalypse.

The strength of the film is that Meier is not interested in explaining. Lots of things remain unclear. The focus is the tension within the family and how that tension is intertwined with the opening of the freeway. This tension is rendered in a geographical rather than psychological way. The film takes a look at places of solace, non-places, places that provide a sense of escape. All the time, the concept of place remains open-ended and fluid. This also ultimately means that the concept of 'home' takes on new meanings as the film progresses (and as the nightmare deepens).

To me, this film is an important reminder of what cinema can be, and how it can work with ordinary experiences through emotions that are elusive yet completely intelligible.

Agnès Godard, perhaps the best cinematographer working today, shot the movie and the images perfectly reflect the strange in-between land that we are invited into: a place where the fields stretch on forever and the landscapes are dressed in drab grays only to break into glimmering sunshine. The sparse choice of music is also excellent.