Title: Heima Release Date: 2007 Genre: Documentary Director: Dean DeBlois
If you have ever met the parents of a friend and suddenly felt like you knew him or her much better, understood more of why they do some of the things they do, then you know something of what it feels like to watch Heima.
Icelandic for homecoming, Heima is a documentary on the band Sigur Rós and their summer 2006 tour around their native country, Iceland. News of the shows, spread almost entirely by word of mouth, drew eclectic crowds in places ranging from large staged venues to an abandon herring factory in a northern ghost town. When Sigur Ros performs in the physical and cultural landscape from which they were born, their music becomes a mirror image of its surroundings. Playing their songs in the midst of the rolling fields, steep volcanic cliffs and black sand beaches reveals that this band sees itself as co-creators. While they are making something unique with every song they write, there is nothing new about their music—it is simply the sounds of the people and places that have long existed in this beautiful northern land.
What started as an idea for a fitting end to several years of globetrotting for the band quickly turned into a unifying storyline for an entire nation. It is this narrative thread, matched with the sounds of Sigur Ros and the indescribable images captured by Alan Calzatti, that make Heima a cinematic wonder.
Watching the film you see that this tour was not a PR or publicity stunt by a rock band. Sigur Rós went from one corner of their country to the other blessing it, validating it, and thanking it for making them who they are. Footage of live shows is blended with performances done in the middle of fields with no audience other than the camera and the surrounding landscape. Whether it is a young girl having milk and cookies in a coffee house with her grandmother or 25,000 people mobbed in front of a traditional concert stage, each performance communicates a love and admiration for the people and places their sounds fill.
During one performance a small toy piano is given a solo before the crowed gathered. It is a wonderful moment of rock performance imitating life. The humble sounds of the child’s toy are brought to the center of the stage for a moment of celebration and validation. What most would see as insignificant and small, Sigur Rós sees as simply beautiful—not despite what it is, but precisely because of what it is. Each stop along the tour was the solo performance that place deserved.
Heima shows us just how much we are a product of our environment. For better or worse, that from which you came has defined and shaped you. Whether that truth is buried deep beneath layers of pain or is joyfully obvious to everyone you meet, who you are is deeply rooted in where you came from. Do you embrace the people and places you come from, celebrating and validating them, or is much of your life a subconscious (or conscience) attempt to deny that origin?
For many of us, it has been a long time since we went back to the place from which we came. For many of us, returning home sounds more like a cause for screaming than singing. But, for many of us if we do not acknowledge the past (and yes, even learn to embrace it for what it is) we will never move forward.
As you get lost in the transcendent beauty of Sigur Rós' Heima, maybe it's time you consider a Heima of your own.
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