The Baader Meinhof Complex

Posted by Tanos on Sun 23 Nov 08, 8:51 PM

Tags: films

I went to see The Baader Meinhof Complex on Friday. Well worth two and a half hours or subtitles, as I have zero German apart from the odd "schadenfreude" etc. Apparently the film is very controversial in Germany, but it neither glamorised nor trivialised it all to me.

One aspect I particularly appreciated was the sense of the glamour of being in an underground subculture that the Baader-Meinhof gang members felt. The cinematic attractiveness of many of the real members no doubt helped, as does casting actors like Johanna Wokalek to play them. But then we also see the grubby reality of shooting family men in their own homes, and journalists being killed by bombs because you sound like just another crank on the phone when you ring in a warning. And of course, you don't stop being just another crank at heart when you start making pipe bombs on the kitchen table.

The opening sequence, involving student protesters being beaten up by the police, also pitches you straight into a feeling that maybe the rhetoric about West Germany starting to descend into fascism again was right. But then as you watch the process of leftwing journalist Ulrike Meinhof going from interviewing amateurish political firebombers to co-leading a group of quite professional, Palestinian-trained, murderers, you see just how, well, silly they're being. Student politics is great fun, but it's not something you can pursue in the real world without acquiring some perspective.

Edited Sun 23 Nov 08, 9:43 PM by Tanos