Films, This Month »

The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany’s Best Foreign Language entrant at next year’s Oscars) charts the rise and fall of the Red Army Faction, a radical group of German political activists. Set in West Germany, the film’s events take place over the course of a socially and politically tumultuous decade. The film begins in 1967 with a group of counter-culture activists protesting the arrival in Berlin of the despot Shah of Iran, things turn nasty when the protesters are attacked by weapon-wielding pro-Iranians, who are subsequently helped by heavy-handed police, resulting in the death of one of the protesters. Tensions rise among the extreme left-wing with the words of journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) spurring them on. These tensions escalate further when the activists leader, Rudi Dutschke, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.

The idea of peacefully protesting goes out the window and, led by the charismatic Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), the hardcore of the group set a new agenda. Baader’s splinter group, which he leads with his lover Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) soon includes Meinhof, who had been content with observing until the shooting of Dutschke.

This trio form the core of the group, soon dubbed the Red Army Faction, which ranges from kids in their late teens with nowhere else to go to a middle class lawyer and they embark on a trip to Jordan to train for guerrilla warfare. In Jordan, the flaws in the group begin to reveal themselves. Preferring nude sunbathing over training, the gang seem happier to talk about revolution rather than attempt it. The decision is soon made for them to return to Germany, where they embark on a series of bank robberies.

Press releases written by Meinhof and several bomb threats made by the group create a media frenzy and the RAF begin to earn sympathy among a noticeable percentage of Germans, gaining them cult status. But as their actions escalate further, with innocent people regularly being hurt or killed, infighting takes hold. Director Uli Edel doesn’t glorify or demonise the characters, nor does he glamorize their actions, what he does do is point out the ironies of their ideals. For example, while in Roma, Baader reacts furiously after his car is stolen, a car he himself stole. As well as this, the power struggles among the group’s key trio are laughable as they profess to believe in equality and comradeship, yet each wants to be chief of the RAF.

The first hour and a half is a thrill-ride, taking in several locations, situations and plot strands. Genuine news footage is edited into the film brilliantly and the set designs, costumes and make up all give the film a docu-drama feel. The one major flaw of the first half though is a lack of focus. Initially, Meinhof is the central character before being usurped by Baader and Ensslin, while intermittently we’re introduced to several characters of importance, though we learn little about them. Moritz Bleibtreu’s swaggering, rock star style performance will probably see him earn bags of awards and Johanna Wokalek should earn similar plaudits. Bruno Ganz (Downfall) plays the police chief on the group’s trail, Horst Herold, in an understated fashion and he comes across as one of the few sympathetic characters in the film. Herold’s well-executed police investigation sees the group’s key members arrested and sent to separate prisons and this is where The Baader Meinhof Complex falters.

While the group languish in prison, several complicated and convoluted events rapidly occur and years go by in minutes. The most significant of these events is a hunger strike and the growth of a successor RAF group which takes the violence and radicalism to heights the original gang would never have gone too. Other political events of the era are covered briefly as Edel attempts to wrap things up as quickly as possible but the film still weighs in too heavily at two and a half hours. But while the low end of The Baader Meinhof Complex does drag, the opening hour and a half is more thrilling and entertaining than most Hollywood blockbusters, serving up as much information as explosions along the way.

The Baader Meinhof Complex is released on November 14th

Robert Hogan

(Originally published by The Spanner Magazine/Oxygen.ie)