[5 articles] Review: 'Baader Meinhof Complex' a true epic
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/04/MVNI199RNL.DTL&type=movies Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic September 4, 2009 The Baader Meinhof Complex Drama. Starring Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek and Bruno Ganz. Directed by Uli Edel. In German with English subtitles. (R. 150 minutes. At the Embarcadero Center Cinema, Shattuck Cinema, Aquarius Theatre and Nickelodeon Theater.) For a thoroughly fascinating, true glimpse into the horrors that vanity and self-delusion can wreak, take some time to see "The Baader Meinhof Complex." The film is a deluxe German production - 150 minutes - meticulously directed by Uli Edel ("Last Exit to Brooklyn"), written by Bernd Eichinger ("Downfall") and starring some of Germany's best actors: Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek and Bruno Ganz. These estimable talents come together to tell the story of the Red Army Faction, a German terrorist group that formed in the late '60s and dominated headlines in the 1970s. The filmmakers adopt the wise strategy of never imposing their judgments on the viewer. Instead, working off of transcripts and real-life accounts, they simply re-create the Red Army Factions exploits, in accordance with the historical record. Ultimately, the film emerges as an exegesis of a certain mentality, alive and well in the 1970s, as well as a cautionary tale about the dangers of groupthink. People who easily might have gone through life peaceful end up committing atrocities against their fellow citizens - while deluding themselves that they're on the side of right. "The Baader Meinhof Complex" contains four remarkable performances. The most chilling in its strange elusiveness and truth is that of Gedeck, who plays Ulrike Meinhof. Here was a married woman with children, who had a good job as a journalist and left-wing columnist. And then one day she chucked everything and picked up a machine gun. Gedeck ("The Lives of Others," "Mostly Martha"), an actress very good at suggesting something weak or skewed beneath a smooth facade, brings that quality to Meinhof. Bleibtreu has the role of Andreas Baader, playing him as a kind of charismatic thug, who can spout Marxist ideology to serve his every selfish end. In a less flashy role, Ganz ("Downfall") makes an equally strong impression, bringing wiliness and introspection to the role of Horst Herold, the head of the German police force. Herold realizes that to catch terrorists he needs to think like one, to understand their motivations and goals - or, as he puts it, to understand the "myth" that they live with. And no one is more deeply immersed in the whole myth than Gudrun Ensslin, Baader's girlfriend and partner in crime. As played by Wokalek, Gudrun never doubts her own virtue or judgment. Rather, Wokalek plays her as the kind of person who could burn other people to death and yet think of herself as a modern Joan of Arc. We might see Lady Macbeth. She sees herself as an underdog beset by the faithless, and as a visionary with the courage to see the obvious that others would deny. Along the way, Wokalek gives audiences something valuable, a portrait of murderous evil that is, at once, perfectly human and understandable. How could anybody think that firebombing a department store in West Germany could be justified as a protest against - get ready - America's involvement in Vietnam? This is the madness portrayed in "The Baader Meinhof Complex," a rare epic that deserves every minute of its epic length. Director Uli Edel has a feel for the era's internal and external life, for both its mentality and for the ways in which violence played out on the street. -- Advisory: This film contains full frontal nudity, strong language (in subtitle) and extreme violence. -- E-mail Mick LaSalle at [email protected]. -------- [See URL for embedded links.] The Politics of Cool: The Baader Meinhof Complex http://sfappeal.com/culture/2009/09/the-politics-of-cool-the-baader-meinhof-complex.php There's so much going on in the Baader Meinhof Complex it could fill a book. In fact, it was a book. This book. So here's the deal. In the late 60s in Germany, there was a group who called themselves the RAF (Red Army Faction), who others came to call the Baader-Meinhof Gang (two of their leaders were named Baader and Meinhof, you see). They were militant communists who organized a series of terrorist attacks in protest of all kinds of things they dubbed "fascist". (Although it mostly lurks in the background, it's important to remember these are very much post-Holocaust times). They weren't particularly discriminate, and their actions were mostly deplored, but there was an undercurrent of sympathy that ordinary civilians showed for them. This movie takes that sympathy, defends it, condemns it, justifies it, ridicules it, tries to put it in context with the sexual revolution, and eventually hangs it out to dry. How does one do this, you ask? With two and a half-hours, some rock music, a Palestinian terrorist training camp, naked women on rooftops, a portrait of Mao Zedong, a copy of Moby Dick, and a leather jacket. The movie jumps from anarchy-tinged anger to big-band rallies, from three people in an apartment to five people in a different apartment. The attacks escalate from planting bombs in police stations to the hijacking of a Lufthansa jet. Every action seems equal parts mercilessness, conviction, and vanity. And that's the complex. Baader had it. Meinhof had it. The question is, did everyone else have it too? And there's the inevitable, do we as audience members still have it? It's not so much a movie about the late 60s as it is a movie about looking back at the late 60s. In one scene, Andreas Baader gets out of jail to come home and find his girlfriend in the tub with a young boy who just escaped a juvenile detention center. He says a few words, kisses her, grabs her breast, and as he's walking out, the boy says to him, "Cool jacket." Baader takes off the jacket and throws it to him, effectively handing off his own cool to the next generation. A couple scenes later when we see Andreas Baader again, he's wearing a different, equally cool, leather jacket. This reminds us that for all the political idealism, for all the fighting for the little guy, and for all the solidarity, these guys really wanted to be rock stars. As a result, it's as similar to Almost Famous as The Battle of Algiers. But what do I know? I wasn't there. The movie is epic, culminating in a entire final chapter of courtroom drama and prison politicking. It's very much an Academy Awards movie and it was nominated last year for Best Foreign Language Film. Having already released in Europe, it drew some mixed responses. People sympathetic to the RAF condemned it for making them look reckless and out of control. People who despise the RAF were angry that a viewer could sympathize with them. With politically-based movies, pissing off both sides is a sure sign of success for me. As a perfect match for its, well, complex, political maneuvering, it has some confounding technique as well. There's a discombobulating mix of big and small. Each bomb that goes off feels suffocated by the camera. Each woman's bare breasts feel a little too up-front. We sympathize with the leaders, but when the focus turns to the followers, they're just blank faces. And when they somehow steal a jet, why doesn't it feel like they just stole a jet? The hectic style is consistent perhaps with the conflicted motives of the gang, but makes it tough for the viewer to keep up. And ultimately I think it's about the viewer here. How do we fit into all this? How do we want our terrorists to act? Do we want to hate them like we love them? Or is the most hated person the one who's ignored? (I feel like Carrie Bradshaw if she wrote for the Washington Post.) The movie speculates but doesn't argue. Movies about the past shouldn't be just about the past. The Baader Meinhof Complex, finally coming to the U.S., surely isn't. -------- The Baader Meinhof Complex http://www.sfstation.com/the-baader-meinhof-complex-a21221 Engrossing Political-Historical Drama By Mel Valentin Sep 04, 2009 Directed and adapted by Uli Edel (Ring of the Nibelungs, Julius Caesar, "The Mists of Avalon") from Stefan Aust's best-selling non-fiction book, The Baader Meinhof Complex ("Der Baader Meinhof Komplex"), explores Germany's most notorious domestic group officially known as the Red Army Faction (RAF) and unofficially known as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang" as well as its two most prominent members, Ulrike Meinhof, a left-wing journalist turned chief propagandist and strategist for the RAF, and Andreas Baader, the nominal leader of the RAF from its founding in the late 60s through his death in the mid-70s. Engrossing, fascinating, and compelling, The Baader Meinhof Complex offers a clear-eyed, unromantic look at the pitfalls of how rigid, dogmatic ideology becomes the justification for political violence and not just political action. The Baader Meinhof Complex opens in the late 1960s as student unrest and mass protests threaten to destabilize the West German government -- fueled by anti-Vietnam fervor, left wing, social justice-oriented political beliefs, a repressive, heavy-handed government, and the anti-authoritarian attitudes of the counter-cultural revolution that swept through Western countries during that period. Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), a left wing intellectual and journalist, initially refrains from active political participation. It's not until she discovers her husband having an affair that she leaves a comfortable middle-class existence (with her twin daughters in tow, however) for the RAF thanks to her friendship with Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek), Baader's (Moritz Bleibtreu) girlfriend and RAF co-leader. Formed in response to the violent government crackdown on student protests and the absence of left-wing voices in the West German parliament, the RAF under Baader, Ensslin and Meinhof bomb civilian, government, and U.S. military installations, rob banks (rationalized as "expropriation to finance the revolution"), after receiving training in the Middle East from Palestinian terrorists, and later, as student unrest and demonstrations dissipate, to kidnappings and assassinations to remain politically relevant. Meinhof doesn't become an active member in the RAF's operations until the police capture Baader. Even then, Meinhof limits herself to chief propagandist and occasional strategist for the RAF. It's Baader and Ensslin, however, who plan and execute most of the RAF's actions. After they're captured, detained (for three years), and put on trial, the RAF's "second generation" carries on in their name. While, by necessity and, presumably, historical precedent, The Baader Meinhof Complex focuses primarily on Baader, Meinhof, and Ensslin, other members of the RAF also receive screen time. Unfortunately, that's exactly where The Baader Meinhof Complex suffers the most: in delineating the supporting or background characters, some of whom appear in a handful of scenes, barely introduced, only to disappear altogether. Once The Baader Meinhof Complex shifts from Baader, Meinhof, and Ensslin, the RAF's second generation increases in importance, but given their late, sketchy introduction, it's difficult to follow them with anything except marginal, tangential interest. The Baader Meinhof Complex's other major flaw lies in the absence of markers to denote the passage of time. While Edel includes the occasional montage to cross off major events (e.g., the political assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy), Edel doesn't include references to the year through title cards, superimposed text, or dialogue. Baader, Meinhof, and Ensslin's detention and trial last three years, but Edel discloses that in a single line of dialogue near the end of the film. It might sound like a minor point, but in a film tied so closely to historical events, it's important to let the audience in on when events are happening and the time between major events. Where Edel succeeds, however, is in the portrayal of the RAF, the initial idealism of its chief members, and their relatively rapid descent from political activism to terrorism, including the murders of government officials, industrialists, and members of the police. Idealism fueled by ideology hardens into dogmatism, dogmatism hardens into an "Us-Them" mentality (an idea Ensslin mentions several times), and that "Us-Them" mentality allows Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, and their followers to justify murder by dehumanizing political opponents. Whatever its faults, The Baader Meinhof Complex is at, minimum, a cautionary tale, regardless of political ideology. Once political activism turns to violence, whatever value ideology may have (i.e., by reflecting real-world power relations) becomes, if not moot, then discredited. -------- Baader to the bone http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=9094&catid=110&volume_id=398&issue_id=447&volume_num=43&issue_num=49 Hipster terrorists? Uli Edel's new film exhaustively explores the Red Army Faction BY KIMBERLY CHUN September 2, 2009 "The Baader Meinhof gang? Those spoiled, hipster terrorists?" That was the response of one knowledgeable pop watcher when I told her about The Baader Mienhof Complex, the new feature from Uli Edel (1989's Last Exit to Brooklyn). The violence-prone West German anarchist group, otherwise known as the Red Army Faction (RAF), still inspires both venomous spew and starry-eyed fascination (see Joe Strummer's RAF T-shirt, Gerhard Richter's paintings of its dead leaders, and Erin Cosgrove's 2003 satirical romance paperback, The Baader-Meinhof Affair). Edel's sober, clear-eyed view of the youthful and sexy yet arrogant and murderous, gun-toting radicals at the center of Baader-Meinhof's mythology a complex construct, indeed manages to do justice to the core of their sprawling chronology, while never overstating their narrative's obvious post-9/11 relevance. Based on the nonfiction best-seller by onetime Der Spiegel editor Stefan Aust, The Baader Meinhof Complex finds its still, watchful center in Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck). Aust's onetime fourth-estate colleague makes the dramatic trajectory from bourgeois wife and mother to underground radical crawling through Mideast dust and toting a machine gun under the tutelage of Fatah. She's shocked by brutal police crackdowns on the student protests against the visiting shah of Iran and America's Vietnam War enacted with a cruelty reminiscent of the one-generation-removed SS and a reminder of a not-so-distant fascist past and somewhat in awe of Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek), who emit rock-star charisma. Helping to bust Baader out of jail on the pretext of working on a book, Meinhof joins her crushes in life on the lam. The three and their followers declare an urban guerrilla war on West Germany until they are nabbed and stuck in solitary at Stammheim Prison. While their trial descends into bitter, kangaroo court-style comedy, the RAF members outside resort to heightened feats of bloodshed and desperation in the so-called "German Autumn" of 1977, killing the chief federal prosecutor, kidnapping a banker, and finally conspiring in the hijacking of a Lufthansa jet. Edel has absorbed his share of criticism for his RAF portrayal: the director's far from sympathetic when it comes to these self-absorbed, smug rebels, who relish offending their Muslim hosts by sunbathing nude, yet he's not immune to their cocky, idealistic charms. Cool-headed yet fully capable of thrilling to his subjects' eye-popping audacity, the filmmaker does an admirable job of contextualizing the group within the global student and activist movements and bringing the viewer, authentically, to the still timely question: how does one best (i.e., morally) respond to terrorism? -------- Scars of German terrorism survive http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-baader-meinhof4-2009sep04,0,5871981.story Depiction of terrorists prompts some of the victims' loved ones to decry the film, which opens in the U.S. By Kate Connolly September 4, 2009 Reporting from Berlin - When "The Baader Meinhof Complex," an epic depiction of left-wing terrorists who cut a murderous and explosive path through German politics in the 1970s, debuted here last fall, it was like taking a knife to a partially healed wound. The film, which opened in limited release in the U.S. last week, did solid business at home, won critical plaudits and was nominated for an Academy Award in the foreign film competition. But "Baader Meinhof" also ignited fierce debate over whether the film glorifies the terrorist Red Army Faction -- responsible for 34 deaths and numerous kidnappings and bombings -- or gives an unsparing portrayal of the gang's brutality. And not all of the reactions have fallen along predictable lines. The 2-hour, 24 minute-film chronicles the rise and fall of the RAF, principally focusing on its leaders Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. Director Uli Edel and writer-producer Bernd Eichinger have punctuated the movie with action sequences but also provide political context. The terrorists saw their violence, in part, as a struggle against a previous generation they perceived to have been implicit in -- and to have subsequently failed to confront -- the country's Nazi past. Among the most vocal critics of the portrayal is the daughter of Meinhof, Bettina Röhl, who was abandoned by her mother, who left to join the RAF. "Society has not managed to overcome this trauma until now precisely because of such unscrupulous people who insisted on keeping the RAF on the boil for their own means," Röhl wrote in a blog in response to the movie. She added that the movie did nothing to "bury the RAF corpse" as she felt should have happened long ago, but "embalms it instead." Michael Buback, son of one of the gang's murder victims, said the film pays little heed to the victims or their survivors. "We feel we're playing the victims all over again," he said. But that feeling was not universal. Jorg Schleyer, son of industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, who was kidnapped and killed by the RAF in 1977, described the movie as a frank portrayal of the gang as a "wantonly brutal band of murderers . . . without damaging the memory of the victims." Frank Schirrmacher, editor of the highly regarded Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, praised the film for finally "doing away with the histrionic fustiness" surrounding the RAF, which for 30 years, he said, had allowed "left-wing romantic filmmakers and RAF sympathizers" to nurture the idea of home-grown "feel-good terrorism" in Germany. But Petra Terhoeven, a historian at the University of Göttingen, was critical of the film's failure to mention Meinhof's "statement of support" of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 by Palestinian terroristsand what Terhoeven described as the gang's manipulation of "the dark German past" into a "self-victimization" PR strategy. What was clear was that even though Meinhof, Baader and Ensslin are dead and their crimes extend three decades into the past, the events are still potent in German society. And as if to underline this, just last week another member of the gang who had served her sentence was arrested in connection with the 1977 murder of chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback at the hands of the RAF, which is graphically depicted in the film. The woman allegedly had been linked to the envelopes containing the group's claims of responsibility for the killing. . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
