“Shooting and f*cking are the same thing.” – Member of the Red Army Faction, a German left-wing terrorist group, in response to a Jordanian guerrilla who tells them to stop sunbathing nude at the training camp.
Of such surreal juxtapositions is 1960s radicalism made, at least in the Western world. Behind the Iron Curtain, the revolutionaries were trying to breathe the fresh air of the Prague Spring – and though the response was an incursion of Soviet tanks, few fired back. In the Third World, on the other hand, guns and bombs were not in short supply, while libertine sexuality and pop cultural acumen were regarded as bourgeois conveniences: serious revolutionaries had no time for the counterculture. Yet in relatively liberal democracies like France, West Germany, and the United States the New Left was drawn mostly from student ranks, from young people who had grown up for the most part in comfort, in the paradoxical postwar atmosphere of hope and fear. They dreamed of fusing the libertarian ethos of the hippie counterculture, the badass attitude of urban outlaw culture, and the heady exuberance of Marxism (sans the dead weight of the USSR) into a Molotov cocktail of youth revolution. Their credo was, in Jim Morrison’s words, “We want the world and we want it now.”
That “now” was crucial – however incoherent, hypocritical, and destructive, the impatience and privilege of the more militant 60s radicals made them charismatic in the extreme; one could disagree with them and regard them with awe at the same time. Which is pretty much where the based-on-a-true-story Baader-Meinhof Complex, an entertaining if flawed German film (which will be playing locally for at least another week, and possibly further into October), finds itself. At times the filmmakers step back to regard the protagonists’ foolishness with a wry sense of humor or grim shock – they neither obfuscate the revolutionaries’ silly self-regard nor minimize their rampant violence against civilians and government officials. Yet the movie can’t help but titter excitedly when the gun-wielding “gang” rolls up in black leather and sunglasses, robbing banks to finance mad urban guerrilla warfare. A stronger filmmaker could locate the heart of the film in this ambivalence (Jean-Luc Godard did just that with his 1967 masterpiece La Chinoise) but unfortunately, screenwriter Bernd Eichinger is unable to set the film’s moral or political compass, while director Uli Edel’s stylistic vision is not unique enough to impose a point of view on the material.
Still, if you like this sort of thing then, well, you’ll like this sort of thing. I do, so I enjoyed the movie – and would recommend it to others. But it is rather incoherent – and not just because the filmmakers can’t decide if the terrorists are hypocritical examples of radical chic, cool badass icons, pathetic wannabe middle-class guerrillas, or ideological dead-enders trapped in their paranoia and hysteria. The Baader-Meinhof Complex also struggles with several structural problems, foremost among them how to keep track of its overweening narrative – which stretches across a decade and includes hundreds of characters – without losing the audience’s interest. The film compromises by mostly throwing exposition out the window (how the characters arrive at one location from another, never mind from one ideological position to another, is often overlooked). Nonetheless, the screenplay is burdened by obligations to set the tone and send its characters on their merry, apocalyptic way.
The film begins in late sixties West Germany; trouble is brewing, but student protests are still peaceful and older, intellectual leftists like journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) still feel like they can have a place, however critical, within the establishment. That begins to change when police brutality and political assassinations shift the mood into desperate militarism: into this zeitgeist bursts the shaggy Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), a swaggering hoodlum-cum-Maoist who sets off bombs more as personal expression than political action – though the two causes seem increasingly hard to separate. Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek), a lithe and hot-tempered young woman, is his lover and partner in crime; together the two are sent up for bombing a department store, but they flee to Italy where they talk hyperbolic (and hypothetical) revolution while daring their radical-me-tooist lawyer to steal an old lady’s purse.
When they return to the Fatherland, Baader is recaptured and so Ensslin cajoles Meinhof to take part in a bloody rescue operation, after which the trio go into hiding, train with weapons, and begin a war against the state. Meinhof’s transformation from public scold to underground bomb-thrower goes relatively unexplained. We sense her guilt but guilt is only gunpowder; whatever lights the fuse remains resolutely interior. Until the moment she officially joins the gang, she appears to be the main character; after that, we no longer understand her enough to identify with her as the heroine, so she slips into the background. Mind you, Gedeck looks lovely throughout (Joseph Jon Lanthier’s description of her as “gorgeously plaintive” hits the nail on the head), and as an excellent actress – see her bewitching turn in Summer ’04 for further evidence – she tries to spin gold from Meinhof’s straw. Yet the character remains a cipher. Perhaps Gedeck’s taciturn performance style is the wrong match for Meinhof’s withdrawn cool. Would a more intense actress suggest the requisite fire beneath the journalist/terrorist’s analytically icy exterior?
By now the film has dispensed with preparations and embarked on its this-is-why-we-came-here middle, largely devoted to capers and arguments. The gang, calling themselves (without explanation) the Red Army Faction, split their time between robbing banks, setting off bombs, and fighting amongst themselves while hiding out in apartments commandeered from bourgeois sympathizers. In these scenes, the Bonnie and Clyde coupling of Baader and Ensslin move to the fore, but their undeniable charisma cannot replace Meinhof’s audience-surrogate observation; we can watch and even enjoy, but never identify with them. As the ostensible heroes take ideological flight, the filmmakers look elsewhere for logic. In an attempt to express a nuanced perspective on the situation, Bruno Ganz is inserted as a government official who doubles as the film’s moral conscience. Ganz is a wonderful actor so he almost pulls it off, and it’s fun to see him relaxing after playing the histrionic Hitler in writer Eichinger’s earlier Downfall (and the million and one You Tube spoofs thereof).
But the scenes which feature him lecturing cops on how we must “understand the terrorist mentality” remind one of the censor-inserted show-stopper in the 1932 Scarface, with a generic Italian wagging his fingers at the camera and saying of the gangster hero, “He disgrace-a his people!” Ganz seems to be in the film only so it can include some liberal talking points about the Bush war on terror; the situations seem forced. Besides, since Ganz’s official is the one imposing the policies of surveillance and repression (albeit without Bush’s self-assurance), the message remains muddled. At any rate, the draconian tactics work and soon the RAF leadership is behind bars – in maximum-security prison, away from the action, but with the Baader-Meinhof cause and name still in the air. What follows are hunger strikes, bitter feuds, disruptions of the high-profile trial, and finally suicides disguised as political murder. Meanwhile, in the outside world, actions by the remnant RAF become increasingly grisly and hard-edged: the group takes (and kills) innocent hostages, hijacks an airplane, and assassinates a government official in his own home.
This final section of the film is its strongest; the tension is ratcheted up, the stakes suddenly seem quite high, and we can identify a bit with the once-mad Baader as he curses his successors in the RAF (“What a f*cked-up operation,” he mutters to himself after watching an embassy bombing go haywire on the TV). Still, the film has never resolved the question of how to view its terrorists. Part of the problem is that context is missing. We hear much about the Vietnam War and conformist elders, but West Germany was not the United States and these radicals had a generational conflict all their own to push them over the edge. The dark history of the Third Reich hovered in the background: many in the government had served under Hitler, some even in the SS. The suspicion that the “democratic” regime disguised a lingering and latent Nazism was pervasive on the German left. The youth movement was in part an attempt to exorcise the parental demons of Hitlerism and genocide (although certain tendencies of the extreme left, from a latent anti-Semitism in the hatred of Israel, to a penchant for brutal violence and a fondness for fanaticism, showed that the apples had not fallen far from the tree).
Meanwhile, fascism wasn’t the only historical force to be reckoned with: communism was not a near-whimsical alternative to middle-class respectability as it was in America; it was a viable force breathing down one’s neck so to speak, with the totalitarian socialist state of East Germany just next door. Thus, given the recent history and haphazard geography of 1970 West Germany, the possibility of instability was not merely wishful thinking, but a real, tangible possibility – and memory. One wishes the filmmakers had stressed this point more, contextualizing the country’s unique situation; this would have made the gang’s ideology seem less generic and its violence more desperate and less crazy.
Still, flaws and all, the film offers a riveting look at this semi-forgotten world, and that alone is worth the price of admission. The Baader-Meinhof Complex take us on a journey which begins with nude bathers lying in the summer sun and ends with bloody corpses sprawled out in solitary confinement cells. The Molotov cocktail has exploded, consuming its creators, and the “now” has passed into history; personal liberation gave way to destructive violence, and it turned out they were not the same thing after all.
[Originally this post provided a link to my piece, which was first posted on the Examiner. As of 1/29/10, it has been moved here in its entirety.]
This is the radical 60s refracted by a ‘bad-ass’ 00’s lens. Daniele Luchetti’s My Brother is An Only Child (Italy-2007) has more veracity without bullshit lines about shooting and f…
“Ganz is a wonderful actor so he almost pulls it off, and it’s fun to see him relaxing after playing the histrionic Hitler in writer Eichinger’s earlier Downfall (and the million and one You Tube spoofs thereof)”
Ganz is a scene stealer. I haven’t seen this film, but Ganz alone makes it desirable.
This film seemed convoluted to me, but I think a single viewing is insufficient. Mr. Bocko has done a remarkable job with this review of this turbulent period.
Tony, I partially disagree. While you are right that Edel definitely emphasizes the “bad-ass” aspect at the expense of the ideology (however incoherent), it was also there to begin with. 60s radicalism was a world apart from 30s radicalism in its style and power base (no coincidence, that); extreme-left groups like the Weatherman and the RAF were enraptured by the idea of playing Bonnie & Clyde but with Marxist credentials. It’s what makes the 60s so fascinating and, ultimately, so frustrating. It’s similar to the idea of what we agreed on before: the propensity of certain intellectuals to fetishize and aesthetisize the idea of revolution, divorcing it from its ethical context while still attempting to hold on to the “we’re the good guys” moral shine of the left.
I’ve heard of the Italian film you mention, and wanted to see it. Thanks for reminding me of it; I will definitely follow through.
Joel, 60s radicalism was complex and the violence of state apparatus was a reality. Fascists actually took control of Greece for 6 years, and were dislodged only after the students of the Athens Polytechnic confronted the Generals’ tanks – many were killed and their bodies dumped under the cover of darkness. The US was complicit in the Athens coup and in the overthrow of Allende in Chile. There was a cause worth fighting for.
We have to go beyond the stereotypes and recognise that 60s radicalism was beyond chic and not necessarily terrorist. Two of the best German films of the 70s dealt with this complexity with honesty and an historical immediacy: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975 – from Heinrich Boll’s 1974 novel) and Knife in the Head (1978 – starring Bruno Ganz).
I was 15 in 1968 and my heroes were Marx and Che – not as chic or under a banner for violence but as a projection of youthful ideals against the turmoil of Vietnam and the radical climate of the times.
By the way, thanks again for the DVD recommendations. I’ve discussed before why I separate “favorite” and “best” when analyzing films – not to open another can of worms in this thread, but simply to indulge in an ultimately relevant digression. One reason is that I recognize I’ll like, and be attracted to seeing, a movie more if it’s about a subject I’m interested in, no matter how well it deals with the topic. The 60s left is one such subject – any film about it, and I’m absolutely hooked. That’s one reason, despite my criticisms of Baader-Meinhof Complex, I was riveted and will probably see it again. Blum was already in my Netflix queue but I did not know the subject matter and now it’s been boosted to the top (were it joins Fassbinder’s The Third Generation, a similarly-themed work queued in the wake of my BMC viewing). Frustratingly, Knife in the Head is not available on Netflix.
Tony,
Believe me, I don’t dismiss 60s activism as mere radical chic – it was far more complicated than that; even if we focus just on the New Left (excluding the early civil rights movement and the more liberal and moderate wings of the antiwar movement – and even that’s only within the American aspect.) Besides, as I clearly state in the article one of my problems with the movie was the way it did not deal with the very specific reasons for left-wing violence in Germany. It shows reactionary and/or state violence, but this was presented in rather general terms despite a few examples (the shooting of “Red” Rudy; the killing at the police riot – although that turned out to be the work of a Communist spy – a Stasi agent from East Germany, a fact revealed only after the film came out). There was little to no mention of the fact that former Nazis, even former SS, were still lodged in the state and that there was a grim sense of continuity between the Reich and West Germany and a frantic sense of historical urgency given the tenuous history of democracy in Germany. Granted, some of this may have been exaggerated – for example, many German leaders had been anti-Nazis so it wasn’t exactly fascism hiding behind a liberal mask – but it still throws the actions of the RAF and other German militants (and collaborationist radical intellectuals) in a very different light.
But that’s Germany; as to your larger point, some 60s radicalism was beyond chic, some wasn’t. The fashionable aspect simply cannot be written off; it was far too integral to the whole vibe of the times – from about ’66/’67 to ’71/’72 the counterculture and the radical left, two very different strands of youth rebellion (with antecedents which were not necessarily “youth”) had fused. The fact that students rationalized THEMSELVES as the new proletariat has to tell you that there was some element of narcissism and fervor involved. And of course some left-wing action was not terrorist at all – but some of it certainly was. What else would you call setting off bombs in a newspaper building?
I can understand why at 15 you idolized Che – many have, though I always found him much less interesting and charismatic a historical figure than Castro. But I’m sure by now you realize he was a killer and an ideologue, as well as – truth be told – an ineffective guerrilla and, while we’re on the subject, a virulent homophobe who supported rounding up gays in concentration camps. The point is that there was a fair amount of foolishness mixed in with the idealism and the righteousness of 60s activism.
I dealt more with that former aspect in this piece because that was the subject at hand – with the RAF, it’s not exactly the Mobe or SNCC we’re talking about here. But of course I recognize the righteousness of much of what 60s radicals were fighting for or against – the Vietnam War, civil rights, state repression, police brutality. I even sympathize with the romanticism of the countercultural aspects of the 60s rebellion, more from an aesthetic standpoint than a political one, but I can fully appreciate the spirit of the times.
It’s probably my favorite period in history, and I never tire of investigating and appreciating the politics, the art, the music, the social upheaval, the pop culture, the whole damn zeitgeist. In a way, I envy you for being there – I would have loved to experienced it firsthand. All of the criticisms are part and parcel of what make the era so fascinating to subsequent generations. But it’s been a tough act to follow, particularly because so much of what arose, arose spontaneously – the misguided and the right-on alike – and subsequent attempts to “revive the spirit” have been forced, missing the point. And also, yes, because mistakes were made: major, major ones in some cases. The American Left in particular has never recovered from the confusion with which 60s mashed together libertarianism, the communal spirit, social responsibility, and free-spiritedness – an intoxicating brew but a very short-lived and impractical one. That’s not to say I don’t have problems with the pre-60s left, or that it didn’t contain all the seeds of what grew up then in those heady times, but it was an easier thing to get ahold of and parse out.
It’s different, of course, across the globe but the primary contours remain the same. The influence of the 60s has been mixed: so much of the good that we take for granted or overlook came about because of the era. Much more attention has been paid to the losses, either from the right-wing perspective, seeing the “revolution” as victorious and damning the 60s for that or from the left-wing perspective, seeing the “revolution” as having failed and damning the 60s for THAT.
And all of this is only to discuss the political, and leftist-political, aspect of the 60s, when there was so much more too – cultural, social, aesthetic, on and on – all of it wrapped together in a way rarely seen since (or even before). Sometimes, the political movement of the time seems to have been the tail that thought it was the wagging the dog but ultimately even that’s too simple an assessment.
Joel, as I intimated, Marx and Che were symbols upon which we projected our youthful ideals. I don’t think we were foolish – naive perhaps. One thing you do learn in your later years is that there are no heroes.
I definitely get that, particularly the “symbolic” aspect. But there’s a difference between “not heroes” and “tyrants.” Guevera belonged to the latter category. Marx was a theorist whose theories were misused so I would not put him in the same category, though I have not read enough of his work to say exactly where he belongs.
Also, you were only 15 – there were much older, and supposedly much wiser, people making the same mistakes, which might incline me to call them “foolish” rather than “naive.”
You know the old comment about if you’re a socialist at 20, if you’re still a socialist at 50 (“no heart,” “no brain”) variously attributed to Shaw and Churchill. There’s a kernel of truth there in the sense that one a winning idealism at 20 becomes foolhardiness by 50. Of course, I don’t quite agree with the quote full-stop; one doesn’t have to turn 180 degrees (note the once hard-line lefties who simply become hard-line righties and acted as if they’d rejected ideology). I particularly disagree with the incarnation of this quote that changes it to “if you’re not a conservative at 50 you have no brain” (Palin and her ilk having completed the long-brewing transformation of “conservatism” from meaning prudence and traditionalism to meaning brain-dead celebrations of ignorance, conformity, and shallow materialism. Say what you will about McCain, he was an old-school conservative; and the way the glib crowd greeted his speech, with its talk of sacrifice and camaraderie and patriotism vs. the horrifically superficial Palin speech says everything that needs saying about the modern GOP. But I digress.)
All I can say is we need more old ‘fools’ like FDR, Adlai Stevenson, J K Galbraith, Joan Robinson, Daniel Ellsberg, Nelson Mandela, Noam Chomsky et al…
Hmmm, a wildly diverse crowd, that. Some could be more accurately classified as “liberals” than “left” in the sense we’ve been using. And I’d certainly take some over others (Chomsky is brilliant, but depressingly one note: “yes, yes, but now let me tell you what America’s done wrong in the world, to change the subject.” At least he shut down the Truthers.)
In the end, I’m not interested in subscribing to any ideology, nor handling one group with kid gloves because they claim to be on the side of the angels (as Renoir once said, we all have our reasons; if belief made right we’d be living in a world of saints). I’ll take the individual accomplishments as they come, and give praise where praise is due. And I’ll criticize when there’s something to be criticized. I approach issues on an one-by-one basis with an open mind, skepticism, and hopefully a grain or two of common sense.
Also, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’m less interested in intentions – which the left usually gets right – than in results – where the left’s record is spotty at best. I’d love to live in a more peaceful, more just, more tolerant world: but just because someone on the left tells me that’s their aim does not make their particular prescription correct.
(On the other hand, a faulty prescription may seem preferable to no prescription at all: if the right were offering a viable alternative to Obamacare, perhaps I’d be inclined to humor their criticisms. As is, they seem merely obstructionist. It’s no wonder the American population has largely moved left, if only marginally so: the prospect of a reasonable opposition has been taken away, by the very people who were supposed to offer it. But all that’s another story, for another day, and I’m for letting this particular conversation wind down; I finished watching my last movie an hour ago and now no longer have time to watch another because I get sidetracked here! NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!)
What about bad faith? A tko ok?
What about it? Is the road to hell paved with it too? The road to hell has many cobblestones, my friend.
Anyway, lest I give the wrong impression, I am trying to lay out my own thoughts on/approach to political matters in general, not pin any blame on/make any assumptions about you in particular. There’s plenty of room for those who identify strongly with a particular political alignment, as well as for those who don’t; and I always respect the fact that your views seem to arise from a humanistic impulse rather than a snobbishness – it’s a leftism moved by the plight of the downtrodden, not disgusted with a certain “un-cool” lifestyle or system and using the downtrodden as convenient excuses to criticize the objects of their scorn. Call the latter assumption bad-faith if you wish, but I’ve seen quite enough to know it’s out there. It’s the hypocrisy which sticks: to a certain extent, I can take elitists, and I can take moralists, but I can’t take elitists who think they’re moralists.
What’s the “tko” in reference to? Our “bout”? I prefer to think of it as a reasonable discussion of differing sensibilities, but if the boxing metaphor sticks, I’ll throw the fight if you wish, but you never got me down, Tony, you never got me down… (God, I need to go to bed – for those concerned as to my viewing habits, however, I did manage to squeeze in the first episode of Singing Detective after getting side-tracked here tonight; great stuff, can’t wait to see the rest… and between this & Once Upon a Time I’m seeing a lot of 80s influences on David Chase.)
As I stated elsewhere I thought THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX is epic in scope, but it’s rather a narrative mess with sketchy characterizations, underveloped characterizations and poor clarity of focus. As Joel notes there’s much in the socio-political context here to fascinate, but it’s a distant film, undermined by excess.
Yes, Sam, with these films it’s always a trade-off. When they go for comprehensiveness, they entertain and perhaps in a more direct way than a more focused film were. I’m glad there are these messy attempts to “say it all” out there, and I enjoy them every time even as I recognize their flaws. But if a film wants to be great, it has to focus its vision. That does not mean an abandonment of epic scope, or even of sprawling narratives. But there needs to be some kind of essential element holding it all together – Scarlett O’Hara’s determined character in Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia’s identity crisis, even Kubrick’s inimitable style in 2001. Like most films of its ilk, Baader-Meinhof hits the spot but doesn’t really satisfy – like tasty junk food vs. a really excellent meal. Heck, though, sometimes one’s in the mood for the former, as Bob Clark stated once on these boards.
Mr. Bocko, I would love to say something that would enrich this discussion, but the problem is that I did not see this film. Can I ask if you think it covers a lot of the same territory as Bertolucci’s The Dreamers? Based on the review you wrote I see some parallels.
Sort of, Frederick, but The Dreamers had a stronger and more unique point of view – befitting the fact that a great filmmaker was at the helm. The American protagonist played audience surrogate in a way that Meinhof could not in BMC, and there is a more direct display of the tension between a particularly privileged brand of bohemianism and a violently militant – and heavily aestheticized – politics. The Dreamers is flawed, but it has a clearer take on its own action than Baader-Meinhof. Also, in The Dreamers, the politics remain background, for the most part, until the end.
Just watched this last night and I came across with much the same feelings as you did, Joel (although I think ultimately you were much more satisfied with the film than I was). They simply tried to cram too much into the film. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the movie HUNGER, but I kind of wished they did with this movie what was done with that one and narrowed the scope a bit to give a more subdued look into the life of a revolutionary.
Troy, sorry just saw this. In a way I agree – a narrower focus usually yields a better film. Yet at the same time, I have to admit, I love movies that bite off more than they can chew. Even as they aren’t quite satisfying, they’re exciting in a way – so I’m glad that there are films which try to cram in too much as well as films that discipline themselves, even if perhaps there’s too many of the former.
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This review clearly shows why MovieMan is one of my favorite film writers. I have no idea how I missed this review when it was put up. Terrific stuff.
JAFB, I just love the idea that old reviews aren’t lost in the shuffle. Thanks for the comment!
Movieman,
I have no idea how or why I got here. I’d seen and written on the movie early last year and surely wasn’t searching for more reviews. So it’s something like a dream – I just don’t know I got here!
But when I read the first line, I was sure that this is going to go somewhere beyond the movie and I wasn’t disappointed.
I completely realize that the subject is very close to your heart too.