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Flicks - The Baader-Meinhof Complex The Baader-Meinhof Complex tells the true story of a controversial radical group called the Red Army Faction, who went on a rampage in Germany in the 1970s, robbing banks, setting off bombs,and assassinating judges by Chris Dashiell - The Film Snob The Baader-Meinhof Complex, directed by Uli Edel, tells the true story of a controversial radical group called the Red Army Faction, who went on a rampage in Germany in the 1970s, robbing banks, setting off bombs, assassinating judges, and most famously kidnapping the head of the government's employee union (a former SS officer), in an attempt to free comrades in prison. The film closely follows a book by Stefan Aust, and is ambitious in scope, covering roughly an entire turbulent decade in the history of modern Germany.
There are three main characters in the bloody saga. The most compelling is Ulrike Meinhof (played by Martina Gedeck), a left-wing journalist who gradually evolves from the conventional activism of protests and demonstrations to helping out the militant group, and in one very gripping scene, actually joining them. She becomes the writer of the group's communiqués, but her ideological passion does not resolve her personal struggles and inner pain. Her counterpart is the fierce, beautiful and reckless Gudurn Ensslin (played by Johanna Wokalek), the middle-class daughter of a minister whose rage at the system undoubtedly reflects the repression of her upbringing. She becomes the lover of Andreas Baader, the arrogant and ruthless leader of the group played by Moritz Bleibtrau.
German students were radicalized during the American war in Vietnam, in which resentment was aimed at the many army bases in Germany, and by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Near the beginning of the film, a brutal and unprovoked attack by police on nonviolent demonstrators during a visit from the Shah of Iran turns the main characters from protest to armed struggle. The director Edel takes a dispassionate stance—his aim is to portray as many as the events as possible, and there are many other members of the group who are characters, even a new generation that arises after the first ones are killed and imprisoned. Although some of this might be difficult to follow, the film succeeds in portraying the hectic, sometimes crazed political atmosphere in which the Baader-Meinhof gang evolved into terrorists, and involving an alliance with Palestinian militants and the hijacking of a Lufthansa jet in 1977. Meanwhile, fanaticism produces conflict within the group, especially between Gudrun and the more cerebral Ulrike. The spiral of violence becomes its own self-sustaining myth, as a police inspector played by Bruno Ganz points out late in the film.
The picture is ambivalent—the rage and violence of the gang is an ugly dead end, but on the other hand Edel doesn't minimize the rigorous commitment involved, especially in the prison scenes. The enormity of the film's attempt precludes a depth of insight that one might better seek elsewhere, but there's no denying the sense of engulfment in the acute political agonies of that era. The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a riveting experience.