Baader-Meinhof Complex, a New Film Based on True Events

Ulrike Meinhof, a prominent left-wing journalist in '70s Germany found the revolutionary spirit of the Red Army Faction so appealing, she abandoned her children to join up with a counterculture much like the U. S. Weather Underground in its terrorist tactics. Andreas Baader was one of its leaders along with Gudrun Ensslin and other young people who protested the policies of their elders during this volatile period of the Vietnam War when Germany became America's accomplice.

The writer Stefan Aust's riveting Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. (Oxford) came out in the mid-'80's and now a film, directed by Uli Edel (Last Exit to Brooklyn)--epic length, Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film--opens on Friday. All 150 minutes of it are mesmerizing thanks to the fine work of the German actors: Martina Gedeck as Ulrike, Moritz Bleibtreu as Andreas and Johanna Wokalek as Gudrun, with Bruno Ganz as the Head of the German Police Force who brings them in.

A fast-paced action adventure that takes you from Meinhof's troubled marriage through the current events of the time, the police taking action against peaceful protesters through the group's bombings of key government buildings, bank robberies, their schooling in terrorism at an Al Fatah camp in Jordan, incarceration, solitary confinement, trial (dialogue verbatim from actual transcripts), and suicides. If you've been napping during this summer of economic woes, this film will wake you up.

What makes the coming of this film in the present moment so fascinating is that we have all but forgotten the intensity of that period, the fervor of politics, here protesting the Vietnam war, in Germany, resisting American imperialism supported by the contrite German establishment of the post-World War II era. An audience as interesting as this subject assembled for a private screening last week, hosted by The Atlantic: Dick Cavett, Bob Jamieson, Morley Safer, S. I. Newhouse, Lillian Ross, Susan Brownmiller, Alix Kates Shulman, Dick Wittenborn, Tova Feldshuh, Albert Maysles, Julie Taymor, among them. But oddly, Brooke Astor's son and his wife, embroiled in a much-publicized trial for tampering with his mother's will, sat in the third row. Fortunately those who stayed for the Q&A with author and Der Spiegel editor, Stefan Aust, interviewed by Boykin Curry, were more concerned with history than with the tribulations of the super rich and greedy, however juicy the scandal.

Audience responses to the film were favorable: Several felt that the film glamorized the revolutionaries who were essentially using acts of terror to make their points. While it was hard to stay neutral, the film made efforts to do so. Bernt Eichinger's screenplay, on which Aust consulted, is careful to illustrate the loss of revolutionary vision. Pointing out that terrorism is like a religion, Aust spoke about the dilution of ideals: The second generation wanted to get the first out of prison, but after the first generation committed suicide, what did they have to do? They lost their focus, momentum.

As we filed out of the theater, a Harvard student, an intern at the New York Observer stopped me to ask, Do you think this film is specific to Germany? My response was an immediate, No. I replied by recounting heady times in America: the tear gassing, and mace and weapons used against college students of that time, of how an American vice president declared war against the young, calling college students, draft evaders, "Effete snobs." These were the sentiments reflected in movies like "Easy Rider" and "Joe," that eventually led to the tragedy of Kent State, of an older generation so bewildered by the youth rebellion, they used violence as a knee-jerk response. The more radical factions of Students for a Democratic Society, the accidental blowing up of a townhouse used as a bomb factory on West 11 Street, were some of the manifestations of revolutionary zeal turned violent.

Everyone needs to see this movie to remember a time when feelings were more aroused by ideologies than buried by the long sleep of consumer culture. Wrong-headed, extreme in principles and procedures, terrorism can never be condoned, glorified, or presented as an option. How do you explain "The Baader Meinhof Complex?" As Aust said, "They were in love with a myth, the myth of revolution."

Comments

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

That is a ridiculous thing to say about Tom Hayden, who never resorted to the silly urban terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof fools.

And, of course, ended up with Jane Fonda ...

>Living in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1970s, we had our own version of the Baader-Meinhof gang: the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that kidnapped Patty Hearst. Their program was exactly the same as the German group: commit enough terroristic acts to cause the government to crack down with enough oppression to cause the masses to rise up to overthrow the government. Regardless of the time period --- and, yes, I remember the marches, the police overreactions, the passion (Tom Hayden becoming a campus radical so that he could be girls) --- but the program was and is remarkably stupid.

[Steamboater]

We've forgtton how it was in those days or at least the generations since the 60's have because war doesn't affect most. There's no draft. If there was a draft with these reckless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, things would be much different and protests would be as cohesive and as strident as they were during the Vietnam War, plus we wouldn't have a president who continued to keep our troops in those countries, certainly not a democratic president who would have to really keep his word about ending the war in Iraq and not eventaully leave some 50,000 troops there.

[JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin]

"Everyone needs to see this movie to remember a time when feelings were more aroused by ideologies than buried by the long sleep of consumer culture."

While I agree that consumer culture has kept us apathetic in many ways, your article/review sounds like a romanticisation of the 60's and 70's, which it was anything but romantic.

Go watch Fassbinder's The Third Generation, a film about terrorism that was made right in the heart of 1979, and was highly critical and accurate about the movements/tactics of the terrorists (and the state police) in Germany at the time.

I'll always remember what the poster for the film said...

"I don't throw bombs. I make films". RWF.

[addisonsteele]

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1970s, we had our own version of the Baader-Meinhof gang: the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that kidnapped Patty Hearst. Their program was exactly the same as the German group: commit enough terroristic acts to cause the government to crack down with enough oppression to cause the masses to rise up to overthrow the government. Regardless of the time period --- and, yes, I remember the marches, the police overreactions, the passion (Tom Hayden becoming a campus radical so that he could be girls) --- but the program was and is remarkably stupid.

[sbrownmiller]

Thank you, Regina!