The Baader-Meinhof Complex

There has been a trend since the early 2000’s, in part inspired by 9/11, the War on Terror, the Bush Administration and an economy acting like a vengeful Greek God to compare everything to the late nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies. It makes enough sense in theory, after all there seems to be a comparative point for each of these things: Bush is often compared to Nixon, the economy has been argued to be similarly bear-like and the War in Iraq is often compared to the War in Vietnam. The issues of government conspiracy and acts of terror, have, however, been the forefront of historical fiction in cinema as of late with regard to this trend, which is a shame because most of the films attempting to teach today’s generation to ‘learn from the past’ have been awful.

Steven Speilberg’s 2005 train wreck Munich was perhaps the most discussed, followed almost immediately by the quickly forgotten Tim Robbins film Catch a Fire. Funny enough, up until now, the only retro-reflective film of the genre- if you can call it that- that I have enjoyed has been the little discussed The Bank Job of last year which, despite needing to fill in enormous blanks where history admittedly has no idea what happened, was a captivating story which at its minimum kept my interest. Perhaps The Bank Job did so well at telling the story because it was British and thus like most other film industries has some distance with all the nonsense of modern American story telling.

Which brings us to this year’s installation of the remember-when films The Baader-Meinhof Complex, a German film about the story of the Red Army Faction (RAF), an extremist terrorist group of the communist persuasion in West Germany.

The film follows a rather linear and comprehensive biography of the group from its origins and the inclusion of its main members to the end of what today is known as the German Autumn, whose real life climax is that of the film’s which I won’t state here in case anyone is looking for something to do in the near future.

As a historic piece goes, it works. I am always one to run home after a movie and look into how much of a film was telling the truth, how much was changed for ‘drama’ and how much is simply unknown. In the case of The Baader-Meinhof Complex, the facts are pretty much the facts. It would be hard to avoid throwing in some useless dialogue to keep the story moving, which it does, but all of the main events seem to be faithfully represented with just a hint of real news reels from the period here and there.

I am not terribly knowledgeable on the subject of the RAF and so I am not sure if the characters are or are not faithfully represented in the film, but regardless of if this is true or not, they are certainly the weakest link in the film. The characters are for the most part fleshed out enough that we understand their motivations but I could not help but have zero empathy for them whatsoever. Their arguments were one dimensional and uninspiring. Someone in the film even criticizes this exact fact at one point saying that it ‘sounds good when you’ve smoked a joint’ and while I can not help but laugh at such an observation, it all seems a little too easy and I find it hard to believe that the people involved in the RAF, most of whom were well educated, could be reduced to such simplicity.

The only commentary that even touches on this fact is briefly mentioned by one of the shining stars of the film and one of my favorite German actors (who by the way is Swiss), Bruno Ganz, now infamous as Adolf Hitler in the movie The Downfall and victim to what must be the most overly-abused meme in the history of the internet.

The Baader-Meinhof Complex certainly gives you something to think about and exposes an interesting piece of German history which I think most people, even in Europe, forget. It is a shame because the film does not employ properly all of the potential a true story like this one has to offer. The trailer (again) promises inexistent reflections about a generation growing up after the fall of Nazism, something which is barely a footnote in a sequence of dialogue.

Nevertheless, The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a fresh change from the never ending arguments about terrorism, dealing with the subject as simply something that happens as opposed to shoving one position or another down our throats. The audience is very much left to decide if the action taken in the film was really revolutionary action in the name of an idealistic cause, or the madness of some gun wielding hippies who were simply angry at the world.

Though the film doesn’t really have any lasting power beyond being a good afternoon at the cinema which is bound to provoke some conversation afterwards, it is still a great example of how history has so many moments yet to be explored without the need of re-hashing yet another visit to Woodstock as if that were the only thing post-World War Two of interest in the counter-culture resistance to the man, and for this alone The Baader-Meinhof Complex is commended.