Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008)
It’s film festival time in Auckland again and whilst I’ve not been too clever at getting out and seeing my picks in the brochure yet, I did manage to see The Baader Meinhof Complex yesterday. You know, recently we re-watched The Lives Of Others – another German film – and I have to say that in general, the European films I watch recently stand out from their American-made counterparts in one sense above all others: I’m interested in every single minute of them. Seriously – I can think of not one wasted minute of that film yesterday, and there were 180 of them. What is it with American made films now that they almost uniformly contain at least 40 minutes I would cut out?
Apart from all that, this film told a fascinating story in a thoroughly riveting way. Photographically and art-design-wise, it captured the mood of those troubled times in a thoroughly convincing and captivating manner. I could hardly take my eyes away from the myriad details in the set (and costume) design. If I had one complaint, it would be that the songs chosen for the soundtrack were perhaps a little too quintessentially ’60s, a little too ‘pop’ for what I imagine Baader and co to have been listening to. I’d have had them down for a bit of Can or something. Even if the Red Army Faction weren’t fans, Can and a its like would have fit the mood so much better than Bob Dylan and Co. No offence Bob.
I’d read Stefan Aust’s definitive text on the story of these guys before and found that the film told it earnestly and unselfconsciously, even adding a lot of detail that I’d not previously known. Today, thinking back on it, my one abiding thought is that it went to great lengths to provide a thorough description of the word ‘terrorist.’ When I think of what we call a terrorist today and compare it to a time when people were prepared to take to the streets against governments domestic and foreign, I feel a little sad that I could never imagine any country in the developed west where such a thing could ever happen any more.
Also fascinating was the tenderly treated (for all its horrific nature) point at which those who must resort to terror to be heard, end up hurting innocent people, often their own people, in the process. We in this day and age tend towards the view of Terrorists as irrational, unstable lunatics (a view foisted upon us at every turn by those whose purpose it suits) and it is important to remember that, generally speaking, those forced to resort to terrorism are far more politically astute than we are and quite often just by and large better educated.
I admire the RAF and what they stood for. Many of the things they were fighting against are still going on and still not a very fucking good idea. I think, as I did after reading Aust’s book, that Andreas Baader himself was a probably psychopathic maniac – a shit-disturber who was born to fight against anyone that had an interest in stopping him. But he was, in this instance, fighting against a great and real injustice and I have to respect that – I could never do it myself. Maybe the world would be a better place if they had succeeded. There’s a thought.
