The Baader Meinhof Complex

Over the next few weeks I'll be able to catch up on the Foreign Language nominees from 2008 that I haven't seen yet. As a reminder, I have already reviewed Waltz With Bashir and The Class. I now turn to the German film, directed by Uli Edel, The Baader Meinhof Complex.

The film is an almost documentary-style depiction of the left-wing terrorist organization that cut a violent swath across West Germany in the late sixties and early seventies. Known to themselves as the Red Army Faction, or RAF, they became known to the media as The Baader-Meinhof Group from the names of two their leaders, one of whom, Ulrike Meinhof, was a respected journalist (it seems to me as if it would be like today if Naomi Klein joined a paramilitary group).

Based on a non-fiction book, the film is full of details but short on characterization. Meinhof is the most interesting character. As the film begins she's seen in domestic bliss (albeit on a nude beach) with a husband and two daughters. Her resistance to the Vietnam War, Israel, and the Shah of Iran, as well as catching her husband in the arms of another woman, radicalize her further, and she becomes involved in a plot to free a member of a gang in a group led by Andreas Baader and his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin. At first she's just going to play the role of a dupe, but at a key moment she jumps out a window after her comrades, forever turning her back on her children and the world she knew before.

That's a powerful scene, but I wish there were more like it. I'm not quite sure what the point of this film is. The gang members seem to be depicted honestly (I'm certainly no expert on this), and therefore childish and at times psychotically violent. I don't know if anyone still sees them as heroes, Edel and his writer, Bernd Eichinger certainly don't. But I wonder how this material was improved by making it a narrative film, and not a documentary.

Aside from the principle characters, we learn little about any of the other gang members. They seem to pop up without explanation, commit violent acts, and get captured, all without knowing who they are. It is with films like this that we can understand how in other films of this type characters are combined--there's just too many to keep track of here. Also, the adherence to real life--Meinhof committed suicide during her trial in 1976--robs the story of a complete arc. After her death (which is not shown on screen) the film seems to stumble to a close.

I did admire the technique involved. This is a long film--two and a half hours--but it moves briskly, and its editor Alexander Berner, is to be commended. The acting is also uniformly excellent, particularly Martina Gedeck, who was so good in The Lives of Others, as Meinhof. But I still felt wanting while watching it, searching for a point of view that was sadly lacking.