Der Baader Meinhof Komplex

Plot synopsis:
On 2 June 1967, the Shah of Iran visits West Berlin and attends a performance at the Deutsche Oper. Angered at his policies in governing Iran, members of the German student movement protest his appearance. The West Berlin police and the Shah's security team attack the protesters and unarmed protester Benno Ohnesorg, is fatally shot by Officer Karl-Heinz Kurras.
Ohnesorg's death outrages West Germany, including left wing journalist Ulrike Meinhof, who claims in a televised debate that the democratically elected government of West Germany is a Fascist police state. Inspired by Meinhof's rhetoric, charismatic radicals Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader mastermind the fire bombing of a department store in Frankfurt am Main. While covering their trial, Ulrike Meinhof finds herself deeply moved by their commitment to armed struggle against what they see as a Neo-Nazi Government. She secures a jailhouse interview with Ensslin and the two strike up a close friendship. Soon after, Meinhof leaves her husband for Peter Homann.
Meanwhile, Ensslin and Baader have been released pending an appeal and attract various young people, including Astrid Proll and Peter-Jurgen Boock. After spending some time abroad, Baader, Ensslin and Proll return to West Germany and begin living with Meinhof. Increasingly bored with her middle class life, Meinhof longs to take more direct action. Even though Ensslin tells her that sacrifices must be made for the revolution, Meinhof does not wish to leave her children. But then, Baader is arrested. Using her connections, Meinhof is able to arrange for him to be interviewed off prison grounds, where Ensslin and the others rescue him. While the plan called for Meinhof to look like an innocent journalist caught in a prison break, she flees with Baader and Ensslin, thereby incriminating herself in the murders of an unarmed civilian and two policemen.
After leaving Meinhof's two children in Sicily, the group receives training in a Fatah camp in Jordan, where the egotistical and promiscuous Germans enrage their Muslim hosts. Homann leaves the group after overhearing Meinhof, Baader, and Ensslin asking Fatah to kill him. Having also learned that Meinhof wishes to send her two children to a training camp for suicide bombers, Homann informs Meinhof's former colleague Stefan Aust, who returns the children to their father.
Returning to Germany and styling themselves the Red Army Faction (RAF), Baader and his followers launch a campaign of bank robberies. In response, BKA chief Horst Herold orders all local police to be put at Federal command for one day.
During that day, RAF member Petra Schelm drives through a roadblock and is chased by two cops. When cornered, she refuses to go quietly, initiates a gunfight, and is fatally shot by the policemen's return fire. Regarding this as murder, Baader and Ensslin overrule Meinhof's objections and begin systematically bombing police stations and United States Military bases. As grisly footage of the maimed and the dead appears onscreen, Meinhof's press statements rationalizing the bombings are heard in voiceover.
As the violence escalates, Herold orders the BKA to pioneer criminal profiling and members of the RAF begin to be arrested. Baader and Holger Meins are caught after a shoot-out with police. Ensslin and Meinhof are captured soon after.
In separate prisons, the RAF inmates stage a hunger strike which results in Meins' death. The German student movement considers this to be murder. The authorities then move Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and Jan-Carl Raspe to Stammheim Prison, where they work on their defense for their trial and smuggle orders outside.
In 1975, a group of younger RAF recruits seize the West German embassy in Stockholm. The siege ends with a series of explosions, which kill several RAF members and injure the hostages. RAF member Siegfried Hausner survives the blast but is critically wounded, extradited to West Germany and dies in a prison hospital. The imprisoned RAF members are appalled by the poor execution of their orders for the Stockholm operation. Meanwhile, Herold's assistant asks why people who have never met Baader are willing to take orders from him. Herold replies, "A myth."
Meinhof, suffering from depression and remorse over the deaths caused by their bombings, is subjected to sadistic emotional abuse by Baader and Ensslin, who call her a traitor and "a knife in the RAF's back". In response, Meinhof hangs herself in her cell. The imprisoned RAF members accuse West Germany's Government of murdering her during their trial and are widely believed.
Upon completing her sentence Brigitte Mohnhaupt takes over command of the RAF outside. She informs Boock that Baader has forbidden any more attacks on "the people" and enlists his help smuggling weapons into Stammheim. In retaliation for the "murders" of Meins, Hausner, and Meinhof, the RAF assassinates West Germany's Attorney General, Siegfried Buback. Mohnhaupt, Christian Klar, and Susanne Albrecht, also attempt to kidnap Dresdner Bank President Jürgen Ponto, who fights back and is shot dead. Knowing that the imprisoned RAF members have ordered both murders, the West German Government returns them to solitary confinement. Even so, Ensslin and Baader obtain two way radios and continue smuggling orders outside.
Mohnhaupt then abducts industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer and demands the release of her imprisoned comrades in exchange for not killing him. When West German authorities fail to meet their demands, the RAF and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijack Lufthansa Flight 181. The hijacking ends with the plane being stormed and the hostages saved.
In Stammheim, Baader warns a West German Government negotiator that the violence will continue to escalate. Ensslin makes the same prediction to the prison chaplain and claims that the West German Government is about to murder her and her imprisoned comrades.
The following morning, corrections officers find Baader and Raspe shot to death in their cells as the handguns Mohnhaupt smuggled into the prison lie nearby. Ensslin is found hanging from the steel bars of the window. They also find Irmgard Möller stabbed four times in the chest, but still alive.
When the news reaches the free RAF members, they are devastated and certain that the trio was murdered. To their shock, Mohnhaupt explains that Baader, Ensslin, Möller, and Raspe "are not victims and never were". She explains, that they, like Meinhof, were "in control of the outcome until the very end". When the RAF members react with stunned disbelief, Mohnhaupt responds, "You did not know them. Stop thinking that they were different than they were."
In a sign that RAF terrorism will continue, the last moments of the film show the murder of hostage Hanns-Martin Schleyer.
In an ironic commentary on the violence of the era, Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind plays during the credits.

Tags: avant garde, murder, anti war, violence, flashback, revenge, historical

Review:
Nevertheless the end credits come a little abruptly.The second problem is that the film tries to show virtually ALL events from the book (only some minor incidents like the Mahler detention, Peter Urbach, the burglaries in registration offices in order to steal blank passports or the visit of Jean-Paul Sartre in Stammheim are missing) so that it needs to squeeze 10 years of history into 140 minutes.
In the US I expect the criticism that there are too many naked people, too many swear words and even more cigarettes (every one in BMK smokes everywhere and at all times), in order to distract from the politics of the film ;-) "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex" isn't the masterpiece on the history of the first generation of the RAF that I had hoped for in my comments on "Todesspiel", but altogether it is a very suspenseful, fascinating, densely narrated and well acted film.
I was reminded of "The French Connection" in the use of sheer excitement to keep an audience engaged in a very elaborate political movement that terrorized Europe for nearly a decade (at least the cast of characters depicted in this film; activities of the group are still—arguably—alive).Some have argued that the focus of the film on the crimes of the group glorify them, but no more than, say, the Barrow gang was elevated in Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde." We're given Baader and Meinhof's dialectic, but we're clearly watching psychotic/psychopathic people; and no one can deny they had a following.It's a long film, but I think it's very efficient in the story it tells.
This film is the story of the core of the Baader-Meinhof group, and it's close to the best political cinema I've ever seen; the direction, the acting, the script, the editing and the music...it's as if the make-up is washed away from how political films usually are, leaving the viewer to decide what's right and wrong.
It also shows better than this film how a single grand terrorist exploit could hold a whole nation in its feverish grip.No doubt that the actors playing journalist-convert Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), the lawless hipster revolutionary Andreas Baader (Moritz Beibtreu) and Baader's paramour Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) have the right stuff to convey the wild conviction and psychoses of the time.
All independence wars in America South to North were basically terrorist groups fighting European Crowns exploiting them.Based on the above, understanding "The Baader-Meinhof complex" requires an open mind probably even more than the director had.In sixties, Germany two main parties united under an extreme right position; outlawing the communist and left parties and creating a conservative state, affiliated with USA capitalism.Former NAZI members like Kurt Georg Kiesinger controlled the coalition and government positions and opposed public opinions, specially those intellectual group as students.Some violent events executed by the government against students and protesters created the ground for a violent revolutionary movement called RAF.Originally staged by Andreas Baader and his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin; and later, molded, organized and ideologically improved by the left wing reporter Ulrike Meinhoff, RAF become a popular movement and the main resistant against a totalitarian government that even supported genocide like the Vietnam War.The first part of the movie, makes a fast depiction of the events using news footage or staging events like the Iraq's Sha protest while introducing the main characters and the subsequent born off the RAF (Red Army Faction).While Meinhoff and Ensslin are properly described as an obsessive idealist and a violent but smart executor, Baader is merely shown as a violent and impulsive guy; not particularly brilliant or brave (Baader was incredible charismatic thus he was the face of the movement).The second parts of the movie, basically shows a series of acts and events performed by RAF shown as criminals masking as political activists and far from organized.From that moment on, as the events become more and more interesting; the movie (or the director) never takes the side of the activist (which might be right) but seems to approve the government behavior (police never start shooting and rarely hit them); the absurd courtroom events (based on transcripts) or the acceptance of the dead of many main RAF members as suicide (seems pretty convenient in the most heavily guarded prison in Germany, all were able to obtain guns and bullets, not to escape but to kill themselves).Please do not take me wrong.
(A similar movement existed in 19th century Russia when terrorist bombers, impatient with social quiescence, took to assassinating prominent officials, including Tsar Alexander II.) It didn't work and it only killed or injured a lot of innocent people, alienated millions more and ultimately reinforced the status quo.This film not only re-stages the street battles, bank robberies and bombings in a manner up to the best Hollywood-action standards, but also reveals the individual, psychological complexities of the central gang members as portrayed by some very fine actors.
Certainly, not every character needs a back story, but it would have been essential to tell the audience at least how these recruits got to join the group in general.By the time that Meinhof, Baader and Ensslin are imprisoned, we really don't care about the RAF any more.
To me, this is the ultimate proof that Eichinger didn't care about the characters at all, all he cared about was the actors he could squish into this movie.There are other things that others will criticize, for example the way the victims are turned just into cardboard figures with no purpose other than getting assassinated, or the fact that the German government, which was very involved especially in the final act, is not present at all.
The only drawbacks: being banged up for a couple of decades or, at the very worst, individually picked off by special forces (although if you were a male terrorist you had even more of a fighting chance, as everyone knew they always shot the women first).At least, that's the impression you might take away from The Baader Meinhof Complex, during an exchange between a pair of sexy, second generation RAF (Red Army Faction) recruits and a Middle Eastern fixer.
(In the event, the RAF picks the plane platter with hostages to go.) So although it would be nuts (given how the central characters wind up) to accuse The Baader Meinhof Complex of glamourising terrorism or playing fast and loose with the facts, the film could certainly be mistaken for trading in radical chic, dealing as it does with a young, hip, disproportionately middle-class organisation, much given to Bonnie And Clyde-style posturing and gunplay.The filmmakers can also hardly be blamed for the fact that quite a few of Germany's most wanted were ridiculously good looking in real life, and they've cast accordingly.
Nor, after nearly two-and-a-half-hours of dense history, does the film, one of the coldest and least sentimental of the German new wave, wrap with some tidy, poignant resolution; it climaxes with an awful, spiteful gunshot ringing out in a middle of a forest.Instead, The Baader Meinhof Complex, based on Stefan Aust's non-fiction study, is a brutally honest, totally uncompromising and utterly gripping depiction of exactly what happened in the ten years between June 1967 - when police shot dead a protester during a state visit to Germany by the Shah of Iran - to October 1977, when abducted industrialist and former Nazi Hanns-Martin Schleyer was executed in revenge for the suicides of imprisoned RAF leaders Ensslin, Baader and Jan-Carl Raspe.Our escort into the underworld is the left-wing journalist and mother-of-two Ulrike Meinhof (Gedeck) who goes from reporting the news to making it.
While the film doesn't flinch from showing precisely what a car bomb does to the human body, neither does it shy away from depicting the tedium of drifting from one safe house to the next in the company of angry neurotics.There is not the slightest shred of hero-worship or sympathy for these left-wing idealists-turned-neo-Nazis: Baader is portrayed as a reckless, idiotic poseur ("Only a gun makes it fun!" he exclaims to a young disciple), Ensslin, a manipulative tyrant, and Meinhof, an icy propagandist ("A man in uniform is a pig, and of course it's okay to shoot him").
Really, just because you're on a nude beach does not mean anything will change, except that you're naked and you'll need to put your clothes back on at *some* point.The RAF, the Red Army Faction, are the focus here in the Baader Meinhof Complex, from the people who also brought you the movie Downfall.
It's a long movie, maybe too long, and there could have been oddly enough more of the character Horst Herold with his investigation- in trying to figure out the real method of these terrorists and how they operate past the given 'yes, they're bad' status- and but as it is Edel skillfully weaves in history and drama, giving us a focal point of this organization and how it related to its country and the Middle East, how its evolution past the first group into generations two and three became disjointed (the last one being apart of a hardcore terrorist act with a Lufthansa airplane hijacking in 1977), and how truly dangerous all of this really was.The Baader Meinhof Complex offers little hope really, certainly not for any of the principle characters in their years spent in a doomed jail-term and ridiculous trial, and it shouldn't.
Four years after the courageous - and excellent - Downfall, German cinema tackles another black page of its history: the terrorist acts committed by the so-called Baader Meinhof Complex, a radical left-wing group that used the uprise of communism as a means to induce fear and panic into the heart of an already battered nation.
Significantly, the producer of Downfall, Bern Eichinger, is also behind this film - perhaps because no one else had the ambition to go through with such a project.The story is told largely from the point of view of Ulrike Meinhof (Martin Gedeck), a leftist journalist who isn't afraid to publicly express her criticisms against the German government's actions.
While at the time the RAF was seen as a German version of Italy's Red Brigades (hence the brief sequence taking place in Rome), director Uli Edel draws a not-so-implicit parallel between Baader and present day terrorist leaders, suggesting the political and social scenario hasn't really changed that much in over four decades.
He also stresses his point, but not too much, by shooting most of the film as if it were a documentary (particularly during the incarceration and trial), an approach which, inevitably, invites comparisons with today's news footage.The Baader Meinhof Complex has a great deal of things to tell, which should justify the running time (it's only ten minutes shorter than Munich).
Although the events portrayed in The Baader Meinhof Complex dates back to the 60s and 70s, this look back at West Germany's struggle with political extremism and armed resistance holds some relevance in today's terror threats, given that it's never always just about tackling the issue as an independent silo, but there's this inter-connectedness with events around the world that shape rationale, objectives and outcome.Director Uli Edel has crafted an engaging political action-thriller if you might, from Stefan Aust's book about the founders of the Red Faction Army (RAF), one of Germany's violent left- wing anti-capitalist group, whose logo is a combination of a Red Star and an MP5 sub- machine gun.
Terrorist camps become training ground for members to get equipped with guerrilla warfare, and hats off to Uli Edel and his team in accurately reconstructing the major events as accurately as possible, and how they allowed for the smooth juxtaposition of archived newsreels, which at times made the movie play out almost like watching a documentary with ring-side seats to the series of world events, from US political elections to the Vietnam War, and even to the massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
If there should be shortcomings, then perhaps it didn't exactly put forth the appeal of the group of anarchists, because at one point it mentioned support coming from one in four Germans, but doesn't go beyond the Us or Them syndrome, or provided some depth into the court proceedings, which in the film looked more like a circus than to serve any purpose.Germany's entry into the Foreign Language Film category in this year's Oscars, The Baader Meinhof Complex is thoroughly riveting and engaging, and should be in your list of much watch films of the week, instead of opting for the week's summer blockbuster offering..
Not wanting to risk sobriety the film chooses instead sensationalism, perhaps deliberately bypassing a truly serious-minded portrait of what must be a divisive episode in German history.The Baader-Meinhof Complex did succeed in making me curious to know more about these people and I'll be looking for a suitable book or documentary.
Being an Asian viewer born after the 80's, without any knowledge of the Red Army Faction (RAF), it poses some challenges to me when watching The Baader Meinhof Complex.It is amazing to see director Uli Edel, who once directed the box office failure Body of Evidence in 1992, could brilliantly directed a historical drama that is not too far away from us.
As the government refuse to release them, which leads to the trial on the imprisoned members, the second, and the third generation of the RAF, creates more attacks, including the assassination of important political characters, hijacking of airplane and more bombings.Told from the period beginning from 1968 to the late 70's within 2 hours and 30 minutes, it is more than a challenge for the crew to come our on the script that needs to deliver the whole story in a short period.
A very interesting movie about the Baader Meinhof Gang (or the Red Army Faction as they called themselves), a German extreme left terror group which killed dozens of people in the 1970s, basically, policemen and businessmen.
As comparable groups and events exist in other countries (in Canada or Québec, it has been the FLQ that is very similar), it is not difficult to watch this movie, understand it and get addicted to it.I would recommend this film to anyone who likes political and historical topics, that is interested in foreign cultures or who simply wants to see an intense and action filled drama with credible actors..
I was very conscious of the possibility of some left leaning, sympathetic film maker still entwined in their rebellious socialist student ideology and out to glamourise the title group as some gathering of 'Bonnie and Clydes' or disaffected heroes fighting the good fight.A brief rundown for anyone that might not know, the film tells the story of; the rise and fall of the 'Bader-Meinhof Gang' or 'Red Army Faction' in West Germany in the late 60's and 70's, ostensibly as portrayed in the film, a collection of middle class idealistic young people outraged at western 'facism', determined to see the mistakes of the past (Nazism) not repeated and setting out to bring about change by violently forcing and imposing their ideals on the rest of the world in order to bring about 'change' and more fairness to the oppressed.As an aside I thought they and their behaviour presented collectively in the film as every bit as bad as that of their predecessors of the 30's & 40's whose attitudes and ideas they were so 'determined' not to see flourish again.
This film actually struck me as rather neutral in terms of its presentation of the key figures and undoubtedly there will be some who see the B-M G/RAF as out and out villains (as I'm inclined to do) but there'll also be plenty of people who, if not supportive of or rooting for our 'anti-heroes' may be at least sympathetic to their ideals at some level.I certainly don't know enough to comment on the historical accuracy on show although there are a whole lot of things happening through a rather long film and I got the feeling that the director wanted as little as possible to sweep up off the cutting room floor afterwards and therein lies the strength of the film which goes into plenty of detail.I found none of the central characters to be particularly likable or endearing and as a result didn't bat an eyelid when they suffered any misfortune or negative consequence of their actions, though I don't know if that was intended by the director or writers.
After the critical and financial success of the brilliant Downfall, producer Bernd Eichinger follows up with another tale from German history, this time about the Red Army Faction (RAF) in the 60s and 70s.The Baader Meinhof Complex tells the story from the formation of the organisation during the student protests of 1967 till their downfall 10-years later.
Two of the main leaders were Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), a young hothead who believes in using violence to bring about his group's political aims and Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), a successful left-wing journalist who ends up joining the student movement and becomes the intelligential voice for the RAF, justifying their violence.
Not because of the Actors they are very good and neither the authenticity of the film which is very high, but because if you didn't read the book by Aust, it will be difficult for someone who never heard something about the RAF or Baader Meinhof, to understand this movie.
The second problem is related to that  the film tries so hard to document absolutely everything, it seems to forget it is supposed to be a drama.The strongest suit of The Baader Meinhof Complex are definitely the actors (especially German stars Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck), who make their terrorist characters so human and passionate you can't help but root for them a little bit.http://thecelebritycafe.com/movies/full_review/12801.html.
"The Baader-Meinhof Group" is a provocative, brutal, German film meticulously directed by Uli Edel "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (1990), written by Bernd Eichinger "Downfall" (2004), and stars some of Germany's best actors: Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek and Bruno Ganz.