The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009)

From Uli Edel, director of Last Exit to Brooklyn, comes The Baader Meinhof Complex, a look at Germany’s most notorious terrorist group. The Red Army Faction, otherwise known as the Baader-Meinhof group, carried out bombings, bank robberies, arson, and kidnapping in an anarchist attempt to destabilize imperialism. The film considers the mystery of how socially conscious but bourgeois reporter Ulrike Meinhof (played by Martina Gedeck) came over to the urban guerilla group led by Andreas Baader (played by Moritz Bleibtreu), though it doesn’t claim to solve it. As the group frustrates police and politicians, the chief of federal police (played by Bruno Ganz) develops sane, but largely unheeded strategies to take the wind out of the anarchists’ sails. Like their characters, Edel and co-writer Bernd Eichinger walk a line between politics and platitudes, chalking up as much of the group’s action to the energy of the volatile Baader, the impulsiveness of youth, and the sexiness of the outlaw life. Rather than a deep character study, this 2009 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film is more of a procedural, blazing through a scrupulously recreated history of the group’s actions and incarcerations.

Sylt, Germany June 1967 to 1977

Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" (a.k.a. "The Politician") "Blowing In the Wind"

Shah Reza Pahlavi and Empress Farah of Persia

socially conscious Ulrike Meinhof

peaceful West Berlin protest explodes into violence

Germany's terrorist group, The Red Army Faction (RAF)

urban guerillas

American imperialism Vietnam

anarchist Rudi Dutschke

jailed arsonist Gudrun: "People here and in America have to eat, eat, and shop, so they can never reflect or gain awareness, because otherwise they might have to do something...do you think that your theoretical masturbation will change anything?" "What we need is a new morality."

go underground in Rome, Jordan, Baghdad, Brussels

Munich Olympics

prison hunger strikes

sacrifice

martyrdom

compromise and in-fighting

second and third generations of the group escalate in violence

written and produced by Bernd Eichinger, co-written by Edel

based on the book by Stefan Aust

Bruno Ganz