The Baader Meinhof Complex

The Baader Meinhof Complex

In the 70s, Germany was obsessed with the Baader-Meinhof Gang terrorists who robbed banks, blew up buildings, kidnapped and killed in their attempt to bring down the government. The usual: U.S. imperialism and German capitalist oppression. Marxist or so they thought; what it really reflected was anarchist theory that random acts of violence could destroy a society’s fabric but longer-lived and much more destructive than our Weathermen.

“The Baader Meinhof Complex” is an attempt to detail the group’s rise, fall and tentative rebirth over a decade when it called itself the Red Army Faction. I gather that it is historically accurate perhaps too accurate, with too many names and places and dates and victims to grasp. A German who lived through those years would understand it more easily, no doubt.

As it is we cling to a few high-profile characters, relating to others only in vague terms. They are Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) and Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck). Baader is Ensslin’s lover as well as a comrade in arms; Vietnam inflames them both along with German industrialism, an attempt on the life of a left-wing leader one thing leads to another until they conclude that violence is the only kind of opposition that works.

Joining them early on is journalist Meinhof (not related to co-leaders Andreas and Ingrid), already famous when she begins writing for their newspaper from inside prison. She shares their convictions; her husband says later she has always been searching for someone like Baader. She’s also confused me more than anyone else in this movie: What happened?

At first their confidant and adviser, she becomes participant observer then falls completely from view outside prison walls forever after vanishing off-screen; husband says he doesn’t remember hearing from her again after that. Why? This is not a satisfyingly examined decision but it was made, so I suppose we’re meant to take for granted.

Nor is this a bad film. It’s an impressive period re-creation, directed by Uli Edel, whose best work involved Jennifer Jason Leigh in “Last Exit to Brooklyn” (1989). The screenplay is by Edel and Bernd Eichinger, who wrote the great “Downfall” (2004), about Hitler in his Berlin bunker during the last days of World War II. Which was enhanced by its limits of time and space; here too much happens over too much time with too many people.

The unifying character providing some kind of focus is Horst Herold (Bruno Ganz), the top law enforcement officer in West Germany. He tries to understand how terrorists think, why they do what they do. Patiently he argues some police tactics are futile because counterproductive. He doesn’t agree with Baader-Meinhof; he comprehends them. Sherlock Holmes: Understand the mind of the criminal.

Ganz brings all this weight to bear effortlessly on the role, which suits him as well as any he has ever played: His face makes everything sound true.)

Uli Edel may be suspected to relate to the gang’s causes in principle, but yes; it is right too that they go about their tactics murderously and hopelessly. A member brings a gun to a bank raid where everyone else had agreed not to and kills someone in the process; from then on, homicide becomes a part of the Baader-Meinhof charter. I maintain that it is crazy to hold an innocent citizen accountable for his government’s acts directly. Yes, each one of us “bears some guilt” for our people’s deeds but detonating a bomb equates executing an anonymous passerby. That is what terrorism inherently is wicked although in classic theory of anarchism it may make sense. I get chaos depicted through art or literature or film which seeks establishment overthrow. But at what cost? You must be mad proud of yourself.

After rounding up and imprisoning the first members of the gang, the film loses its way somewhat but regains it toward the end when they go on hunger strike and are force-fed until they find ways of killing themselves. It does not say exactly how or why or even whether some of them took this step, any more than life did. Instead of trying to cover all bases like this, it would perhaps have been better if the film had focused on fewer emblematic characters: Meinhof and Herold could have been two good ones for starters.

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