Dir. Uli Edel, Germany/France/Czech Republic, 2008, 150 mins, (German with subtitles)
Cast: Moritz Bleibtreu, Martina Gedek, Johanna Wokalek
Review by Carol Allen
In the late 60s and the 70s the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader Meinhof Group, conducted a campaign of terrorist activity in Germany against what they saw as the new fascism of their home country and the imperialism of America in Vietnam. Their leaders were left-wing journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Gedek), Andreas Baader (Bleibtrau) and his girlfriend Gudrun Enslinn (Wokalek).
This film is a carefully-researched reconstruction of historical events, placed in the context of a time of student revolution in France, the Russian suppression of emerging freedom in Czechoslovakia, Che Guevara’s battle in Bolivia, Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement and the largely youth-led campaign against the Vietnam war. It also intentionally or otherwise implicitly makes the still relevant point that whether someone is a terrorist or freedom fighter depends on your point of view. And while Edel and producer/writer Bernd Elhinger attempt to just record the events without taking sides, inevitably the members of the group do elicit a certain amount of empathy if not sympathy from the audience, particularly in the early scenes, where the seeds of the movement are sown, with the shockingly brutal repression by the police of a peaceful student demonstration against a visit to Germany of the Shah of Persia and the shooting by a right-wing extremist of student leader Rudi Dutschke (Sebastian Blomberg).
Gedek is particularly strong as Ulrike, a mother in her thirties so older than the others and separated from her unfaithful husband, who comes to believe that her pen/typewriter is not mightier than the gun and the bomb and so becomes involved in the direct action. Andreas appears to take more delight in the criminal opportunities of revolution, stealing cars and robbing banks for the cause with relish. The first half is pretty violent, action packed and totally absorbing but as the film’s makers have elected to stick as closely as they can to the facts (taken from Stefan Aust’s definitive history of the RAF) and avoid traditional film structure, it does lose some momentum once the trio are captured and imprisoned and we concentrate more on legal arguments, with the direct action continuing to take place outside in the name of the group by other people. There is also a first-class performance from Bruno Ganz as the police officer pursuing them, a wily fox who realises that in order to catch a terrorist, you have to understand their point of view and how they think — another lesson for today’s world. Edel and Eichinger were themselves young and fervent in the 60s and 70s and their representation of the attitudes and detail of the period is spot on.
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