The Baader Meinhof Complex
This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (July 2021) |
The Baader Meinhof Complex | |
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Directed by | Uli Edel |
Written by |
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Based on | Der Baader Meinhof Komplex by Stefan Aust |
Produced by | Bernd Eichinger |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Rainer Klausmann |
Edited by | Alexander Berner |
Music by |
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Production company | |
Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time |
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Countries |
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Language |
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Budget | €13.5 million ($19.7 million)[2] |
Box office | $16,498,827[2] |
The Baader Meinhof Complex (
The film was nominated for
Plot
On 2 June 1967, the
Ohnesorg's death outrages West Germany, including
Meanwhile, Ensslin and Baader have been released pending an appeal and attract various young people, including
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
As things escalate, Herold orders the BKA to pioneer
In 1975, a group of younger RAF recruits
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. 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
The following morning, corrections officers find Baader and Raspe shot to death in their cells as the handguns Mohnhaupt smuggled into the prison lie beside them. 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 critique of how violent the counterculture of the 1960s was in Germany compared to other Western countries, Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" plays during the credits.
Cast
- Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof
- Moritz Bleibtreu as Andreas Baader
- Johanna Wokalek as Gudrun Ensslin
- Nadja Uhl as Brigitte Mohnhaupt
- Stipe Erceg as Holger Meins
- Jan Carl Raspe
- Peter-Jurgen Boock
- Simon Licht as Horst Mahler
- Alexandra Maria Lara as Petra Schelm
- Daniel Lommatzsch as Christian Klar
- Sebastian Blomberg as Rudi Dutschke
- Bruno Ganz as Horst Herold
- Heino Ferch as Horst Herold's assistant
- Jan Josef Liefers as Peter Homann
- Hannah Herzsprung as Susanne Albrecht
- Tom Schilling as Josef Bachmann
- Hans Werner Meyer as Klaus Rainer Röhl
- Katharina Wackernagel as Astrid Proll
- Anna Thalbach as Ingrid
- Volker Bruch as Stefan Aust
Production
The film began production in August 2007 with filming at several locations including Berlin, Munich, Stammheim Prison, Rome and Morocco. The film was subsidized by several film financing boards to the sum of EUR 6.5 million.
The American trailer is narrated by actor Will Lyman, a voice commonly associated with serious documentary films.
Distribution and reception
When the film opened in Germany last year, some younger viewers came out of theaters crestfallen that the Red Army Faction members, still mythologized, were such dead-enders. Some who were older complained that the film had made the gang look too attractive. But they were dead-enders, and they were attractive. A film about them, or any other popular terrorist movement, has to account for both facts if it seeks to explain not just their crimes but also their existence.
The film premiered on 15 September 2008, in Munich and was commercially released in Germany on 25 September 2008.
The Baader Meinhof Complex has an approval rating of 85% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 100 reviews, and an average rating of 7.04/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Intricately researched and impressively authentic slice of modern German History, with a terrific cast, assured direction, and a cracking script".[6] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 76 out of 100, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[7]
The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a favourable review, praising the acting and storytelling, but also noting a lack of character development in certain parts.[8] A mixed review with similar criticism was published in Variety.[9] Fionnuala Halligan of Screen International praised the film's excellent production values as well as the efficient and crisp translation of a fascinating topic to film, but felt that the plot flatlines emotionally and does not hold much dramatic suspense for younger and non-European audiences unfamiliar with the film's historical events.[10]
Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote The Baader Meinhof Complex was 'A dynamic and fascinating account of the German terrorists of the 1970s'.[11]
Christopher Hitchens lavishly praised The Baader-Meinhof Complex in a review for Vanity Fair. He singled out what he considered "the filmmakers' decision to strike against Hollywood's usual practice of glamorizing Marxist insurgents" by making an explicit connection between revolutionary and criminal violence. By slowly erasing the difference between the two, Hitchens wrote that the film exposed the "uneasy relationship between sexuality and cruelty, and between casual or cynical attitudes to both," as well as the RAF's tendency to offer unquestioning support to the most extreme factions of the Marxist and Islamist underground. Relating his own memories of West Germany during the era, Hitchens further described
Film and Red Army Faction historian Christina Gerhardt wrote a more critical review for Film Quarterly. Arguing that its nonstop action failed to engage the historical and political events depicted, she wrote "During its 150 minutes, the film achieves action-film momentum—bombs exploding, bullets spraying, and glass shattering—and this inevitably comes at the expense of quasi journalistic exposé or historical excavation."[13]
French movie director Olivier Assayas, who had previously made a film about left-wing terrorist Carlos the Jackal, wrote that the film addresses a very painful subject for modern Germany and called it, "some kind of revolution." He admitted, however, that his own perspective was limited: "I’m not German and I’m not an expert, but I never really bought the collective suicide theory. For me it’s absolutely impossible to believe. So I don’t think The Baader Meinhof Complex fully addresses the issue. The supposed suicides in Stammheim prison are for me the elephant in the living room of German politics dealing with that subject. You have to take a position on the subject and face it. The Baader Meinhof Complex doesn’t exactly face it."[14]
The Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden, Germany's national agency which evaluates movies on their artistic, documentary and historical significance, gave the movie the rating "especially valuable." In their explanatory statement the committee says: "the film tries to do justice to the terrorists as well as to the representatives of the German state by describing both sides with an equally objective distance." The committee summarized the film as: "German history as a big movie production: impressive, authentic, political, tantalizing."
Reception from the families of those killed by the RAF
Prior to seeing the film, Michael Buback, the son of West German Attorney General Siegfried Buback, expressed doubts that the film would seriously attempt to present the historical truth.[15] He later amended this statement after seeing the film, but expressed regret that The Baader-Meinhof Complex concentrates almost exclusively on members of the RAF, which carried the danger that viewers would identify too strongly with the protagonists.[16]
“Aust's film has been criticized in Germany and Israel for making terrorist thuggery too glamorous. But in order to capture Baader-Meinhof accurately, the film needs to convey its appeal at the time. From mental patients to left-wing ideologues, from rebellious teens to sexually frustrated professionals, the gang’s members captivated many Germans with derring-do and self-conscious theatricality.”[17]
— Fred Seigel
As a protest against the "distorted" and "almost completely false" portrayal of the RAF's assassination of banker
Jörg Schleyer, the son of murdered Confederation of German Employers' Associations President Hanns Martin Schleyer, praised the film. In an interview with Der Spiegel, Schleyer expressed a belief that The Baader-Meinhof Complex accurately portrays the RAF, for the first time in a German film, as, "a ruthless and merciless gang of murderers." Commenting on the film's graphic violence, he said, "Only a movie like this can show young people how brutal and bloodthirsty the RAF's actions were at that time."[15]
Extended version
The German TV channel ARD aired the film split in two parts with new footage added to each part. This extended version was later released in Germany on DVD as well. The first part adds ten minutes and 41 seconds of new footage, the second part 3 minutes and 41 seconds.
References
- ^ "THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX (18)". British Board of Film Classification. 31 October 2008. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
- ^ a b "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex - Box Office Data, Movie News, Cast Information - The Numbers". The Numbers. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
- ^ A Match That Burned the Germans by Fred Kaplan, The New York Times, 12 August 2009
- ^ "Kino: Premiere für "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex"" (in German). Die Zeit. 15 September 2008. Retrieved 15 September 2008.
- ^ Kaufmann, Nicole (16 September 2008). "The Baader Meinhof Complex to represent Germany in the race for the Academy Award". German Films. Archived from the original on 30 October 2010. Retrieved 16 September 2008.
- ^ The Baader-Meinhof Complex Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ "The Baader Meinhof Complex". Metacritic.
- ^ Bonnie J. Gordon (2008). "The Baader Meinhof Complex". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 6 March 2013.(subscription required)
- ^ Boyd van Hoeij (25 September 2008). "New Int'l Release: "The Baader Meinhof Complex"". Variety (online). Retrieved 10 October 2008.
- ^ Fionnuala Halligan (26 September 2008). "The Baader Meinhof Complex (Das (sic) Baader Meinhof Complex (sic))". Screen International. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
- ^ Films Worth Seeing (9/4/09)
- ^ Christopher Hitchens on The Baader Meinhof Complex Vanity Fair, 17 August 2009
- ^ [1] Film Quarterly, Winter 2009
- ^ [2] Film Quarterly Winter 2010, Vol. 64, No. 2
- ^ a b "Schelte von Buback, Lob von Schleyer" (in German). Der Spiegel. 17 September 2008. Retrieved 17 September 2008.
- ^ Hollstein, Miriam (20 September 2008). "Buback-Sohn sieht im RAF-Drama einen Täter-Film". Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 30 September 2008.
- City Journal, 18 September 2009
- Sueddeutsche Zeitung Online. 7 October 2008. Archived from the originalon 13 May 2010. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
- Bibliography
- Aust, Stefan (2008). Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (in German). Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe. ISBN 978-1-84792-045-4)
- Eichinger, Katja (2008). Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex: Das Buch zum Film (in German). Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe. ISBN 978-3-455-50096-7.