The Baader-Meinhof Complex [DVD]

This is an excellent film that presents a dramatization of historical events in Germany during the 1960's and 1970's. The story concerns the formation and activities of a radical and militant left-wing group - the Red Army Faction (RAF) - that operated illegally in West Germany, organised along Leninist lines, and sought to destabilise capitalism in that country. The film explores the early aims and objectives of certain key individuals - Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin - showing how, initially, they sought to redress perceived civil wrongs within society. Yet, as their organisation developed, the group escalated into terrorism - carrying out bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. Ultimately the German police capture these individuals, and the movie depicts the lengthy court proceedings and their imprisonment. The film is superbly acted, with standout performances by Moritz Bleibtreu, Martina Gedeck, Johanna Wokalek and Bruno Ganz. It is, in the end, a tale that explores disillusionment with the status quo and how efforts to fight for greater freedom and liberty can become twisted into terror and murder. This is a violent film, yet it makes for compelling viewing - especially knowing that it's based on actual events. This movie is in German, with English subtitles. If you enjoy it, I also recommend The Lives of Others [DVD] [2006 ].

THE FILM DESCRIBES THE LIVES AND ACTIONS OF LEFT WING TERRORIST GROUP (R.A.F.) IN THE 70S.IT IS A SUPERB AND DETAILED EFFORT IN NEARLY EVERY ASPECT AND WILL HAVE YOUR ATTENTION UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE.M.BLEIBTREU IS VERY GOOD AS THE LEADER ANDREAS BAADER AND MARTINA GEDECK PORTRAYS ULRIKE MEINHOF IN A STRICT FASHION SUITABLE FOR SUCH A COMPLEX PERSONALITY.THE ACTRESS WHO GRABS THE HEADLIGHTS THOUGH IS JOHANNA WOKALEK PLAYING BAADER'S GIRLFRIEND GUDRUN ENSSLIN.WOKALEK IS EXTREMELY COOL AS THE SEXY TERRORIST AND HER PERFORMANCE IS PERFECT.THE WHOLE MOVIE OOZES PACE AND RYTHEM AND IS A MUST FOR ANY THRILLER FAN.NOT TO BE MISSED.THE DVD QUALITY IS ALSO EXCELLENT AS IS THE SOUND.

There seems, understandably I feel, to be some confusion over what this film seeks to do and how successful it is. My reading is that the film seeks to provide "a slice of history", so to speak, and goes to great lengths to try to provide an "objective" account. The film thus includes all the dramatic action you could wish for (such being the nature of the history) without selling out to the "all-out action zero content" genre. The sincerity of intention is commendable. The film successfully contextualises the birth of the Red Army Faction in late 60s West Germany against a background of the VietNam War (principally) but also Che's struggle in Bolivia, the Prague Spring, Martin Luther King's assassination, the Mexico City massacres and the student movement in Paris. The relevance of a generation intensely aware of the rise of Hitler's Third Reich and the importance of resisting fascism is also intelligently conveyed. But unfortunatley that's where the study of motive ends. We see Meinhof's rejection of a life of bourgeois comfort to join the RAF but we don't really understand why (and the key incident of her involvement in Baader's escape from prison is very poorly done). Nor are the reasons for her later disintegration nor her alienation from the rest of the group satisfactorily clarified. Ditto with Baader: we get a hint of his empathy with juvenile "delinquents" but the role of his background in creating the angry young man we see in the film is not explored. All the rest of the group appear as members with minimal or zero explanation as to what has led them there. This lack of psychological depth is the film's major weakness. Maybe a psychological dimension is intentionally not explored to avoid any overt interpretation of the action. This would accord with the extremely meticulous attempts to present a "balanced" picture. The issue of selection of material is avoided by scrupulously including more or less every recorded action during the decade concerned. Throughout the film we get effectively a "double commentary": mainstream media prespectives of RAF actions are juxtaposed to the RAF viewpoint articulated by Meinhof. And here the film hits a dilemna: Meinhof's cliche-ridden prose during her RAF period lacks the critical and analytical dimension of her earlier "bourgeois" journalism. Using Meinhof's RAF writing as a device to articulate the RAF's ideological perspective is therefore going to have limited success due to the limited nature of the material. To weakness in the area of psychology we thus get weakness in the area of ideology. The end-result is an action-packed, well-acted, first-class production which leaves you dissatisfied and wishing to explore this fascinating phenomenon more deeply. Hopefully a future film will take up the challenge.

This 2008 historical drama concentrates on the what the press called the Baader-Meinhoff Group, which marked the formative and early years [first generation] of the West German far-left militant group the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction, or RAF) from 1967 through to the leaderships demise in 1977. The strength here is that it tries to balance the views of the B-M-G against those of the representatives of the fledgling German state, managing a generally ‘fair’ balance while capturing some of the political differences within the group and highlights the cultural clashes and tensions between the middle class revolutionaries and the people they sought to represent and work with. The downside is that the characters are often portrayed as neurotic and disengaged from the world about them, also it fails to really distinguish the differing ‘generations’ that the B-M-G gave rise too, which intensified the B-M-G internal differences, even though they are mentioned and the failure to discuss the more violent Italian Red Brigades is a massive oversight. The single disc opens to 2 trailers, the main menu offering play, scene selection and bonus [history in the making, on Uli Edel, the score, filmographies, trailer]. Rated 18 with scenes of full frontal nudity from the opening, concepts of free love, violence, profanity [including the much used ‘C’ word] this is bound to enrage some, as is the general subject but remains a ‘must see’ for anyone interested in student unrest and terrorism in the 20th century.

The film is very good but it did NOT come with a free book as advertised

I remember those days. I was a young ex-pat living in Germany during the RAF's heydey, and I remember well the sense of dread and impending doom this group managed to inculcate in the society. Especially, I remember the Mogadishu crisis; unfortunately, this episode I feel was rather neglected inthe movie. It was therefore fascinating to get behind the scenes of the story, to get beneath the skin of the main protagonist. I'm not sure how true-to-life the movie is, but it paints Andreas Baader as a hot-blooded gangster who just happened to find a cause into which to focus his unreigned aggression. The two women Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Enslinn came across as far more intelligent, and more human as a consequence. In particular, the split in Meinhof's personality becomes clear. According to the film, this was a woman, a mother, with all the right instincts and a deep sense of justice; then "something happened". That sense of justice hardened into a curtain behind which lost herself. What a waste of a basically good human being. HIghly recommended.

The alienation of German post war youth as they grow to realise that right wing ex nazis are still in power in West Germany backed by the West. Explains a lot about the anger of that period and why we should still be angry now, a lot of the nazis got away with it because they were thought to be needed to counter the Soviets.

German screenwriter, producer and director Uli Edel`s fifth feature film which he co-wrote with German filmmaker Bern Eichinger, is an adaptation of a book from 1985 by German Journalist Stefan Aust. It premiered in Germany, was shot on locations in Germany, Italy and Morocco and is a Germany-France-Czech Republic co-production which was produced by producer Bernd Eichinger. It tells the story about three children of the Second World War who following the attempted murder of a German student named Rudi Dutschke, the killing of a German student named Benno Ohrnesorg, the execution of Argentine physician and author Che Guevara, the assassination of American pastor and activist Martin Luther King and American attorney and politician Robert F. Kennedy, the escalation of U.S. bombings in Vietnam, the German student movement, the Paris student riots, the Northern Ireland civil rights movements` first civil rights march and the same year as Australian author Germaine Greer published a book about second-wave feminism, founded an organization. Distinctly and precisely directed by German filmmaker Uli Edel, this finely paced and somewhat fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws an informative and involving portrayal of a German daughter, mother, sister and author named Ulrike Meinhof, a German daughter, mother, sister and trained elementary school teacher named Gudrun Ensslin and a German son, brother and father named Andreas Baader who met each other in the late 1960s, and who due to their common political views regarding imperialism, neo-fascism and authoritarianism started the first generation of the Baader-Meinhof group. While notable for its versatile milieu depictions, reverent cinematography by cinematographer Rainer Klausmann, production design by production designer Bernd Lepel and costume design by costume designer Birgit Missal, this character-driven and narrative-driven story about the history of terrorism in Germany and dehumanization as a result of ideological extremism which recreates a period in time with counterculture and cold-war when the former leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany named Willy Brandt (1913-1992) was president of the Federal Republic of Germany, the eugenistic legislation in Sweden regarding compulsory sterilization was formally abolished and French actress Isabelle Carré was born, depicts some abridged studies of character and contains a timely score by composers Peter Hinderthür and Florian Tessloff. This reflectively conversational, historic and cinematographic reconstruction of real events from the late 2000s which is set mostly in postwar Germany in the late 1960s and 1970s when German students who due to being German citizens were being blamed for the crimes committed by their parents` generation protested against a new emergency legislature in the former capital of West Germany called Bonn and Palestinian leader of the Fatah party Yasser Arafat was elected as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which chronicles the militant activities of the Red Army Faction and where collectivism surpasses individualism and turns into unjustifiable left-wing extremism whilst ones humanity is abandoned for a perceived greater cause, is impelled and reinforced by its cogent narrative structure, subtle character development, rhythmic continuity, abrupt film editing, multiple perspectives, use of archival footage and reverently credible acting performances by German actor Moritz Bleibtreu and German actresses Martina Gedeck and Johanna Wokalek. A densely political, virtuously demystifying and atmospheric narrative feature.

Souvenir car j'y étais!!!

Very good movie and well done with accurate facts.

Dieser Film ist gut gemacht, spannend und geschichtsgerecht. Je j'ai utilisé pour mon cours d'allemand des années '70 en Allemagne: la montée de la presse à scandale et les divisions politiques secouent le pays. Le terrorisme de Baader-Meinhof est magnifiquement mis en scène, le tout est réaliste et historiquement correct. Attention aux images qui pourraient choquées. Mes élèves de Terminale ont beaucoup aimé ce film et mieux compris le contexte historique de Heinrich Böll. En dehors d'une contexte scolaire, le film reste superbe! Film en anglais + allemand + sous-titres. (=rien n'est en français) TOP!!

The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a historically faithful and visually pleasing film about an extreme left-wing militant group that began at the end of the 1960s. Director Uli Edell provides important details about the reasons for the militancy and the different ways that the Baader-Meinhof militants wrought violent disruption of West German society while tapping into the older generation's unresolved issues from its Nazi past. Edell at once portrays the militants as committed, oftentimes ruthless fighters, demonstrating that these individuals were not victims, but rather, people who were willing to stop at nothing to achieve their goals of breaking what they viewed as the complacency and terror of the West German state that had evolved far too little from its Nazi past. It is vital however, to investigate further than Edell's remarkable film, to gauge the extent and scope of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon by looking through a couple of scholarly works on this important passage in recent German history. Baader-Meinhof Returns: History and Cultural Memory of German Left-Wing Terrorism (German Monitor) and Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies will shed light on these events in a more detailed and careful fashion. This is not to imply in any way that the film is incorrect or unhelpful. On the contrary, it is well worth seeing both for its cinematic value--telling a good story with strong characterization, great camera and editing work, etc-- as well as its historiographical input on a troubling, oftentimes puzzling, but nevertheless remarkable era in modern western history.

Ein hervorragender Film, spannend und sehr aufschlussreich. Das wahnsinnige und tödliche Abenteuer von Andreas Baader und seinen Mitstreitern. Der Film lässt uns Baaders Leidenschaft für das Aktionismus und seine Überzeugungen hautnah miterleben. Seinen Kampf gegen das Establishment. Eine Sackgasse, in die er sich stürzt wie ein Rennwagen, der geradewegs auf die Wand zufährt.