Der Baader Meinhof Komplex

Being an Asian viewer born during the 80's, without any knowledge of the Red Army Faction (RAF), it poses some challenges to me when watching The Baader Meinhof Complex. A warning to those who have no clue as to the RAF before watching this movie: Read on it first. And for heaven's sake don't watch it from the Constantin german DVD release if you don't know a word of german. The Paramount release could be an exciting alternative. I'm not saying why, just trust me, it works better that way.

Uli Edel’s "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" is an exhilarating historical picture with an intoxicating blend of fiction drama with fact-based evidence, resulting in one of the most exciting movies of the year. It is never highbrow in its approach to the subject, but it manages to curb the usual problems biographical features are associated with – chiefly the treatment of having actors introduce their characters initially in neatly composed frames, ticking all the boxes to their ideals. Edel drops us into the events at an appropriate point in history, but is determined to avoid his movie resembling a PowerPoint sermon. The first scene taking place on the sands of a nudist beach is an eye-opening introduction, and I believe Edel is challenging us straight away to look past the various human bodies on full display, and to concentrate on picking up the little details, like the magazine a woman is reading, or the question a blonde haired woman asks a gentleman, who manages an astute response despite the sheer size, and possible flaunting, of this female's naturally voluptuous breasts.

'The Baader-Meinhof Gang certainly didn’t expect to win their war by themselves. They assumed an epic proletarian backlash would be the Revolution’s true engine' explains Richard Huffman in his invaluable book The Gun Speaks. The genesis of the Baader-Meinhof group is discussed in the movie, but you have to look very carefully to find it. This is a movie that rewards attention, though, unlike "Gomorrah," it has a structure that is intricately connected. Observe the segment that develops from the garden party of two characters at this point we know little about - the husband has just received a printed note from a young student, and it is an essay written by his wife to her Majesty Farah Diba (whom we glimpsed on that cover a few moments earlier if you caught it.) As the wife, Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), reads aloud her writings, the movie intercuts to footage from a student-led protest on the streets of Berlin, where one of the signs reads: 'Autonomy for the University of Tehran'. Rather than spend time explaining to those unaware of that institutions whereabouts, the movie endures through presumed audience cooperation by connecting the words spoken by Meinhof to these images. Her angry letter is attacking the Shah of Persia (seen only from a distance in the Berlin footage but the cries of '...long live the Emperor' from supporters confirm it is he who is in their presence.)

If you know your history you will have little troubling following all this. What occurs next is an interpretation of an event in which the Berlin police implicated a new measure for crowd control. Having researched it prior to my screening, I was curious to see how the movie would display 'The Liver Sausage Method' of squeezing bodies between barricades and background buildings. Would it commit and show a few who crushed to death? As it turns out, the movie tinkers a few facts, and has mainly one man start the act of violence by throwing what appears to be a brown papered bag; upon hitting the ground a white trail of dust causes a minor explosion and a cop's patience quota is surpassed. "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" features, at this point, a superb riot sequence that is never melodramatic, never romanticised, yet, bizarrely, is observed from a close distance. The music is perhaps a little too ominous but the riot itself is deceptively pleasing - from moment to moment you feel as if you are right there on that street in 1968. None of the protestors are given room to make an impression, and hence the audience's sympathy is neutral. I liked the omission of the crushing tactic. These cops react as if they were zombies in "28 Days Later" jumping upon the pack for some lunch.

As this riot unfolds to its historically accurate conclusion, I thought to myself why these students were there? 1968 was a particularly unsettled year worldwide, but why were they so enraged with the Shah of Iran to the point they felt they could change the world? They are liberals, of course, but that is a trigger word, explaining little. Are they part of what Huffman referred to as the 'epic proletarian backlash' that generated the Baader-Meinhof's Revolution? This is the Auschwitz generation, and with that legacy fresh in their identity there was enough fuel to energise a wave of discontent against elitist society. That is another trigger word, however, and doesn't really get to the bottom of what their goal was. Are they Communists if they are anti-capitalist? If they are joined by non-violence, does that brand them as ritualists or merely educators? We are introduced to another woman, Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) after this rampage and she is certainly pro-violence. Her boyfriend Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) arrives at their apartment with some explosives. A fire occurs in a clothes shop a short time later. Ensslin and Baader go to bed together but it is not long before police raid the location. This particular strand to the story is momentarily forgotten, but commences once more after footage of Vietnam, Che Guevarra, Richard Nixon, Martin Luther King and the perennial squeals of a long-haired man. The court trial is yet to be seen, but in that brief montage, the reasons for their terrorism have been outlined.

The movie uses the new forms of technology to link characters who otherwise would never meet - one of the great beauties of modern technology. Observe the swot who sits upright in his armchair watching television and sees a newsreel report about Rudi Dutschke. Edel makes the most of the incident, as he dissolves from the real-life individual to the actor in his movie playing Dutschke (Sebastian Blomberg.) One might think the television image was used for such trickery, but Edel has another use for it which I will not reveal here. Likewise, the two key women, Meinhof and Ensslin, are initially linked by the media as the latter is watching the journalist report her feelings on the right-wing tactics of dealing with today's students on a live talk show. Meinhof learns about this terrorist through a microphone orientated interview conducted with the father of the now imprisoned criminal, and she is engrossed with what she hears, as dad explains Gudrun's '...state of almost euphoric self-realisation through this act'. Naturally, when Meinhof visits her in jail, Enssslin is quick to highlight she is a fan of the journalist's columns. Whether the two women share an attraction is hearsay, but this is the birth of the Baader-Meinhof conglomeration.

Some commentators will argue the effectiveness of pertaining to violence. I have heard from writers who ridicule students for their belief they can change the world. They can't change the world. There is an admiration though to their action. If one man throws a stone, it is an act of crime that is deemed punishable. If one thousand men throw stones, it becomes more than that - it is, as the film notes, political action. The Holocaust generation feel an obligation to leave their mark, I imagine, and if I were alive during the period who is to say I wouldn't feel ashamed because of the lacklustre resistance the previous generation demonstrated against Adolf Hitler? I may even have got involved in these terrorist organisations in the heat of the moment. Ensslin can't explain her involvement, but she knows it is her historical responsibility to put up as much resistance as is physically possible to what she deems as unacceptable imperialism.

Everything I have described so far takes place within the movie's first thirty minutes. It is that sort of motion picture - the kind that stimulates debate and provokes controversy. "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" runs for just under 150 minutes but it flies past in a heartbeat. If you are a fan of Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Downfall" you may enjoy the reunion of sorts between Hitler and Albert Speer, as Bruno Ganz and Heino Ferch both appear here. Interestingly, Ganz plays Horst Herold and Ferch is billed as Horst Herold's assistant (I can imagine his agent telling him this was too good an in-joke to refuse!) You may also remember Alexandra Maria Lara, who played the angelic Traudl Junge, as one of the Red Army Faction's members, Petra Schelm. Sometimes such inclusions can appear redundant, but I sensed these actors were picked for their ability.

They say that only two things in the world sell anything worth counting: sex annd violence. "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" excels in both departments. 'Sexual revolution and anti-imperialism go together' explains Baader to a group of fleeting voyeurs. We see quite a lot of Wokalek's flesh throughout the film, and there is a sense that Meinhof is in love with her character. They both look similar, with their poker-straight fringes covering most of their face, but whereas Meinhof looks mousey, Ensslin sizzles with femininity. A meandering student walks in on her as she bathes, and the lady politely asks the stranger to jump in. It is hard to believe a time existed when sex was treated so casually but it was and "The Baader-Meinhof Complex" taps into that. My only criticism with the movie is in its second-half, where a few of the prison sequences are not gloomy enough to support their lengthy illustrations, but overall this is great example of a reality thriller. If you were disappointed with Steven Spielberg's "Munich" and in particular the scene involving the detonation of a bomb in a building, there is an alternative example here that bears a striking, though likely unintentional, resemblance to a moment in "The Dark Knight" when Heath Ledger's Joker vacated Gotham's hospital.

David Wallace, United Kingdom, http://www.sightforallseasons.co.nr/

The Reader

Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

This isn't meet-cute. Fifteen-year-old schoolboy Michael Berg (David Kross) first encounters his 36-year-old future lover Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) by throwing up in her doorway. It's a dismal rainy day in a German city in 1958 and he has taken ill on the way home from school. She cleans him up and accompanies him to his family. He turns out to have scarlet fever, and is kept at home for months. Once he's well again he goes back carrying a bunch of flowers to thank Hanna for her kindness, but realizes he's turned on, and bolts in embarrassment while she's bathing. Eventually Michael returns and happily loses his virginity. A regular ritual of reading, bathing, and lovemaking develops between him and Hanna. He reads to her; she bathes him; the sex is mutual. She is a tram conductor with a harsh manner, and several huge secrets. She seems to be using Michael, but she's also enjoying him mightily, and he is reaping enormous rewards, though his affair puts pressure on his relations with family and schoolmates.

Bernhard Schlink's original The Reader was an international bestseller. A lawyer and judge who writes, Schlink departed from his usual detective stories with this novel that becomes a meditation on Nazism--the denial of the surviving participants and the incomprehension of Germans like Michael who were born in the aftermath. Michael's feelings toward Hanna become much more complicated than simply those of a youth introduced to love by an older woman--as complicated as the feelings of Germans about the demons in their modern past. As for Hanna, she seems to understand nothing and to be more concerned about how she appears than what she has done.

The book is in three parts. First there is the love affair of the schoolboy and the tram conductor, which ends abruptly and painfully when Hanna suddenly disappears. In the second part it's eight years later and Michael is a law student attending trials of Nazis with fellow students and their seminar teacher, Professor Rohl (Bruno Ganz). One day the young man is horrified and riveted to learn one of the defendants is none other than his long lost Hanna. She turns out to have been an SS guard at a satellite of Auschwitz and she's on trial with five other women for allegedly allowing several hundred prisoners to burn to death locked inside a church. This trial paralyzes Michael. He has never gotten over his first, interrupted love idyll with Hanna. Now he is filled with guilt for having loved her but also a sense that he should help her when he realizes he has information that might lower her sentence.

The last part, thirty years later, consists of several brief visits by Michael, first to Hanna in prison, then to the posh Manhattan flat of a Jewish woman, Rose Mather (Lena Olin), who was at the trial. She was one of the survivors and wrote a book about her experiences that was used in evidence. This provides a kind of coda.

Schlink's novel is neat and arresting, a page-turner that conceivably makes you think. Its Holocaust issues are cunningly intertwined with a sensuous--and rather peculiar--coming-of-age story told by a sensitive man still struggling to understand his experience and his country's. I read the book with interest, but found it a bit contrived. This together with Stephen Daldry's previous choice to film Michael Cunningham's The Hours shows a weakness on the English director's part for stories that are a little too clever and schematic.

This time the screenplay by the British playwright David Hare does damage to the book by altering its chronology, chopping it up and muddling the original linear three-part structure. Hare has said in interviews that the interpolated device of Michael's telling his story to his grown daughter was necessary to make sense of his voice-over. (That,however, is debatable.) Having settled on this device, Hare felt obligated to keep interjecting the mature Michael, played by Ralph Fiennes, at points throughout the film. The omnipresence of Fiennes' glum face undermines the sense of the young Michael's eagerness and, later, shock and confusion.

Fiennes as Michael revisits a cosmetically aged Kate Winslet as Hanna three decades later when she is about to be released from prison. Michael could never bring himself to visit her, but sent her tapes of himself reading the same books he read to her during their affair. Fiennes is a cold fish, hard to relate to the lively and sweet personality of young David Kross.

The film is hampered from the outset by its use of the outmoded artifice of dramatizing a story that takes place in another country and another language and yet having everyone speak English, with several of the main characters played by Brits (Winslet, Fiennes) putting on German accents. Bruno Ganz speaks with less of a German accent than they do.

There is much of interest in this glossy production, beautifully photographed on location by two of the best DP's in the business, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins. Ganz's professor is an ambiguous, subtle characterization. But since the drama of the unfolding story has been destroyed by breaking it up into pieces, the only thing that remains alive and beautiful and strange are the love scenes between Kross and Winslet. There is good chemistry between the 18-year-old Kross and the 34-year-old Winslet, and their nude scenes are bold and intimate. It's only when the machinery of what Schlink and the filmmakers are trying to tell us about German guilt and denial goes into action that things begin to be clunky and cold. Unfortunately, that is a big part of the picture.