The Baader Meinhof Complex
Screening: Monday 11 January 2010
Germany 2008.Director: Uli Edel.
Starring: Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek.
Subtitles.
Certificate: 15. 150 minutes.
Synopsis
Germany in the 1970s: murderous bomb attacks and the threat of terrorism threaten the foundations of the still fragile German democracy. The radicalised children of the Nazi generation, led by Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin, are fighting a violent war against what they perceive as the new face of fascism: American imperialism supported by the German establishment, many of whom have a Nazi past.Uli Edel’s drama has been described as the definitive film of the Baader-Meinhof era. Nominated for the 2009 best foreign language Oscar – plus a Bafta and a Golden Globe – it caused controversy in Germany for supposedly glorifying terrorism. It stars some of the country’s most prominent actors and was based on a book by Stephan Aust, one of the foremost authorities of the period.
The student protests of 1968 that promised so much hope, quickly turned into riots. Some of the radicals wanted revolution immediately and sought to kick-start the cause through terrorism. But support for these urban guerillas dried up when they stopped robbing banks and began killing people.
Most of the leaders of the Baader-Meinhof Gang were captured in mid-1972. Their followers would kidnap and kill close to a dozen people over the next five years in an effort to secure their leaders' release from prison, but the German government had no intention of releasing them. Then in 1977, after an airplane hi-jacking by Palestinian comrades failed to secure the release of the three imprisoned leaders, they saw that their cause was in vain and committed suicide.
