RSS

Contact us

Friday 9 January 2009

Horribly powerful

The Baader Meinhof Complex
18, Key Cities

The Baader Meinhof Complex is, well, just horrible really. Horrible, horrible, horrible and for those of you who are slow out there — and I know who you are; don’t think I don’t — it is horrible; just horrible. It is brutal, relentless, nihilistic, violent, terrifying, relentless, psychopathic, and yet — and this is quite a big ‘and yet’, so do try to concentrate, even those of you who find it a struggle — it is so powerful, so explosively febrile, it compels you to watch and keep watching. It’s like being caught in a current taking you way out to sea. You want to get back to the safety of the shore, and you may even thrash about for a bit (‘help, help!’) but ultimately there is nothing you can do. This is not a film to like — I did not like it at all, not for a minute, and it’s 150 minutes, so you may say I disliked it 150 times in a row — but it is such an engrossing and commanding piece of cinema, it’ll have you, or at least it did me. And I say that as someone who is quite hard to get and would never, for example, have sex with anyone until the first date.

Produced by Bernd Eichinger (Downfall) who also wrote the screenplay based on the non-fiction book by Stefan Aust, and directed by Uli Edel (Last Exit to Brooklyn), The Baader Meinhof Complex is about what you’ve probably already surmised it is about. But for the slow ones — I still know who you are; there is no hiding — it’s about the German terrorist group which grew out of the radical politics of the late Sixties, the anti-Vietnam war movement and the perceived authoritarianism of the West German state. It starts with Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), a left-wing journalist and married mother of two, who, because of the government’s heavy-handed response to the 1968 student rebellion, becomes the political mind behind the terrorist activities of Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek), a pastor’s daughter who has left behind her husband and baby to join the struggle. Struggle for what exactly? To dismantle the state, I suppose, although, once dismantled, there is never any suggestion they would have a clue what to do then. You may say they never have a Plan B.

More articles from: Deborah Ross | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comments (1)

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved