thecelebritycafe.com: Movie Review - The Baader Meinhof Complex

Original Article

A little-told piece of German history in a film that tries a little too hard to be a documentary.

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Germany, the 1970ies: The left-wing Red Army Faction (RAF) becomes the most feared group in the country by bombing government buildings, robbing banks and organizing kidnappings. They protest US Vietnam policy, the treatment of the so-called Third World, and capitalism. Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin are the group’s founders and leaders. They believe in their causes and are convinced that violence is necessary to fight the evils of the world. But then, things get out of control and people get hurt and killed. Can the spiral of violence be stopped?

2008's The Baader Meinhof Complex hasn’t found a US distributor yet, but it is up for a foreign language Oscar on Feb 22. The nomination is well-deserved, a win however wouldn’t be. The film does a good job at portraying a piece of German history that has been more or less neglected by the movie industry. It gives you an overlook of three generations of RAF terrorists and their fate. This is where the film’s first problem arises – it tries too hard to stuff in too many facts and events into 150 minutes, and that doesn’t quite work. Especially the last third feels more like a series of snapshots than like a movie. The second problem is related to that – the film tries so hard to document absolutely everything, it seems to forget it is supposed to be a drama.

The strongest suit of The Baader Meinhof Complex are definitely the actors (especially German stars Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck), who make their terrorist characters so human and passionate you can’t help but root for them a little bit.