But I digress...this film is a tight piece of work and impressively portrays the strategic motivations and ideological frameworks of both the RAF and the anti-terror admins of the German state--I can't comment on how realistic it is, except in one regard: it is obviously realistic in portraying a moment in time. And, as someone who hadn't been born until nearly the end of the diegetic events, I can't necessarily say it was "realistic" but that there are statements made and events that took place that seem completely out of line with my understanding of how the world operates. Like the films released recently on the Weather Underground (I also concur with Dennis Perrin that the RAF makes the WU look like real lightweights), it is somewhat amazing to me that people actually existed in a major western country who were willing to go up against the state in this way. I'm familiar with the progeny of some of the ideological statements made by people like Bernadine Dorn or, in this case, Ulrike Meinhof, but to hear their statements made in a public forum with some modicum of popular support seems almost other worldly to me. On the one hand, I can't imagine someone believing this so fully and on the other I can't imagine them being allowed to speak. In other words, it is somewhat startling to imagine that cultural moment and to understand why people might have felt it so pregnant with possibility and revolutionary energy. Most of the time I understand these statements and actions academically and somewhat abstractly: I can catalog them, say how important those events are for world history, know where they fit into the unfolding of the last fifty years, but when they are placed in motion and the whole scene is elaborated with this kind of vitality, it seems like science fiction rather than recent history. It makes the account as I understand it seem almost fictional--not because it is wrong in terms of the facts, but because words can't really describe what it was like to be present at that moment. I know that movies can't either, but the film seems further along the continuum.
Second, I was taken by the narrative of the German police--especially the Bruno Ganz character--since it seems to be mostly speaking to the present "war on terror" meme in world culture. On the one hand, in seeing the scale of the RAF actions, I'm really surprised at how little people seem to remember about recent history. Here was a domestic terror group that was bombing and robbing, etc. on a regular basis for at least seven years. It was connected with a wide variety of other groups performing similar kinds of actions around the world. Yet somehow it is only 9/11 which inspires the need for a "war on terror." It reminds me how easy it is to have one's sense of perspective dulled even by narratives one finds hyperbolic and incendiary. On the other hand, I don't know how accurate the depiction of Ganz's character is, but it seems clear that the choice to have him ask for a smarter way of approaching terror (rather than flailing with a big stick) is directed at the people today who argue for a firmer hand. Since he is nominally successful in his methods, I can't help but think there is a hidden message from that perspective as well--or maybe just a lesson the current administrators of the empire still haven't reconciled (at least no publically.)
In any case, I recommend the film.
s
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 12:30, Dwayne Monroe <dwayne.monroe at gmail.com> wrote:
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader_Meinhof_Komplex>
>
> I imagine that in American hands (investor pressure being what it is)
> this story would've suffered from excessive moralizing and, the
> inclusion of back stories about absent fathers, domineering mothers
> and bad spouses unwittingly conspiring to drive nice German kids into
> acts of ultra-violence.
>
> But Uli Edel and Bernd Eichinger avoid this entirely; the story moves
> with a relentless logic. Milieu and reaction lead to action. Things
> fly apart. The violence is a waste, of course (and I will declare the
> first person to post yet another tired, 20th century besotted left
> discourse on the Weathermen and their sins to be the king or queen of
> dullards).
>
> The movie is not emotion-less, people behave as people do. There are
> fiery arguments and joyous parties and blood and sex and beer and calm
> reflection and gut wrenching fear. It's all there but, free of
> sentimentality.
>
> It's a difficult thing to describe, this depiction of genuine emotion
> without resorting to stuffed animalism. What can it be? What's the
> difference between sentiment and sentimentality? We know it when we
> see it, I suppose.
>
>
>
>
>
> .d.
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>