[lbo-talk] baader meinhof

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Mon Oct 18 12:29:14 PDT 2010


At 02:25 PM 10/17/2010, 123hop at comcast.net wrote:


>I saw the Baader Meinhof Complex movie last night and was disappointed.

I miss Dwayne. This thread offers an opportunity to invoke him. He wrote this about the movie when it first came out and on his recommendation I went to see it with a friend:

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20100104/000192.html

Parenthood offers many joys.

It also exacts rather severe penalties and ushers in a host of annoyances, running unfettered like Odin's wild hunt.

Chief among these annoyances, at least for me and people like me, is the enforcement -- via both culture and inescapable biological imperatives -- of sentimentality.

The cultural directives are the memetic air we breathe. Adverts for everything from SUVs to home security systems use images of big-eyed toddlers to inspire sentimental reactions (sub-textually boosted by the latent fear which often accompanies excessive sentiment...fear of loss and change).

The biological imperatives are self-generated and, modified by culture, exist across the globe. It's 'natural' to get a lump in your throat when your daughter, onstage for the first time in an elementary school play about the life of Ghengis Khan, orders her adorable subjects to "hear, tremble and obey!"

That's my girl, you proudly whisper.

It's often difficult to separate culturally programmed sentiment from its naturally occuring source. I'm satisfied to know that a certain amount is unavoidable, perhaps even necessary.

It's that very inescapability which inspires me to seek entertainments as crisp as an arctic wilderness.

So then, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex.

<<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader_Meinhof_Komplex>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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