The Seventh Art

A History For Violence

I hear that the term “Baader-Meinhof phenomenon” refers to something that you keep coming across at an alarming frequency after your first encounter with it. This might sound contrived but unfortunately, that is exactly how I felt when watching Germany’s official entry to the Oscars, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (2008). If you’ve watched the first couple of scenes, you’ve probably seen the whole film. Deservedly the least successful of the five nominees, The Baader-Meinhof Complex is an exercise in futility that seems to have wasted great raw material for historical, political and cinematic analysis. And looking back to see that this one overtook Gomorra (2008) is only shocking. Don’t worry, I am not going to give you plot details here. This link gives you all the necessary (and more than that) details about the script of the film!

The Baader-Meinhof Complex is an out and out political film as opposed to personal films with political subtexts. Its course has already been defined by the passage of time. Now, the only creative latitude that the director has in these kind of films is in providing dimensions, motives and moral conflicts to his characters in order to understand them. The director inherits the responsibility to explore the subject, analyze it and provide insights into the events from an arbitrary perspective. Take the case of a film that shares some of the content with this one – Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2005). Having got heavily panned for his handling of history in Schindler’s List (1993), Spielberg returns in style correcting all the errors that might have been committed in the latter film. He quite successfully delves into the psyche of a troubled man on whom a national mentality is forced, managing never to be speculative. All the “data” associated with the film – the Munich Olympic massacre, the initiation of the Wrath of God by Mossad and the statistics that would invariably arise with it – take a back seat with minuscule runtime.

Coming back to The Baader-Meinhof Complex. See what plot details Mr. Uli Edel chooses. Activities carried out by the gang, courtroom transcripts, initiation of major figures into the group, counter-terrorist measures of the police team and the members’ trip across the Middle East – stuff that any text book about the period can provide. The only scope of innovation, now, can come in the indoor sequences that actually merge these disparate events. There, too, Mr. Edel does an interpolating job by gathering the consequences of the preceding events and providing the obligatory kick off to the forthcoming ones. Now, a case may be made for the film to be considered as plain “time-pass” or tea-time entertainment, but its own runtime betrays it. One hundred and forty minutes can not be considered a time-pass, especially if the content can be wrapped up in ten.

I’m absolutely OK with on-screen violence if it is used for a purpose – as a motif or as a tool to illustrate additional meaning or at least to imply the futility of it all. In The Baader-Meinhof Complex, the violence is an experiment with the ways a bullet can go through a person. There are probably over a dozen extensively “choreographed” sequences of heavy gunfire and massacre in the film that serve no purpose than to pass (historical) time and to provide some cheap thrills. You can actually predict the routine as in our own mainstream films. SMGs and AKs hog the limelight once the perfunctory events that lead to it are established. It’s almost mathematical in the way the pattern evolves and destinations reveal themselves. You quickly realize how the RAF is, in fact, a shoddy wrapper to the laughable WW2 films from Hollywood, minus the one-dimensional portrayal of the two armies. Yes, credit has to be given to Mr. Edel for at least depicting both sides of the revolution with equal affinity, if not with a reason.

The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a film with fine cinematography, fine editing, fine casting and fine performances but one without a direction. Rather, it is a film with a direction that is already decided by history. As a result, Mr. Edel comes across more as the author of a sensational and often sleazy detailer of events than as a film director with skill or ambition. The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a film without a soul, if you please. If at all Mr. Edel is attempting to say something of his own, it must be that the revolutionaries were as directionless and authoritative as the very system they were opposing. That it was more because of the hip-factor associated with it than the vision of real revolutionaries that anti-establishmentarianism became as widespread as it did. But, except for the last scene that actually salvages the film to a minor extent, these sporadic observations fail to come within the grasp of the film and die off within minutes of birth.

Consider one of the better scenes in the film where the car that Baader steals gets stolen from him immediately after he challenges one of his comrades to flick a purse. There was scope for great analysis following this. In Herzog’s spectacular Cobra Verde (1987), the Kinski character overthrows an existing regime with the help of the slaves of the country only to become its chancellor and indulge in slave trade. A while later, when an associate asks him who the arrested people in the cellar are, he says “Our future murderers”. Here too, a similar situation evolves. It is inevitable that revolution begets revolution. Successful revolutionaries will one day be overthrown by similar kinds. Snatchers will be snatched from. Anarchists will eventually become the system. But the film never capitalizes upon the ephemeral idea. Or the intriguing moment when an officer asks Horst Herold (Bruno Ganz) what perpetuates the evolution of terrorist groups. He replies “A myth”. It sets us ruminating. What myth is he referring to? The Raskolnikovian myth bordering foolishness?  The Guevara-esque romanticism?  Sadly, the film remains completely oblivious to it.

Verdict: