Der Baader Meinhof Komplex depicts the political turmoil in the period from 1967 to the bloody "Deutschen Herbst" in 1977. The movie approaches the events based on Stefan Aust's standard work on Die Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The story centers on the leadership of the self named anti-fascist resistance to state violence: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin.
Martina Gedeck Moritz Bleibtreu Johanna Wokalek Nadja Uhl Stipe Erceg Niels-Bruno Schmidt Vinzenz Kiefer Simon Licht Alexandra Maria Lara Bruno Ganz Heino Ferch Daniel Lommatzsch Sebastian Blomberg Jan Josef Liefers Hannah Herzsprung Tom Schilling Hans-Werner Meyer Katharina Wackernagel Anna Thalbach Volker Bruch Jasmin Tabatabai Thomas Thieme Susanne Bormann Michael Gwisdek Hubert Mulzer Alexander Held Bernd Stegemann Annika Kuhl Sandra Borgmann Show All…
Whilst the film has many positive elements from performances to cinematography the subject matter just feels far too big for one film. The Baader Meinhof Complex covers too much complicated history and focuses on too many individuals to really work as a single movie. The whole thing lacks cohesion and character development and shifts focus too many times meaning it ends up as a potted history of the group rather than a compelling study of the people at the heart of the Red Army Faction.
This could have been a stunning mini-series but trying to cover all its bases in only two and half hours was a huge mistake. Even Olivier Assayas’ Carlos suffered from this problem but that was…
This is a bit of an odd beast.
It is a historical thriller that wants to give an objective representation of the historical occurrences around the Baader Meinhoff complex, yet also cast it in the mold of a stylized and tense thriller. And while it only partially succeeds in the first aspect, it more than succeeds in the latter.
If you're looking for an exploration of the motivations of this group of terrorists, look elsewhere. This film doesn't concern itself with that, they almost seem afraid to touch upon the deeper reasonings. They furthermore tend to glorify the lifestyle of the two protagonists a bit too much, slightly favouring them in their objective account. What we do get is a…
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Bonus film #32 in my March Around The World | 2017 Challenge (Germany)
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This film from German writer-director Uli Edel was based upon Stefan Aust's 1985 non-fiction best-seller of the same name. Telling the story of a West German far-left militant group known as the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction or RAF) from 1967 to 1977, it was nominated for prizes in the Best Foreign Language Film categories of the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards.
The opening scene shows a nude beach, where 39-year-old German journalist and author Klaus-Rainer Röhl (Hans Werner Meyer) is vacationing with his wife Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) and their adolescent twin daughters, Regine and Bettina. Röhl is the publisher…
2nd Letterboxd Festival - Film 7
Part of the No Rewatch November project.
If I was supposed to sympathize with any of the characters in this film, then I am definitely not the target audience for 'The Baader Meinhof Complex' since the only guy I cared for was Bruno Ganz's Horst Herold. He seemed to be the only individual in the whole film that used his brain.
If I was supposed to be interested in the complex reasons behind the creation, operation and implications of the RAF, then the movie failed me. Everything happened so fast, without even a split second to let either me or the characters to breathe and reflect on what was happening. The focus of the…
When I found out this was going to be in the Letterboxd Festival, I was so excited! I saw it years ago for my European Cinema class in college and fell in love with it from the opening scene. This time, I was a little less enthralled, but I still enjoyed it. It's a heavy film that tends to overwhelm the audience with detail, but the details are so interesting I didn't care most of the time. I feel like the first half is much more compelling than the second half, when the narrative shifts pretty abruptly from the birth of a movement to its decline. I'm not sure both sides of the story needed equal attention, but I can't…
'The Baader Meinhof Complex' is about as close as German cinema has got to fully emulating Hollywood, and the film carries both the positives and negatives that such a stature can bring. With a bumper all-star German cast, representing almost every major film to come out of the nation in the past decade - from 'Lola Rennt' (Moritz Bleibtreu) to 'Das Leben der Anderen' (Martina Gedeck) - 'Baader Meinhof' appears a lot more promising on paper than its realisation demonstrates.
Despite my education and interest in German and Germany, I was totally ignorant of this film's story, and so I can obviously not comment on how biased or truthful this film is in its…
Is it just me or this had potential but it just didn’t delivered, has some really good aspects but ended up being “average”
It would seem natural that when talking about Uli Edel’s epic left wing terrorist film, The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) without mentioning Olivier Assayas’ equally sweeping leftist terrorist film, Carlos, would be a disservice. Both films are based on real life events and both directors have sifted through an enormous amount of research in order to get the details right. Both films take place in many exotic locations and feature large ensemble casts. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the core of the film is dependent on the performances of a trio of actors who are the main conspirators of the Red Army Faction: Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof, Moritz Bleibtreu as Andreas Baader, and Johanna Wokalek as Gudrun Ensslin.,…
Been meaning to watch this for ages. It was a lot more hollywood than I thoughtt it was going to be but still a pretty interesting look at the RAF at the time. Wilderson has an amazing essay on the conceptual contradictions between so called white revolutionaries that are now still alive living suburban lives and those of the BLA era that are still either in hiding or in prison eg. Assata Shakur. The film also just sort of ended, and I get that they probably didn’t want to delve into the state murders of particularly Ulrike Meinhof and the others but it felt disingenous at the least to also just end it like that.
Really interesting learning about these events, although as a movie it doesn't completely work. Note that the version of events at the end is disputed (although seems to be the widely accepted version).
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