We are first introduced to Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), as she visits a nudist beach with her husband and two children. She's a journalist writing broadly left-wing pieces encouraging the political engagement of all. Meanwhile, Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek), radicalised students, pursue simplistic terrorist activities against department stores. Things come to head when the Shah of Iran visits West Germany, and peaceful anti-Iranian protests are met with violence by pro-regency Iranians in Germany and violent police forces. Meinhof is challenged to stop merely writing about the need for a change in the state, but to act upon her words; an interview with Ensslin finally pushes her over the edge, from commentator to participant.
We watch as the RAF develops from a small group of students into a highly organised, highly active terrorist cell. The core members travel to Jordan and attend a training camp (with mixed results), and return to wage war upon Germany. Their attacks escalate to bombing of American military bases in protest towards American imperialism in Vietnam and the rise of pro-right, fascist groups in Germany. They state, through their mouthpiece Meinhof, how they all have a duty after the Second World War to fight against imperialist tendencies in their country. From there, capture, trial, and suicide, while second- and third-generation cells of the RAF continue their attacks with increasing violence and recklessness.
Perhaps that is a simplified timeline, but the film itself does not shirk from offering the drama in detail. The relationships that develop between the core members, both before and during captivity, are performed with such verve that it is entirely engaging action. It's hard to explain how awkward one feels in sympathising with people whose motives may be laudable but whose actions are not. Perhaps most tellingly is the change we see wrought in both Baader and Meinhof. Baader is bombastic, passionate and aggressive through the first two thirds of the film, and it is only in captivity that we see his spirit tempered by a more measured, considered approach. If before he was terrifying, now he becomes a totally sympathetic presence. Meinhof, meanwhile, the person who sacrificed the most to the cause (her daughters are seized from hiding by an anonymous informant), begins to discover the futility of her words, and imprisonment merely highlights for her that any message she wishes to express will become warped and abused, even by other members of the RAF.
The film raises questions as to suicide; Brigitte (Nadja Uhl), leader of the free RAF members after only seven months in prison, has to silence her comrades who claim that Baader, Meinhof and Ensslin have died from police brutality. To her, their deaths show their ultimate control over their own actions and serve as an example to others; to the younger RAF members, they can only see those actions in terms of the oppression of the state.
One of the greatest strengths of this piece is that characters on both sides come across sympathetically. Certainly the anonymous police presence is intimidating, but the man charged with eliminating the RAF states time and again that without political change, radicalised students will turn again and again to violence. Part of the success of the film is how we are encouraged to see that many different people from different spheres were all pushing towards the same goal, even if the methods differed so broadly. This is brought about by the patience with which the story is told, each episode adding further information towards this picture of a state in turmoil beneath the surface, and the actions of a few affecting the many.
It wasn't the easiest film to watch, but perhaps that was because the pace, so deliberately focused and intense, left for tiring viewing. But the result was worth it; that strange sense of being so strong moved the plight of those many years ago, in a world far different than my own.
~~~~~
2008
Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Uhl, Stipe Erceg, Vinzenz Kiefer
dir. Uli Edel
