Opening in Germany this weekend is Udi Edel's Der Baader Meinhof Komplex. A dramatization of the rise and fall of the West German Red Army Faction -- also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang -- that its producers insist is meant to deglamorize the 'terrorist-chic' reputation of the radical outfit, the movie has already attracted huge amounts of criticism for doing just the opposite.
Of course, it's no surprise that it's a controversial film. The RAF were, after all, bombers, kidnappers and killers, and in today's terror-stricken environment, it's unlikely that any fictional treatment of the Baader-Meinhofs, no matter how critical, would be exempt from criticism for making heroes out of terrorists. Though Der Baader Meinhof Komplex is intended to be a prestige picture (it features an all-star cast, and has already been named as Germany's entrant into the Best Foreign Film category at the Academy Awards), it's encountering significantly more resistance than did Steven Spielberg's Munich, which covered some of the same psychic territory.
Still, surely it's possible to discuss the movie's aims and intentions without entirely glossing over the complex realities of the day. The Guardian article linked above takes as face value the notion that the RAF were little more than mad killers, saying nothing about the extremely repressive and dark political climate of Germany in the 1970s. While it gives admirable space to the families of the victims, other commentary comes from conservative newspaper editors and Ulrike Mienhof's daughter Bettina Roehl, who -- it goes unmentioned -- is a notoriously intemperate right-winger. The mass death of the RAF leaders in prison is given the consensus brush-off as suicide, a theory that has gained acceptance over the idea that they were murdered by the government for little more reason than no one is much interested anymore in defending them. And, most of all, the whole tone of reaction to the film seems predicated on the notion that it's de facto tasteless to even make a movie about historical figures that enough people think are bad.
Eventually, the movie will open in the U.S. It deserves to be subjected to the opinions of the people whose lives were affected by the RAF's crimes; it deserves, too, to be assessed as a work of art.
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