The view: Red Army Blues
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/08/for_editors_the_view_red_army.html
This week's film blogs found a high-end portrait of the
Baader-Meinhof gang embroiled in a PR fiasco
August 22, 2008
by Danny Leigh
News arrives of trouble lapping at a forthcoming movie devoted to a
pivotal moment in modern German history. For once, however, the
blighted Valkyrie is off the hook - the problem child this time is
Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, a prestige account of the life of the Red
Army Faction, written and overseen by the producer of the much-lauded
Downfall, which despite a choice pedigree has blundered into the
roughest of PR waters.
As reported by David Hudson at Green Cine Daily, it's already
habitual for American studios nursing a clunker to skip the niceties
of screening the movie for the press, or to do so only with embargoes
in place to confine bad buzz. But the ante has been conclusively
upped by those responsible for Baader Meinhof, directed by veteran
Uli Edel. Prior to attending a German preview screening of the film
this week, invitees were first required to sign a contract barring
them from writing or even speaking about it afterwards until close to
the film's release date next month - with the penalty a fine of
€100,000 (the better part of £80,000) divided between the journalist
themselves and their outlet.
Absurdly heavy-handed and instantly redolent of
what-have-you-got-to-hide, it's tempting to think the whole thing
must have been conceived as a stunt to play on the severity with
which the German state responded to the early arsons and bank
robberies of the RAF; 100,000 marks being the sum that was placed on
each of the gang members' heads on the infamous Wanted posters issued in 1971.
And yet if so (quite apart from that idea's dubious taste), the
German press don't appear to have been let in on the joke - with the
national journalists' union DJV making a public protest, German
papers including the prominent Der Tagesspiegel and Süddeutsche
Zeitung blowing the whistle on the producers' antics (the latter have
a copy of the contract reproduced here), and Hudson quoting the
online journalist Rüdiger Suchsland as declaiming: "Obviously, Der
Baader Meinhof Komplex is a botched film. There's no other
explanation for [producers] Constantin's loss of control and
hysterical behavior. There's a fear that word of the poor quality of
the film will get out."
So, not quite the PR masterstroke. And it's a gaffe made stranger by
the apparently sturdy foundations on which Edel's film has been
built; while Valkyrie contained a kernel of risibility from the
get-go, everything about Der Baader Meinhof Komplex screams
impeccably high-end: the internationally-acclaimed precedent of
Downfall, an A-list cast (including The Lives of Others' Martina
Gedeck, Run Lola Run's Moritz Bliebtrau and Bruno Ganz essaying
doughy police chief Horst Herold) - and the source material of
journalist Stefan Aust's book on the gang (long out of print in the
UK but due to re-emerge when the film comes out here in the autumn)
outstanding in a field not untouched by the glib or partial.
Yet now, just weeks before its release, the project is, in Germany at
least, the subject of anger and ridicule. And if Rüdiger Suchsland is
right and the film proves to be a tank, then that's a shame for
reasons other than the fortunes of the producers and PR
functionaries. After all, despite their spectral hold over many
imaginations - revenants of a time when a gaggle of petty criminals,
magazine journalists and student cinematographers in crushed velvet
and stolen BMWs could all but unhinge an entire liberal democracy -
and various fragments of their story having appeared on screen
before, the goal remains open for a definitive portrait on film more
than 30 years after the disputed events at Stammheim Prison that left
Andreas Baader and two of the gang's other principals dead.
Of course, for all the rancour, the fiasco could yet prove to be a
mere false start. Yet even so, that still leaves the project tainted
by a bizarrely draconian display of commercial interests - quite the
irony, eh? Still, I'm sure Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer are grateful
for the breathing space.
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