http://renegadebusdallas.com/2009/10/22/coca-cola-commies/
Dipping into the ideas that fueled the turbulent years following
1968, Der Baader Meinhof Complex uses the past to bolster the myth of
the Che Guevara t-shirt.
By Peter Simek
22 October 2009
Der Baader Meinhof Complex is a bang-bang, shoot-shoot, sex-sex,
un-thrilling thriller that glams-up the controversial Baader Meinhof
terrorist group, who unleashed a series of attacks in West Germany
during the late-1960s, early-1970s. The bombings and the rest
similar in spirit to Italy's Red Brigades were part of a violent
streak in the popular unrest that swept the world in 1968, violence
that never materialized on this side of the Atlantic (not that it
didn't look at the time like it might). As a result, the legacy of
1968 has left a much different aftertaste in Europe. It was closer to
a true revolution.
Unfortunately, Der Baader Meinhof Complex is little more than a
propaganda piece that glorifies the idealistic and uncompromising
young pseudo-communists who tried to take part in the global
revolution. But as a propaganda piece, it is curiously paradoxical:
what true red-blooded communist wouldn't squirm at watching the
supposed heroes of the revolution done up on the big screen like a
bunch of slick-talking Brad Pitts and James Deans? In a meta-textual
way, Der Baader Meinhof Complex offers an interesting commentary on
how our current generation sees its forefathers. It is Coca-cola
Communism in the spirit of the Che Guevara t-shirt. No matter your
political affiliations, it is dispiriting to see the revolutionary
spirit reduced to such tom-foolery.
Der Baader Meinhof Complex possesses an implicit respect and
admiration for its own characters. They are an under-developed
collection of students and scruffy-faced Calvin Klein models as well
as Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck), a popular newspaper columnist
turned radical bomber. Meinhof is the only character with any weight,
and as we watch her become involved with the group, disillusioned
with the seeming impotence of her newspaper columns, we wonder what
would drive her to abandon her family, her kids, and the small
liberties of normal life for the cause. The film doesn't fill out the
motives very well; we are told she really believes in the violent
action that has boiled up in response to a heap of catalogued
injustice: Vietnam, Richard Nixon, Israeli's Palestinian aggression,
memories of the Nazis.
If you are interested in this period of history and would like to get
a handle on what exactly were the spirit of the times, you would be
better served with a film that came out on the tenth anniversary of
that crazy year, Deutschland im Herbst (1978), a seminal work of the
New German Cinema which features a collaboration between such German
cinematic heavyweights like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alexander
Kluge, as well as writing credits that include Heinrich Böll.
The 1960s in Germany represented a branch of global unrest that
possessed its own unique and interesting storyline. Members of the
generation born in the years of the Nazi regime pushed their parents
for answers, demanded new revelations and new justice from members of
the national socialist generation. Deutschland im Herbst digs into
this thirst for (and subsequent disillusion with) revelation and the
desire to restore the German name. Although it deals with the same
era, Der Baader Meinhof Complex seems to seek affirmation from a new
generation the children of the 1968ers. Rather than grapple with
complicated significance of the past, it reveals a desire to revel in
a kind of pop-history that reduces ideas and ideologies to quipy
manifestations of our vainest desires. Communism revolution: it's
all about naked chicks and loud guns, man, feeling good and looking
good. Baader Meinhof becomes representative of the real world
revolution, the one that seeks utopia as expressed in the freeze
frame of a perpetual advertisement.
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