Uli Edel’s 2008 German film, The Baader Meinhof Complex (Der Baader Meinhof Komplex) has often been criticised for its violent action movie form. The film contains much of the history of the Baader-Meinhof gang, from their inception to their deaths. However, without researching beforehand, it is very easy for the audience to become lost in the story.
Despite this, even if someone was to go into the film completely ignorant of the history and true story it tells, The Baader Meinhof Complex is sure to be an entertaining cinematic experience. Like any other typical Hollywood action movie, there is plenty of explosions, fan service and cool, gutsy characters however the narrative itself is long, complicated and in danger of being forgettable or misunderstood. When dealing with a serious and important historical topic, especially that of terrorism, a dangerous crime practice which continues to proliferate today, it is essential that it is represented in an informative and above all, memorable fashion. This article will explore the nature of the film’s form and its genre features in order to assess whether it producing the wrong effect for the audience. It will look to assess whether it succeeds in memorialising this true story of terror or if it simply works to preoccupy the human mind with gratuitous and visceral violence.
While it was a German film, The Baader Meinhof Complex was popular worldwide after being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 81st Academy Awards and also for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes. It was met with many favourable reviews in important Western publications such as The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair. While it can be argued that Hollywood is a vast industry, home to many different kinds of films, all individual films can be put into a particular genre or even several genres at once. According to Bordwell and Thompson, “The term [norm] implies a standard of craft competence, along with dimension of collective decision-making. Norms are preferred alternatives within a tradition…sometimes filmmakers act in awareness of norms. More than other national cinemas, Hollywood has developed some fairly explicit rules for how stories can be told effectively.” (Bordwell, D & Thompson, K 2011, p.113) In many senses, no film can really operate outside of the genre system. No film can truly be genreless or completely independent from the invisible rules that come along with it. It is not always the case that these norms constrict the filmmaker but they can limit how a text can be read. If a film is a romance, the audience reads it as a romance, bringing with them a set of assumptions and expectations. For The Baader Meinhof Complex, while it is historical in the sense that it tells a true story, its action film form is the dominant genre and lens for viewing. This fact becomes problematic considering that the subject nature is dark, serious and above all things, real.
Danchev says that “The ethical and political temper of the times can change, making possible or thinkable what was previously impossible or unthinkable- part of the fascination of the present conjuncture. The war on terror, however, raises in acute form the problems of show and tell. What images to show? What stories to tell? What idiom to employ- feature film or documentary, the dramatic or the analytic?” (Danchev, A 2009, p.198) While the film does not address the ‘war on terror’, it explores terrorism all the same. When reading the above considerations in relation to The Baader Meinhof Complex, it is important to ask whether a film about terrorists should be made into an entertaining film. While entertaining movies are always going to sell, making this subject ‘entertaining’ and ‘exciting’ is dangerous as it can trivialise the former. Danchev ponders “If the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting [it] is the struggle of revelation against suppression. That phase is now over. The struggle against suppression has been won...the [images] are in the public domain. It is true that there are some we have not yet seen, but in essence the contents of this extraordinary archive has been disgorged, or downloaded, on the computers of the world.” (Danchev, A, p. 204) In other words, in the film industry, no subject is off limits, nothing is sacred, all can be accessed, twisted and shaped to meet many different purposes.
In the entertainment industry, violence has always captured the interest of viewers. Obviously, while not every single person enjoys violence as entertainment, it has remained a bestseller for a very long time. In the early stages of the film industry, where moving image was used more to create popular spectacle rather than as a device for storytelling, replicating horror in a lifelike way was a huge break through. According to Schechter, “No sooner had the motion picture camera been invented than pioneering filmmakers figured out a way to make it perform shockingly violent optical tricks...to perceive- and exploit-this particular feature of the motion picture camera: i.e., its unique ability to produce startlingly lifelike images of people being chopped to pieces.” (Schechter, H 2005, p.113) The film which he first speaks of is The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, a half a minute short film made by Thomas Edison showing Mary having her head ‘realistically’ hacked off. Why would anyone find this entertaining? For the same reason that people of Ancient Rome flocked to watch fights in the Colosseum and why people overtime gathered to see public hangings and witch trials; humans have been conditioned to be entertained by violence for centuries.
Schechter analyses how the tales of Edgar Allan Poe and the Grimm’s fairy tales worked to sate the human desire to feel and experience the destruction of others.“The great literature offers something besides Beauty and Truth- that it also provides an escape into realms of forbidden experience...which reveled in the horrible rendings of human flesh, blood, and strange sex or sexless relations of the heroes and heroines… Poe himself was fully aware of the popular appeal of the horrific.” He highlights that these desires are only natural, especially since the laws of civilised society bar people from acting out their bloodlust without significant punishment. However, through fiction, it can almost feel as though we are doing what is forbidden without any real blood on our hands. Schechter emphasises that it is “...humanity’s innate endowment of aggression and cruelty- an instinctual inheritance from our bloodthirsty tendencies, for what Henry James’s brother, William, called ‘our aboriginal capacity for murderous excitement.’ After all, as a species we’ve been ‘civilised’ for only a few millennia, compared to the many millions of years we existed as savage hominids who lived by hunting and slaughter.” (Schechter, H 2005, p. 6-9)
Portraying violence on the big screen however was important to be felt as well as seen. Like the evocative words of Poe, the camera can be used in all sorts of ways to immerse the viewer. Movie director, Ron Satlof recalls working with Don Siegel on the action classic, Charley Varrick (173). “When a guy took a punch and fell, Don would have him fall towards the camera rather than away from it. You didn’t really see a hundred percent of what happened but you felt the impact.”(Taylor, T 2015, p. 152) In The Baader Meinhof Complex, a scene that was highly visceral and outrageous in a similar way is when the German student movement were protesting the visit of the Shah of Iran to West Berlin. As the West Berlin police force and the Shah’s security attack the unarmed protesters, complete chaos ensues. While the scene has an obvious political nature, it serves more highly as spectacle commonly found in an action film. It follows a very similar construction to the famous airport panic scene in Die Hard 2 (1990) “Similarly, in the film’s final act, crowds of people inside the terminal learn that the airport is under siege, and riot. They run, scream, and crash through glass partitions- a fitting climax for the beginning of a new action film model, one that would factor into the coming renaissance of the disaster film” says Lichtenfeld about the striking scene. “In these trends, reactions to destruction are as persuasive as destruction itself. With the rioters of Die Hard 2, even response to spectacle is spectacle.” (Lichtenfeld, E 2007, p. 168) Thus, while the scene is pivotal to the story of the Baader-Meinhof gang, as the student killed in the uproar inspires and instigates their actions, the scene is gratuitous, claustrophobic, full of panic and powerful however, what exactly is this power doing? People are scared of danger but only if it is in close proximity to them. This feeling changes however if you learn about the situation and its effects. As the protest incident happened in what Americans would call a ‘foreign country’, the audience do not fully care. They can sympathise but not truly empathise that is unless they are educated to care. Education and knowledge brings a situation closer to home in many ways. While some movies can really strike a chord in the viewers to remember and reflect on a significant event, the fact that this film is an action movie pushes the story deep into the realm of fiction. Rather than representing a real historical event, this scene, like what can be said of the scene from Die Hard 2 primarily functions to immerse the viewers into a fantastic but rather contrived sense of danger and havoc. A sense that can be witnessed with a sense of safety, that the audience is watching from a safe distance as one may go and watch a dramatisation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. While it is bloody, coarse and even frightening, everybody in the audience knows it is fiction. Similarly, even though the scene from The Baader Meinhof Complex is to an extent real because it actually happened, the very cinematic construction renders it false and even typically generic.
Stemming from the innate human desire for violent entertainment, ‘Villains’ are increasingly loved within popular culture. While heroes are strong and brave, they work to assist the law, work for justice and uphold good values, a villain is also powerful and bold and serves nobody or nothing else other than his or her own desires. This freedom from what is morally and societally acceptable and right is refreshing for viewers. Just as almost every narrative needs a hero, the story would go nowhere without a villain, disrupting the peace and challenging normality. Even though good must conquer evil in the end so order can be restored, the villain’s defeat does not lessen or take away the impact and feeling the audience gets from watching what they did. There are many examples of this occurring in popular Hollywood film franchises. While Batman is incredibly popular, the fandom behind The Joker is practically just as great, insuring that Suicide Squad (2016) would be a massive box office hit. While people get the time to know the hero’s story, the villain’s story is often left in the darkness, perhaps where it belongs. This lack of answers however makes audiences all the more curious. For example, the Spiderman film franchise made a movie that explores Venom (2018), one of the most loved villains also known as the black Spiderman (a second movie has been scheduled to come out in 2021). So why do we love villains? While heroes are obviously popular, what they stand for in a way what is stopping humanity from showing and embracing its carnal side. Due to this cultural phenomena, films such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991) were incredibly successful as they play off the idea of the criminal celebrity. Hannibal Lecter, who was based off a real serial killer was portrayed as almost superhuman. While his crimes were utterly barbaric, he was incredibly intelligent. According to Rubin however, “The Sniper (1952) is perhaps the first Hollywood film to attempt to deal seriously with a serial killer on a clinical level, regarding him not as an embodiment of abstract evil but as a problem to be examined and understood...a disturbed young man who expresses his mother motivated hatred of women by picking them off with a long-range rifle.”(Rubin, M 1999, p.43)
There was a great need for films like this as the audience’s fascination with criminals and killers begs for their origin stories. Not every killer is a genius psychopath and no human is simply evil; every person is influenced by their individual contexts and upbringings. While news coverage of the criminal can stop at defining the person being evil or sick, a feature film which turns that person into a character can do so much more. Simply seeing them being portrayed by a living, breathing actor automatically humanises the criminal, allowing us to empathise with even the worst of the worst. This process is however highly questionable. If a person has done something terrible, should they be given a voice through popular cinematic representation? This however makes the story that more intriguing, as if the viewer is accessing something limited, repressed or even taboo. A perfect example of this was the Lolita films based on Vladimir Nobokov’s scandalous novel. While the audience is well aware that the main character, Humbert is a criminal of the worst kind, a child sex offender, it is almost impossible not to like him, laugh, smile and cry with him. The Baader Mienhof Complex deals with the members of the gang, especially Ulrike Meinhof in the same way. They made sacrifices and tough decisions. They had family and homes they left behind. While some may assert that The Baader Meinhof Complex tries to glamourise criminals, villains of society and make them into heroes, I believe the opposite is happening. Rather than trying to make heroes out of them, the film makes them all the more likeable by not denying their ‘villain’ status.
Villains in their badness possess a dangerous quality of coolness and confidence that heroes can never exude. Newitz highlights that “For Americans, serial killers like Henry Lee Lucas and Ted Bundy are media celebrities. This is so widely known, and so generally condemned...the promotion and popularisation of charismatic young Americans who murder people and commit other violent crimes.” (Newitz, A 1999, p. 65) While it is wrong, there is something really attractive and exciting about criminals. Also, unlike many of the people in the audience and what could be called everyday heroes who use words and act on more of a grassroots level to achieve their goals, villains act out, and in a big way. Specifically in terms of the Baader Meinhoff gang, they did not sit at home and detest the political injustice they believed was going on, they acted in order to instigate and bring about a change on a large and noticeable scale. According to Kauffman,“Terrorism is inside us all- not just individuals, but nations. As Nazis demonstrated, this means the State can readily become ruthless as those it pursues. Indeed, by the time of Baader-Meinhof’s trail, public perception had shifted drastically: people felt that the Federal Court had become as lawless as those it sought to punish- literally a terrorist.” (Kauffman, L 2010, p. 25) Thus, because their enemy was prepared to fight, they too needed to make their move. In addition, the fact that the Baader-Meinhof gang were ‘doers’ and felt the need to physically bring about change through extreme action makes them perfectly compatible to the action movie genre. Whether it is Die Hard’s John McClane or Taken’s Bryan Mills, lead characters in action films do not sit back and let the world pass them by. Thanks to the cultural myths that ‘actions speak louder than words’, that ‘talk is cheap’ and that one must ‘walk the walk’ if they are going to ‘talk the talk’, doers are likeable, ideal and culturally ingrained. Even if the person’s goals are wrong or harmful, there is still something very admirable about those who are not afraid to act out and practically go after what they want and believe in. Again however, this kind of character is an ideal and strongly associated with fiction thus the Baader-Meinhof gang’s representation as these kind of people is trivialised in the sense that it is all too familiar to made up people and their stories.
In conclusion, The Baader Meinhof Complex (Der Baader Meinhof Komplex) has often been criticised for its violent action movie form and rightfully so. While the film does in fact contain a lot of the history surrounding the Baader-Meinhof gang, from their inception to their deaths, there are too many genre components that distract from it. Being an action film, it is great for escapism and entertainment. If the viewer does not enter the film without researching the true story beforehand, the complicated narrative can be lost track of very quickly. The Baader Meinhof Complex in many ways is just like any other typical Hollywood action movie. It is familiar and approachable, making it easy to watch. However, because of its multitude of explosions, fanservice and cool, gutsy characters, the subject matter is pulled into the realm of fiction. Rather than turning the terrorists into heroes in the film, their villain status is played off, a status with it’s badness and unlimited freedom that can be even more appealing than the world’s most loved heroes. Viewers are able to revel in the havoc and have their most innate carnal desires sated by witnessing and feeling this extraordinary violence but any tone of memorial and remembrance is completely lacking. Like other action films, narrative becomes secondary to it’s style and effect. When dealing with a serious and important historical topic, especially that of terrorism, a dangerous crime practice which continues to proliferate today, it is essential that it is represented in an informative and above all, memorable fashion. Clearly, it has failed in doing so and simply offers to preoccupy the human mind with gratuitous and visceral violence.
References
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Kauffman, L. (2010), ‘The Wake of Terror: Don DeLillo’s “In The Ruins of The Future,” “Baader-Meinhof,” and Falling Man’, Terrorism, Media and the Ethics of Fiction, The Continuum International Publishing Group, New York, London
King. & McCaughey. (2001), Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, University of Texas Press, Austin
Lehman, K. (2011), ‘Courting Danger: Single Women and Sexual Aggression in 1970s Film’, Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture, University Press of Kansas, USA
Lichtenfeld, E. (2007), Action Speaks Louder, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Connecticut
Newitz, A. (1999), ‘Serial Killers, True Crime, and Economic Performance Anxiety’, Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media, Wayne State University Press, Detroit
Rich, R. (1993), ‘From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation: Girls in Uniform’, Gender and German Cinema: Feminist Interventions Volume II: German Film History/ German History On Film, Berg Publishers, Inc., Providence, Oxford
Rubin, M. (1999), ‘The Grayness of Darkness: The Honeymoon Killers and It’s Impact on Psychokiller Cinema’, Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media, Wayne State University Press, Detroit
Schechter, H. (2005), Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment, St. Martin’s Press, New York
Taylor, T. (2015), Masters of the Shoot-’Em-Up: Conversations with Directors, Actors and Writers of Vintage Action Movies and Television Shows, McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina
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