25 posts shown.
Roger Long67 said:Here we go, stumbling right into the film's first major logical hurdle. In one deliberately emphasized shot, Ms. Meinhof claims she could never abandon her children. Then, without so much as a footnote, she casually walks away from what was essentially the core of her existence just yesterday. How? Why?
Ms. Meinhof wasn't actually as high up the food chain as the "Baader-Meinhof" moniker implies. They strictly referred to themselves as the Weather Underground, and the leading woman was Gudrun. The whole "Baader-Meinhof gang" label was actually something cooked up by the press at the time. I suppose they weren't immune to the fact that the narrative was being driven by their own reporting. Baader himself used to claim that the Weather Underground only gained such notoriety because of the media—their specific way of framing things is remarkably similar to today's 😁 Paris Hilton-style trashy tabloids and their descriptions of
media terror
. I will concede that her portrayal in the movie feels incomplete. Her children were indeed the reason she was kept somewhat on the sidelines, but people change.
Roger Long67 said:If you were to analyze him and his captivating partner—who is arguably the only one displaying any hint of actual depth, particularly during that scene where she’s bathing with that stranger—using some pedantic, academic political jargon, she’d certainly offer a brilliant scholarly perspective.
She actually wrote her dissertation, though she never quite got around to defending it, so there’s a certain truth to your point. Besides, she was the one who actually pulled Baader into politics, not the other way around.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film open with such sheer audacity. It’s a massive middle finger to modern censors and all those ridiculous bans still active in various parts of the world: two naked little girls on a nudist beach—it borders on the predatory.
The sight of breasts and butts walking right past a father’s eyes serves as a sort of narrative trigger, a prop that essentially fires a shot across the bow. That shot lands in a quick, jarring montage of graphic sex, which effectively pivots the life trajectory of Meinhof from an already leftist journalist into a militant radical activist whose own daughters end up lost in some Palestinian refugee camp. The two leads (Baader and Gudrun Ensslin) also have children, though they seem to occupy zero space or hold any actual importance in their lives.
There’s nudity in the training camps in Jordan, too, where naked German comrades casually sunbathe their uninhibited bodies right in front of the eyes of Mujahideen fighters. A complete cultural and civilizational collision based on a shared vision of global justice.
Oh, and there's Ensslin in the bathtub—honestly the only scene worth watching for anyone who sat down expecting a standard action thriller and realized they'd made a huge mistake.
As improbable as it might seem, the entire film is practically saturated with tobacco smoke; it’s thicker than the smog in Los Angeles. Everyone is smoking constantly; there’s no room, no breathing space, and not a single moment where someone isn't lighting up. Whether it's a courtroom, a deathbed, or a gas station, the smoke follows.
The primary culprit behind the perceptual chaos is the sheer, overwhelming number of events and characters the film attempts to track. Ideally, one would want to step into a more documentary-style chronology—a full landscape of terrorist attacks during the decade of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. But then again, many political films play this chaotic card, usually while offering far less justification for it.
The film is flawed, sure, but it’s absolutely fascinating. If I can carve out a bit more time later, I’ll give you a full breakdown of why I feel that way.
I just have to say, in passing, that your comment about him being a playboy gave me a good laugh. In an era where Maxims would probably claim that if you sleep with the same person twice you're already part of the establishment, calling someone who stays that loyal to one person a "playboy" is truly a bizarre take.
Roger Long67 said:The way they characterize one-dimensional characters with zero clear motivation is amateurish at best. To make matters worse, the actress playing Ulrika Meinhof is absolutely dreadful. They portray Klaus Baader as nothing more than some typical playboy, while his sultry companion—who is actually the only one showing hints of a complex personality, especially during that scene bathing with the unknown guy—would likely have a brilliant academic perspective given her nerdy political vocabulary. I honestly can't fathom what drove her to become a killer. There’s plenty of other nonsense in this movie, but I really don't feel like typing it all out.
It wasn't Klaus; it was Andreas. And frankly, I'm glad you're tired of writing, because it's baffling why you even sat through a film if "murderer" is your only metric for understanding urban guerrilla warfare. All in all, about 40 people joined the movement over a decade—that's roughly how many people perish daily in any American combat zone. But that's beside the point. Perhaps you're right that the film fails fundamentally because it requires outside context (something students were dealing with back in the late 60s too; did they just lose their minds? 😁), but man, if you're expecting the filmmakers to explicitly state "these guys are white, those guys are black," you're really overdoing it.