Bath Film Festival 2008

The Baader Meinhof Complex (Der Baader Meinhof Komplex)

German cinema is on a roll, consistently producing trenchant and well-made films about the country's recent past. The Red Army Faction terrorised West Germany  from the late 1960s until the 1990s, in reaction to what they saw as a government which had become a tool of American imperialism. Led by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the RAF's idealistic beginnings gave way to a dogma that eventually turned them into killers, and Uli Edel's detailed, compelling drama is an attempt to unravel the paradoxical mentality which plans for the murder of innocents in pursuit of an anti-fascistic ideal. The faction's nemesis is embodied in one of the few people who tried to empathise with them - Horst Herold is the police chief charged with bringing them to account, portrayed magnificently by Bruno Ganz. Replete with hair-raising action sequences, this is a thorough account of a piece of European history that has too often gone unremarked. PR /CB

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