Neil Young's Film Lounge

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The Baader Meinhof Complex         [4/10]
Germany 2008
Starring : Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu
Director : Uli Edel
UK release : 14th November 2008
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WITH The Downfall and The Lives of Others, Germany has challenged the decades-long hegemony of French fare at UK arthouses – though both two titles are a long way from representing the cream or the cutting-edge of the nation's burgeoning cinematic output. Now we have The Baader Meinhof Complex – "from the makers of The Downfall," the chief "maker" in this instance being producer Bernd Eichinger, who has this time also co-written the script (based on Stefan Aust's 1985 non-fiction bestseller of the same title.)
   Reportedly the most expensive German production ever mounted, it's a two-and-a-half hour chronicle of the Red Army Faction (RAF), whose 1970s campaign of "direct action" against what they saw as an essentially "fascist" West Germany led them to become internationally renowned/reviled as arguably the first celebrity "terrorists" of the mass-media age. The RAF were invariably labelled by the media as the 'Baader Meinhof Gang' – after two of their more high-profile members: Ulrike Meinhof (Gedeck), formerly a famous journalist, and Andreas Baader (Bleibtreu), a hot-headed car-thief who became the charismatic frontman of the outfit.
   But whereas most historians now reckon Meinhof was a relatively marginal figure within the RAF, The Baader Meinhof Complex is for a large part her story. Eichinger and director/co-writer Edel trace Meinhof's transition from respectable family-woman to armed revolutionary, and the film's first section, pulsatingly evoking the turbulent atmosphere of the late sixties, is by far the strongest. Once Meinhof semi-impulsively joins the RAF, however, the picture starts to lose its way: the second act is a breathlessly episodic hurtle through the group's seventies heyday – scored to period hits in a very familiar, Rock 'n Roll Years style – and it's distracting that almost connected with the group looks, acts and dresses like a fashion-model.
   This is a slick, incongruously conservative treatment of tricky, still-controversial, incendiary material, veteran Edel's glossy style harking back to his Hollywood stint (where his output included Madonna's 1993 'erotic thriller', Body of Lies Evidence.) And the final hour in which the key RAF members languish in jail during their lengthy trial, is a real slog – it doesn't help that the film-makers are so coyly evasive about what exactly happened to the protagonists during their final days. The one consistent plus is Johanna Wokalek, who's engagingly fiery as key RAF player Gudrun Ensslin – but overall The Baader Meinhof Complex counts as a frustratingly missed opportunity.

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX : [4/10] : Der Baader Meinhof Komplex : Germany 2008 : Uli EDEL : 150m (BBFC) : seen 4th October 2008, Vue Leicester (press show – CinemaDays event). Also showing at the Bergen International Film Festival (see below)

BIFF packs a solid punch with some celluloid hits to savour
Neil Young, in Norway for the Bergen International Film Festival, has seen plenty to wash away the blues and whet the appetite

THE Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF), held annually in Norway's second-largest city since 2000, has two of the crucial elements which can usually guarantee a successful film-festival: a lot of rain, and a lot of students. This year's festival unspooled from October 15th – 22nd, an unusually wet spell even by the standards of this beautifully hilly coastal region, and the youthful Bergeners required little persuasion to seek shelter – and culture – in one of the two neighbouring city-centre multiplexes which form BIFF's main venues.
   As with the 2007 event, a principal emphasis was on films dealing with human-rights issues – 25 features gathered together under the 'Checkpoints' banner, and examining tough political, economic and social topics in countries ranging from Vietnam (Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath's The Betrayal), to, topically enough, the Democratic Republic of Congo (Lisa F Jackson's The Greatest Silence). This year's BIFF took place in the same month that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, in Norway, to Finnish diplomat Marti Ahtisaari, and the 'Checkpoints' programme was just the latest example of the importance which all Nordic and Scandinavian countries place on humanitarian issues. Many human-rights organisations are located within this part of the world – including the Rafto Foundation, which has its headquarters in Bergen and co-funded not only the 'Checkpoints' programme but also some of the features within it, such as Andrzej Fidyk's very fine documentary Yodok Stories,
  This is an offbeat, oblique but powerfully harrowing approach to the horrors of North Korea's concentration camps. It made for timely – and depressing – viewing in the week that the country was officially taken off the US's official "terror list," a decision which will probably appall anyone who watches this particular film. The set-up initially seems contrived: unable to take his cameras into the camps, the director instead arranges an elaborate all-singing all-dancing musical on the subject to be staged in Seoul, with much involvement from defectors who had first-hand experience of their horrors.
   The (questionable) merits of the play itself – a kind of 'Springtime For Kim Jong-Il' – are secondary to the fact that its creation proves such an effective means of bringing these particular stories, and they do comprise a catalogue of the most shocking atrocities, to the wide audience they deserve.
   Also dealing with issues of self-expression and music within an East Asian context is another Norwegian documentary, Rock Heart Beijing by 30-year-old feature-debutante Karin Winther. It's an hour-long profile of China's leading punk band 'Subs' – and specifically its sparky, female lead-singer (and main songwriter) Kang Mao. We follow Kang Mao and her fellow bandmembers around China (where they complain that the affluent consumer society of the cities is too cosily complacent to have much appetite for raucous, confrontational music) and then on their tour of Europe where they encounter a range of receptions. Kang Mao is the fulcrum holding it all together, an open and indefatigably persistent presence. Subs themselves are a pretty tight outfit – like the movie itself, they're watchable, while adhering pretty closely to accepted conventions of their chosen sub-genre.
   The band themselves were present in Bergen, where they performed at one of the many nightclubs in the city – likewise the grizzled Canadian veterans of the semi-legendary heavy-metal outfit Anvil, in town to promote the screening of Sacha Gervasi's raucously entertaining profile/tribute documentary Anvil! – The Story of Anvil. Very much in the vein of Spinal Tap (except totally for real) the Anvil! movie will be released in Britain early next year, and it's one to look out for – even for those who don't know their Def Leppard from their Judas Priest.
   Likewise here's an early "heads up" for Synecdoche, New York, whose UK release date has yet to be confirmed at the time of writing. A UK release is a definite, however, not least because this is the long-awaited directorial debut from Charlie Kaufman – the screenwriter responsible for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind¹ – and also because it features a high-calibre cast headed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, supported by our very own Emily Watson and Samantha Morton.
   Synecdoche - the unwieldy title a pun on the name of real-life upstate New York city Schenectady, and also a typically high-falutin' linguistic reference from smart-alec Kaufman – is quite dazzlingly brilliant for its first half (of a 124-minute running-time) , but then the gas goes flying out of the creative balloon and the remainder is something of a dour slog.
   This wildly original tale of a crack-up theatre-director (Hoffman) – who copes with his hypochondria and painful private-life by devising an insanely elaborate autobiographical play in an implausibly colossal Manhattan building (the Norwegian title translates, rather charmingly, as New York in a Nutshell) – explicitly unfolds within its protagonist's head, though without ever directly tipping the wink as such the viewer in the usual conventional style. Indeed, Kaufman bravely rejects convention and expectation at every turn, though even he can't avoid falling into that all-too-predictable creative trap: debutant overreach. Certainly worth a look, however, when it does wash up on our shores.

Neil Young
November 4th, 2008

¹ Plus – ahem – Human Nature.

original Jigsaw Lounge Bergen 2008 index-page