This Friday, X and I went to see the film "The Baader Meinhof Complex". It's a brilliant film about the Baader-Meinhof group, i.e. one of the most active modern terrorist groups. The film starts with showing people peacefully demonstrating against the Shah of Iran and his wife who were visiting Western Germany in the late 60s; on signal, supporters of the Shah and the police rush and senselessly beat demonstrators into pulp. The imagery is one that will not soon leave my mind, being extremely reminiscent of what happened in the G8 protests at Genoa and Gothenburg about 30 years later. Back to the film: the leftist movement is at this time very much against the police state that Western Germany has become. As the hippie 60s obviously didn't help much with turning things around, the early 70s - brought on by with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the US carrying on their war in Vietnam with Nixon coming into power and the West German government was being accused for merely being a puppet in the hands of imperialist America, some people wanted to turn things around without using flowers and kind words. These people were seriously convinced that the word was revolution, and used kidnapping, bombs and bullets for change.

This film is the story of the core of the Baader-Meinhof group, and it's close to the best political cinema I've ever seen; the direction, the acting, the script, the editing and the music...it's as if the make-up is washed away from how political films usually are, leaving the viewer to decide what's right and wrong. It's interesting to see how the Baader-Meinhof group works as the members are increasingly isolated and brain-wash each other by simply interacting with their hardcore ideals as the base. Brilliant and highly recommendable, of course no matter what your personal political ideas are.

I just wish it were available on DVD today. If I can, I might be able to convince X that we ought to see it on the silver screen a second time...

Here's the official full-length teaser trailer: