Der Baader Meinhof Komplex.2008.Uli Edel

It just occurred to me that I was able to watch two German films in a week. The second one took place in West Germany during the late sixties. With our country on the brink of a big political change during that time, The Baader Meinhof Complex is a great story telling for those people who love history and governance.

As said, our country went to dictatorship, in a sense, when the Red Army Faction was created. The film mainly tackles the beginnings of the said militant group. The title of the film came from two of the founders of the said group; though the media prior to the use of the group’s name already used the term Baader-Meinhof.

This film was actually nominated during the 81^st Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film; Departures won for that year.

There’s certain likeability for this film and I don’t know how to pinpoint it. One of the greatest reasons for this is for a film to be understandably made even if it tackles a guerilla group. Coming from a country that gave Hukbalahap, National People’s Army, and Moro International Liberation Front, I was actually enthralled by the idea that a beginning of this kind of group can actually be made and shown on the big screen.

Again, as previously said, I was kind of ignorant with who the RAF’s are. It was as simple as this, the moment you mention Germany, there’ll be that certain stigma of the Nazis. And to that, you didn’t know that there were a few factions who tried to make a change given a long standing influence of Hitler and the SS. It also gave me the idea that it was probably a crazy scene on the side of the West Germans.

Surprisingly, I liked the film in a sense that it gathered my interest in reading on whom the RAF’s are and what happened to them after. A film fit to educate a lot of people that the Germans had their own upheaval even twenty years after the Allies defeated them.