Baader

There's no doubt this unfruitful movie cannot keep up with other famous films like "Munich", which comes up to the same genre.

The main character, Andreas Baader (former Leader of the RAF), is embodied by Frank Giering, who is without doubt a miscast. Baader used to be a charismatic, spleenish and aggressive Leader, who was far from being "Mister nice guy". The movie tries to establish a love-story between Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader, which is at the beginning equatable to a stereotypic Hollywood-movie. However, the history of the RAF was less-than-harmonic as the storyline pretends: Particularly Andreas Baader as a decided aggressive person never embodied a nice guy, as Frank Giering in his role suggests, but rather a wakefully psycho, who terrorised a whole nation.

Apart from the miscast of the main character, this movie is rather fiction than part of contemporary history. In fact, Baader died in prison and committed suicide. However, this movie pretends that the Leader of the RAF died on the run, which is, without doubt, a false illustration. Fiction should never be mixed up with contemporary history, mainly if the imaginary end of this movie is twice as boring as the "true story".

In short, this movie is kind of waste. Compared with the RAF, the characters symbolize a knock-off. Furthermore, the story is too far away from the historical events, which is kind of disappointing, especially as a result of the ridiculous ending. There's neither rhyme nor reason in that.

I was disappointed by this movie, maybe because i had the wrong expectations.

My expection was to have a portrait about the person "Andi Baader", maybe how and why he became what he was. But it seems more like drifting away from the historical happenings into an "0815-gangster-movie"... including "a peaceful meeting of the opponents" (the meeting Krone - Baader during night on the road!) the death of Baader is so far away from reality... more in an idealistic gun-hero image "alone against the world" ...the abduction and assassination of Martin Schleyer is missing, too. Baader is an political thriller playing in a moving period of German history, using Names of real RAF-Members, but not displaying it in a historical "retrospective", but in a fictional story

This film was exciting to me because it has a lot of ingredients I like.

First, there is that 70ies feeling throughout. It is created by the 70ies scenery, cars of that time, music of that time, haircuts, cloths, even the colors are kind of 70ies wash-out.

The carnival scenes remind me of "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum", which plays in Cologne, just like the band Can featuring two of the songs (Swim Swan Song and Spoon).

The film is dense, relaxed but still full of tension. You see what an asshole Baader is, but still you may develop some positive feelings for him.

Its like a mixture of a "Tatort" and a Fassbinder, almost if Fassbinder had created a "Tatort".

The film is a complete demystification of the RAF. The RAF had been given the role of a dangerous threat to Germany, but is shown as a gang of weak persons full of admiration for Andreas Baader, following his commands. Reasons are given why the RAF was given that role (in the media) and that the real threat wouldn't be the Baader-Meinhoff gang but those who are supposed to protect Germany from them.

What has puzzled me was the apparent departure from the observed historical truth, in particular in the end. Maybe this was thought as a provocation, to remind you that you cannot rely on being told the truth.

I have to disagree with a lot of comments in here, even though I can understand why it is so easy to get the movie wrong.

Fact is that it mixes fiction with actual facts. Whether or not this is appropriate for a topic as sensitive as this one can be debated, but I think that it is legitimate as such.

I would disagree with the guy writing that the intention of the movie is to create a cult around the personality of Baader - that cult was there long before that movie, and still is nurtured, not only among leftist and teenager-circles.

My impression was rather that the movie tries to reflect a point of view that was not so unlikely in the 70s - the one of a certain hidden admiration for the RAF as a romantic reflection of the "out-law", fighting for freedom. At some point in the movie, there's said that according to a survey, 25% of the people in West Germany had sympathies for the Baader-Meinhof-gang - that is historically correct. I don't want to say that the end justifies the means, and it was soon after the first people were killed by the RAF that sympathies started to vanish. (You also have to know that during the time shown in the movie, there had not been even nearly as many people falling victim to the RAF as shown in the movie. The RAF started to be fairly more unscrupulous and violent in the later years, sometimes referred to as the "2nd or 3rd generation" of the RAF.)

So, I would argue that the movie has a right to exist not as a biopic or a semi-documentary, but as a reflection of a certain (maybe guilty) fascination for a subject that is not one single person's, but some sort of cultural phenomenon.

And here comes the big HOWEVER:

I have to agree with the people arguing that this movie does not offer much to people who are not familiar with the history of the RAF. Not only will it be rather erratic to them at parts, I imagine, but there's also a certain danger to it. If you know the facts, you are able to read the movie as an interpretation of historical events that is as well known as the facts themselves - thus, it becomes a contra-statement. If you do not know those facts or the debate around them, you certainly can get the impression of Andreas Baader as some sort of tragical hero - movie-style. And you certainly can say a lot about the RAF and Baader as a person, but that certainly is far from the truth.

A whole different thing is the fact that the movie has obvious flaws as a movie. The casting is not the smartest one. Frank Giering most of the time rather seems to be try-hard cool than really charismatic - I just don't buy the fact that this guy should be able to lead that many people into illegality. Especially since he doesn't really say many smart thing. Now, I do know that this seems to be true to the historical facts (Baader never was the theorist of the group, and there are a lot of people who would argue that the RAF never was about a theoretical base in the first place), but since Baader is doing pretty much all of the talking and all the other members of the RAF are reduced to mere bystanders, the overall impression is a rather uneven one. I would say that the weak dialogs are one of the biggest flaws of the movie. Plus, the director is sometimes really over-obvious with what he wants us to see, so that especially when it comes to romance (and there is one, because there obviously had to be some sort of Bonny&Clide-theme in it), it sometimes even comes close to cheesy. If it would have been a little more exaggerated, it could have worked for the movie, to make more clear the intentional fictionality of it, but unfortunately, it often looks more like the director's or the actors' incompetence of doing better.

Unfortunately, the movie is by far not as clever as the idea it is based on.

A beautifully filmed and excellently played film that conveys in the first half a lot about the life, the thinking, the hopes, and the dreams of those who later became known as the terrorists of the RAF. I like the ironic approach of both script and direction towards these people who thought about themselves as revolutionaries when they were still only a group of bourgeois youngsters looking for their way. The characters were excellently drawn and the dynamics inside the group - especially the psychological pressure put on the others by Andreas Baader - were well conveyed.

The film has some important flaws though, especially concerning the script and the plotline.

I did not understand for example why the storyline had to stray away in the second half from the historical events to a mythical depiction - like in the 'heroic' ending or in the obviously fictitious meeting between police chief Krone and Baader in the night on the road.

But the major flaw of this film is for me that it never addressed all the murders and abductions the RAF conducted, it never put forward that very moment when they really became a lot of unscrupulous terrorists from a bunch of disoriented young people dreaming about the revolution.

All in all a watchable, well made biopic that still leaves a bad taste in the mouth as it abandons at times an exact depiction of historical events to myths and fairy tales.