MEIN SPOILERS BELOW(en)
THE BMC starts out promisingly enough, giving us the daily life of Ulrike Meinhof, a German upper-middle class reporter, interspersed with the chaos of political protests in Germany in the 1970s. When German police kill a harmless protester, it starts a chain of events that results in the creation of a German terrorist group. Eventually, Ulrike leaves her husband and takes up with the terrorists, training in the Middle East and robbing banks and blowing up buildings. Eventually she and the other leaders are arrested, and new generations of the group spring up, resorting to worse and worse acts in order to try to free the leaders.
All good stuff. However, the film has some major problems, almost all due to the script. One, Ulrike hangs herself in prison about halfway to two-thirds through the movie. She's the character we've been identifying with -- we saw her husband cheat on her, how she couldn't stand by the sidelines when chaos and revolution were going on around her, how she left her children for her cause. So when she dies, there's no one to really identify with. Particularly because all the major characters are in jail at that point as well. So we're watching a jail/courthouse drama intercut with new terrorists doing some truly heinous things.
Two, there are far too many characters. This plagues a lot of films based on true events (like PUBLIC ENEMIES). The filmmakers are so concerned with being historically accurate that they forget about being clear or entertaining. There are dozens of terrorists, some of whom die, some of whom wind up in prison; and it's hard to sort them all out. Combining or cutting characters would've helped, and could've let us focus in on the motivations for some of the characters (like Baader) or the two lawyers who quit practicing law and start robbing and killing.
Three, as a corollary to the above, it's sometimes unclear who people are or why they're doing things. The new generations of terrorists assassinate a banker. I'm not sure why they did that. They also kidnap and later kill a man. I don't know who he is or why they wanted to kill him.
Four, ideology. In the film, the RAF grew up to protest German complacency in the US/Vietnam war (using bases to store/move men and materiel) and in the US/Israel effort. Part of this was national guilt from doing nothing in WWII. However, hearing constant references from Germans to supporting the PLO and other Mideast terrorist groups doesn't sit well; Israel may have done some terrible things in the 1960s and 1970s, but they were also fighting for their survival. And Germans going off on Israel sounds a little Hitler-esque, whatever their actual intentions were.
Five, the film shifts focus, from a sort of fast-paced crime drama to a courthouse drama. And the courthouse and jail scenes are long and boring. We don't know the details of their cases, and their hunger strikes and false accusations of murder (in Ulrike's suicide, for example) aren't particularly interesting to watch. We know that the remaining RAF members have weapons smuggled to them, but almost an hour goes by between the time they get weapons and they commit suicide with them. Why did we have to watch all the stuff that came between?
Six, it's a little hard to identify with people who are committing terrorist acts in the first place. It's a little more palatable when it's people who have a stake in the action, such as Palestinians who have been abused or had family members killed. Watching middle class Germans decide to murder in cold blood, bomb offices, or ask for a Mideast plane hijacking to support their cause isn't something most people can empathize with.
Next, some of the characters' actions aren't adequately explained. A friend decides to drop out of the group in Jordan while they're training with other terrorists. He offers to raise Ulrike's children for her. Not only does she decide to give her children up to a Palestinian orphan camp instead of letting this perfectly nice guy take care of them in Germany, but she and her comrades then try to have him murdered by telling the Arabs he's an Israeli spy. Why? Why did they hate this man so much? A lot of individual operations aren't explained either. We don't know who the targets are or why they're being targeted. Which just ends up confusing.
Finally, the film engages in a sort of fake suspense. The newer members of RAF engage in more violent crimes because of Ulrike's "murder." But it's pretty evident she hung herself -- she was depressed, she was in prison for life, she was marginalized by the rest of her former comrades, she even has a voiceover right before she does it where she says something to the effect of "I can't take it anymore." So we know she didn't kill herself. Then, the film tries to use this again at the end, after the other members commit suicide. And it's played as if it's a huge surprise to the terrorist members; which makes them seem stupid.
A shorter movie that wasn't so ambitious could have worked better. Focusing on Ulrike Meinhof's journey from journalist to terrorist to prisoner to suicide. It would've given us a central character we could identify with and a clear beginning, middle, and end.
No comments:
Post a Comment