I’m not sure what movie Jeffrey Herf saw, or whether former Der Spiegel editor Stefan Aust changed his tune when speaking to an American audience. But Herf’s review of The Baader-Meinhoff Complex has me wondering, well, WTF? He writes “an honest reckoning with the past is exactly what the movie attempts. And, in providing a frank and unsentimental depiction of the brutal excesses associated with 1960s radicalism, it sets an example that Hollywood would do well to follow.”
Last 11 November, I attended a double bill at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, featuring a conversation with Aust and a screening of The Baader-Meinhof Complex. Aust was clear about from where sympathies for the Red Army Faction’s ideology might spring. This was clearly a movie, not a reenactment or documentary. It managed to portray generations of RAF members as bored, anarchic youth intoxicated with their own bullshit hysterics beliefs; but it also set a clearly sympathetic context for their emergence.
An honest reckoning? I’m not so sure. No more “honest” a reckoning – if that means establishing some sort of putative truths about the Baader-Meinhoff gang’s role in post-war German history – than historical accounts can ever be. Frank and unsentimental? About their violence, yes. About the rest? Not even close, and neither it nor Aust pretented to be. The lessons to be learned come from the making of the movie, and from its reception, and what they tell us about our willingness to romanticize an imagined terrorist past in the relativizing light of anti-Nazi nostalgia.
MICHAEL A. INNES 
For an unabashedly romantic film on a similar subject see Was tun, wenn’s brennt? (What to do in case of fire).
I vaguely remember seeing that movie, although can’t remember much about it. Interesting that the first comment at IMDb on that movie says, "an amazingly honest movie … It is simple to sympathize with the group, for their reluctance to hurt people, their very normal lives and their wish to change something in a world they don’t feel they can accept."Just shows how differently we can view the same subject. I wonder if we could pass the slew of post-WWII war movies through a romance-meter, and see what results derive?
Tim, I distinctly remember the utterance "hagiography" coming from you at intermission, making me feel that much guiltier for being entertained by the movie…
The vaguely-remembered movie was the one Steve mentioned, just to clarify. No harm in being entertained by any movie, I suppose, just so long as one keeps one’s eye on the ball. Mind you, I thought Brittany Murphy was great in Uptown Girl, so what do I know? Ahem.