The Baader Meinhof Complex
Directed by Uli Edel
At Angelika & City Cinemas
Runtime: 150 min.

Even with my expensive college education—which included two courses on Europe in the 20th-century—I had never heard of the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader Meinhof Group, a political group who terrified German politicians in the 1970s with increasingly violent acts of protest against Germany’s support of American imperialism. So to anyone worried that a two and a half hour German film about political dissent in the dissent-filled ’70s will be boring, confusing or irrelevant, let me say this: Buy a ticket.

The Baader Meinhof Complex is a throwback to American filmmaking of the ’70s, a pulse-pounding political thriller that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go until the inevitable bloody conclusion; Germany’s Bonnie and Clyde, with a political conscience.

In fact, the film may even be stronger if you go in ignorant of history, since director Uli Edel makes sure the movie doesn’t become bogged down in exposition. In his sure hands, the story doesn’t merely jump through time—it positively sprints. With a single, hair-raising montage of newsreel footage, Edel effortlessly conjures up the world of the late 1960s, rife with paranoia, assassination, and the fear that fascism wasn’t quite as dead as V-Day suggested.

In this Petri dish of simmering resentment for a government that allowed the hiring and electing of former Nazis, the Red Army Faction grows to prominence with a series of highly public bank robberies and bombings. Of course, it helps that the group includes well-respected journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck, in a fearless, vanity-free performance), who serves as their voice with manifestoes and explanations, and the charismatic Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and his girlfriend Gudrun (Johanna Wokalek). But as their tactics grow bloodier and the original RAF is imprisoned, their less subtle followers up the body count with increasingly deranged acts of violence.

Edel and screenwriter Bernd Eichinger (who culled his dialogue whenever possible from transcripts and written texts) deserve credit for bringing to full-bodied life the confusing political milieu of Germany at the time. But what makes The Baader Meinhof Complex truly harrowing is their refusal to judge either the German government or the RAF. The film never goes so far as to present the RAF in the flattering, glamorous light that bathed Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, but there’s a lingering sense of respect for anyone so dedicated to their political beliefs that they abandon their friends and family for a cause in which they believe. At a time when the biggest political debates revolve around health care and marriage, The Baader Meinhof Complex is a reminder of a world in which political ideals were literally matters of life and death.