Hot Docs ’03: Baader-Meinhof: In Love with Terror

**/****
directed by Ben Lewis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Or rather, Ben Lewis: In Love with Obviousness. This brief history of the ultra-left Red Army Faction, whose terrorism swept West Germany during the '70s, doesn't really deal with the issues that created it; the film is far more interested in the sensational aspects of their rampage than in any of the questions that it raised. Admittedly, some of the details depicted are fascinating: I didn't realize that Andreas Baader's squeeze Gudrun Ensselin was a sex-movie queen, or that the BMW, RAF getaway car of choice, became known as the "Baader-Meinhof Wagon." But for the most part, the film has an ambiguous pulpy charge, where you feel thrills and horror and wind up too confused to think. At every turn, bad filmmaking choices are made. Director Lewis assembles both ex-RAF members and pillars of the West German community in an attempt to find "balance" and not offend anyone; even as we thrill to the terroristic adventures, we have Helmut Schmidt likening them to Nazis and the head of police revealing that their actions paradoxically increased the budget of the police force, just so we don't get too caught up. And there are some bewildering sub-Errol Morris visual tropes involving pigs, which are in reference to the RAF's description of the cops, or the group's victims, or something–it's never sure what. In the end, the film combines the worst of the radical left (conscienceless adventurism) with the worst of the mainstream (wishy-washy avoidance of controversy) and will please no one.