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West Germany, the late 1970's: The third generation of leftist
terrorists has become a bunch of bored and incredibly square middle class
citizens who see terrorism much more as a game like (the decidedly
capitalist) Monopoly rather than any sort of idealism, and who
spend much more time with pointless conversations during conspirative
meetings than actually doing something, well doing anything. For example
there's Rudolf (Harry Baer), who works in a record shop by day and takes
care of heroin-addict Ilse (Y Sa Lo) by night, and even puts up with her
fblack boyfriend Franz (Günther Kaufmann), an explosives expert who is
eventually invited into the group, and his friend Bernhard (Vitus
Zeplichal), who tries to learn everything on leftist ideals but only gets
on everybody's nerves. Then there's Paul (Raúl Gimenez), who has just
come back from guerilla-training in Africa and is now the idol of the
whole group ... but actually he is just the typical misogynist macho who
likes to order his girlfriend Hilde (Bulle Ogier) around like your typical
working class husband. Then there's Petra (Margit Carstensen), whose
husband (Jürgen Draeger) works at a bank and who actually can'tlive
without the luxury her husband's job provides. There's also Susanne
(Hanna Schygulla), who works for Peter Lurtz (Eddie Constantine), one of
the capitalist businessmen our terrorists are allegedly fighting against,
while her husband Edgar (Udo Kier) seems to only have joined the group to
rebel against his cop father (Hark Bohm). And then there's August
(Volker Spengler), who has long betrayed teh group's ideals and made a
deal with Peter Lurtz, who wants to be kidnapped by the terrorists so the
German gouvernment will buy his computers (remember, this film was made in
pre-PC times, when computers were strictly a matter of banks and
gouvernment). Eventually, things start to get rough though when Ilse
dies from an overdose, Paul is shot dead, and so is Franz, and Edgar's
father is trying to track the terrorist cell down with the help of
Bernhard, who simply doesn't seem to get anything that's going on. Our
terrorists start acting subversive by robbing a local registry and Petra's
husband's bank, but in the end, they are playing right into the hands of
big business by abducting Peter Lurtz ... In 1979, when Rainer
Werner Fassbinder made this film, the terrorist acts of the left-wing Red
Army Faction were still shocking West Germany - yet Fassbinder mocks the
organisation as such, portraying its members as square middle-class
everybodies craving for adventure and not even capable of understanding
left-wing ideals (like left-wing figurehead Rudi Dutschke, who shows up on
TV-screens during the film repeatedly) and who fail to be all that
interested into real life goings-on as such, as nobody seems to even try
to listen to the news that are constantly running in the background. However,
what could have been a heavy-handed message movie in the hands of a lesser
director turns into a light footed yet incredibly intelligent and
accomplished satirein Fassbinder's hands, who paints a perfect picture of
late-1970's Germany populated by over-the-top yet believable and even
likeable characters, and who manages to tell his big story by a
series of litle but only seemingly unimportant events that in fact tell
more than every explosion, every CGI-effect of any recent Hollywood
blockbuster about terrorists. Definitely recommended.
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