Baader

Baader Meinhof goes pop culture. The film takes considerable artistic license in telling the story of Andreas Baader and the first generation of the Red Army Faction between 1967 and 1972, drawing on real-life events (the department store arson attack, their escape to Paris, the Berlin rescue with Ulrike Meinhof, training in Jordan), supplemented by fictionalized events as well as archive footage and music to evoke the period. Baader is depicted as the ultimate macho, a dandy in a leather jacket and corduroy trousers and a tough gangster boss. Laura Tonke plays his lover Gudrun Ensslin topless and in a miniskirt, determined and a little enigmatic, repeatedly tasked with reciting anti-capitalist slogans and revolutionary doctrines. (bik)