INTERVIEW WITH ULI EDEL

What drew you to THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX?
When Bernd asked me if I wanted to direct THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX, my first reaction was: who else? This is the story of our generation, and it's a story that's occupied me like no other. As I see it, it was the greatest tragedy in post-war German history. Bernd and I have known each other since 1970, when we were both students at the Munich Film Academy. Because I'm  two years older  than him,  I had already been a university student in 1968 and 1969 and had studied German literature and drama at Munich University before going off to film school. During those two years I belonged to  a  political  theatre  group  and  was  off  joining  some  political  rally,  meeting  or demonstration every other day. Those days were highly charged with emotion, which is  something  that  I  tried  to  capture  in  the  first  part  of  the  film.  I  myself  was  a revolutionary romantic, and - like so many other young people at that time - incurably so. I followed the beginnings of the RAF with great interest. It was exciting to see that there were people out  there who dared  to go  to such extremes. The shock and  the great  disillusionment  didn't  set  in  until  1972,  when  the  first  bombs  went  off  and people got killed and injured.

How did you approach the material?
First of all  I  recalled what  I could  remember. Then  I  read everything  I could  find on the  subject.  I  also  talked  to  former  terrorists,  sometimes  in  great  detail. What  you need to take  into account when you have conversations with former terrorists is that the mind can play  tricks on people. 30 or 40  years after  the actual event,  some of them remembered things in a way that diminished their own involvement and guilt. It reminded me of  the  conversations  I had  had with my  parents'  generation. Only  15 years  after  WWII  they  could  no  longer  remember  their  involvement  in  the  Third Reich.  I  suppose  it's  what  you  call  suppressed memory  -  a  process  that  enables people to live with their past.

How did you approach THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX visually? What kind of film did you want to make?
I wanted  to avoid everything  that's  typically associated with a genre movie.  Instead, authenticity was key. The French call it "cinéma vérité". For one thing, this meant that when we put up  the  lights on a set, we would only enhance  the natural or available light  rather  than  adding  dramatic  "movie  light."  And  we  avoided  dolly  shots  or contrived camera angles. Most of  the  film was shot with a hand-held camera, giving the  actors  as  much  freedom  as  possible.  They  didn't  have  to  follow  the  camera because the camera followed them. Whenever possible, I filmed at original locations -  e.g.  the  demonstration  of  June  2nd  1967  at  the  Deutsche  Oper  in  Berlin,  the Vietnam Congress at the Technical University Berlin and the RAF trial at the original courtroom at Stammheim Prison. Also, I tried to avoid CGI and visual effects.

Nevertheless,  some  of  the  shoot-outs  in  the  film  are  extremely  violent  and feature the kind of gunfire we know from genre films…. 
We based  the number of bullets we used  in  those scenes on the police reports. For example,  in  the  case  of  the  Schleyer  kidnapping  the  police  found  up  to  25  entry wounds  in  the bodies at  the crime scene. The kidnappers went about  their business with  incredible brutality. They  fired a  total of 119  bullets  at Schleyer's  team.  In  the case of the Buback assassination, 15 shots were fired and that's what we show in the   film. We also counted  the shots  that were  fired during Andreas Baader's arrest and we only show what was  listed  in  the police  report. We didn't exaggerate  the shoot-outs; we only showed the shots that were actually fired.

How did it feel to film on the original locations? 
When we filmed Benno Ohnesorg's death near the Deutsche Oper Berlin, at exactly the place where he was  shot on  the  June 2nd  1967,  the experience  choked me  so much,  I  barely managed  to  direct  the  scene. When we were  filming  the  scene,  in which Rudi Dutschke is shot, the entire crew became so emotional that some of them had  to  leave. At  the Technical University Berlin, where  the Vietnam Congress  took place and Rudi Dutschke made his famous speech, we had 1500 young Berliners in the  auditorium  chanting  "Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh"  for  a  whole  day.    Such  was  their enthusiasm  that you could have been  forgiven  for  thinking  it was 1968 again. Being able  to  film  the RAF  trial  at  the  original  courtroom  in Stammheim Prison  gave  the actors and me a real sense of assurance. Martina Gedeck, Johanna Wokalek, Moritz Bleibtreu  and  Niels  Bruno  Schmidt  sat  on  the  same  benches  that  Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun  Ensslin,  Andreas  Baader  and  Jan-Carl  Raspe  had  sat  on  30  years  ago. Actually, us filming there interrupted a real terrorism trial: tellingly, it was members of al-Qaeda who are now being tried in Stammheim...

Is  there  a  link  between CHRISTIANE  F., LAST EXIT  TO BROOKLYN  and  THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX?
For  me,  THE  BAADER  MEINHOF  COMPLEX  is  the  third  part  of  a  trilogy  about violence.  LAST  EXIT  TO  BROOKLYN  is  about  social  violence;  THE  BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX  is about political violence. And CHRISTIANE F.  is about  the violence we  commit against ourselves.  If  you watch CHRISTIANE F. more  closely, you can see a single photograph hung up above the bed in the junkie apartment. It's a portrait of Ulrike Meinhof! At the time I put it there myself, without knowing exactly why it had to be Ulrike of all people. Now I know why!

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