Wednesday, November 19, 2008 

Film review: The Baader-Meinhof Complex.

In these times of apparently unstoppable mass-casualty extremist Islamist terrorism, the likes of the Baader-Meinhof gang, as they were known, or the Red Army Faction, as they called themselves, appear almost quaint by comparison. This might well be partly because in the UK we have never experienced much in the way of overt left-wing terrorism, our quota for targeted explosions having been filled by the IRA; doubtless their victims in Germany feel differently. Whilst the film only makes brief allusions to our modern-day reality, the one exemplary message which it puts across is that terrorism, regardless of who it is committed by or why, can only be defeated through legitimate, legal means. Much else is muddled and ambiguous.

The makers of the Baader-Meinhof Complex claim that every scene is historically accurate, and with it being based upon the book by Stefan Aust, a contemporary of some of those who made up the group, you would have thought you could have at least some faith in the adaptation. This is in fact stretched to breaking point from the very beginning, where it is at least heavily implied that Benno Ohnesorg, the student shot dead while protesting against a visit by the Shah of Iran, was murdered by Josef Bachmann, a right-wing extremist who went on to make an assassination attempt on the leader of the students' movement, Rudi Dutschke, who never fully recovered. The shooting of Ohnesorg, combined with the breaking up of the protest by pro-Shah elements while the police first looked on and then joined in the orgy of violence, was the catalyst that sparked the coming together of the RAF.

Concentrating, unsurprisingly, on Baader and Meinhof, we never get really past the point of superficiality with any of the main players. Baader, played by Moritz Bleibtreu, is the charismatic former petty criminal that is depicted straight out of the box as a hypocrite, egomaniac, possible psychopath and with no real ideological bearing whatsoever. Meinhof, played by Martina Gedeck opens the film proper, with a scene on a nude beach, her daughters and husband playing in the surf whilst she sits alone and clothed. If the implication is that throughout she was the outsider, the radical journalist that abandons just the pen and takes up the gun, but is still never really accepted by her comrades, then her explanation for doing so is also rendered, like much else, as ambiguous. One of the conceits is that her husband is obviously cheating on her, with a gorgeous blonde no less, who walks by on the beach, stops for a chat and then saunters off. She takes the children when she inevitably finds him up to the hilt inside her, and if anything it is her husband's betrayal as much as her convictions that results in her joining the comparative youngsters in the RAF. Even less satisfying is the way Meinhof, after declaring her love for her children and saying she'd never give them up, suddenly decides to do just that, surrendering them to go and live in the Palestinian refugee camps of Jordan.

If Baader provided the romance, then Meinhof provided the RAF's ideological underpinning, writing the Urban Guerilla Concept, and while the group thrashed out incoherently at a whole series of injustices, not just protesting violently against the complicity of the late 60s/early 70s West German government with Nazism, when many lower-level officials were still ex-fascists, but against American imperialism in Vietnam and the plight of the Palestinians in Israel amongst other things, the film also falls majorly short on providing us with any real examples of the members arguing or debating such issues. The closest we come is Gudrun Ensslin, played by Johanna Wokalek, sitting in a steaming bath reading Trotsky. Meinhof's justifications for the various bombs and assassinations are played out along with the violence, but their crudity would for the most part shame even our modern vacuous suicide bombers and their gloating messages from the beyond.

Instead what we have is a group of sexy young people doing essentially, sexy young, impulsive things. The key line is from when the group decamp to Jordan to train with the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine, where they reject the strictures placed on them by their faintly religious hosts and spend most of their time sunbathing naked on the roof of their quarters, which goes down well with the agog young sex-starved fighters that have most likely never seen such an abundance of naked white flesh before, but further shows the contempt they have for those they are supposed to be in solidarity with. Ensslin shouts, when challenged, "that shooting and fucking are the same thing", and for them that much is true. Baader himself, again you have to wonder how realistically, is shown to be a bigot, and objects to having to crawl under barbed wire in the sand "as they are urban guerrillas", which while a good point, rather undermines their reasoning behind attending the camp in the first place.

Some of these complaints can be answered with the fact that the film doesn't set out to delve too deeply into why the RAF did what they did; rather, it is an objective account, almost a slightly fictionalised record of the original founders of the group from 68 to 77, and that to have gone any further would have extended the already 2hr30mins running time. What you're getting is what you see, and very little else. Irrespective of that, this opens up the allegation that the film as a result romanticises, even sexualises terrorism, one made in Germany itself, and while undoubtedly those involved are impossibly good looking, endlessly alluring, wear the most chic clothes, all long legs, perfect plump bodies and accurate hair-styles, it doesn't quite reach that low.

One of the things that saves it from doing that is the more than sympathetic portrayal, alongside the inexorable action, which is as crisply photographed and choreographed as anything Hollywood can manage, of Horst Herold (Googlish biography), the police chief charged with tracking down and stopping the group's members in their tracks, played by Bruno Ganz, most well known for his turn as Hitler in Downfall. Coming across as a firm authoritative but determined liberal, again making you wonder wholly about the reality, he makes allowances for the group and their actions in ways which no one could get away with doing for jihadists now. He realises that when the momentum behind the student movement starts to subside, the RAF itself will only step up its campaign, which is exactly what happens. He knows that the martyrdom of their members will only further the sympathy which the group engendered, especially among the German youth, which nonetheless happened when the hunger striker Holger Meins succumbed, partially as a result of prison brutality, which inspires the second generation of the RAF to take their revenge, almost completely independently of the leadership in Stammheim prison.

The film finally falls completely apart in the last half hour, the strands frayed almost beyond comprehension as the second generation of members enters with even less back-story and explanation. Undoubtedly this is partly because the leaders of the original group themselves knew next to nothing about them, but it does nothing to help any ignorant in the audience follow what's going on. Also frustrating is again the way it keeps open the possibility that Meinhof did not take her life by her own hand, hinting at the way she had been ostracised by the others for apparently beginning to find her conscience, or alternatively, for drifting into mental illness.

It's the implication though of the second, even third generation of RAF fighters that Baader alludes to, all springing up independently of the leadership with just the group's schizophrenic ideals as their motivation that has the message for us today. The RAF after all did not formally disband until 1998, more than 20 years after the original leaders killed themselves; the leaders of al-Qaida, of which the second generation (third if you count al-Qaida's origins towards the end of the jihad against the Soviets) has learned its trade not in the camps of Afghanistan but in Iraq and now increasingly in Pakistan, have not been even captured or killed yet. Even if they are, the militant ideology behind al-Qaida is far stronger and far more encompassing than anything the RAF ever came up with, and while the death of bin Laden especially would be a huge blow, providing the romance to the movement while Zawahiri provides the ideology, it will undoubtedly continue to prosper for some time yet. We however have not had the wisdom of a Horst Herold in our fight against it, and instead the almost as insane likes of Melanie Phillips and Jihad Watch have the monopoly on the analysis. The analogy is obviously not completely apposite: the anti-authoritarianism, almost anarchy of the RAF is the opposite of what al-Qaida wishes to impose, and the RAF probably had more sympathy then than al-Qaida has now, especially among the general population, although surveys of Muslims students show some tendency towards some of their solutions, which is again indicative more of the radicalism of those at University than something to be really worried about.

Ultimately, The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a contradiction in terms, as one of the things it is not is complex. It's instead as superficial as the group itself was. If however you're not looking for an in-depth study of the group and instead want a general, possibly given poetic licence account of their rise and fall, it's as good as one as we're likely to get.

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008 

Film review: Donkey Punch.

Since the collapse of the Hammer studios, British horror has often been exactly that: horrible. While it's unlikely that anything will ever be produced on these shores that manages to equal The Wicker Man, the last decade has seen a few flourishings of potential talent. Although both largely derivative, 28 Days Later of the zombie genre and The Descent of the slasher/body count/monster picture, both showed that when both funding and thought is available, commercially successful offerings can still be produced. If you include Shaun of the Dead with those two, and perhaps even London 2 Brighton (which is probably the finest British film of recent years), then the point can be expanded even further. Even so, such films still often require all the help they can get. The makers of Donkey Punch must then be delighted with the Daily Mail's reaction courtesy of Amanda Platell: the most vile film she's ever seen, made with OUR MONEY, via the UK Film Council, although much of the funding would have been provided from those who waste their money on lottery tickets.

The Mail has had a history of giving huge plaudits and attention to films which it finds morally repugnant, therefore driving people to go and see them. It said of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre that if a ever film should be banned, then this it. It was in the vanguard of bringing the mostly pretty bad "video nasties" to wider acclaim, campaigned against Crash, and most recently lambasted Hostel. Some hits, some misses there, but always missing the point that declaring you're outraged about something eminently available will also make it instantly more attractive, and with censorship and bans now largely history, even more pointless than previously.

Donkey Punch was always going to be controversial. After all, when you name your film after an apocryphal sex act, a sex act which is carried out in full glare of the camera, although unless I missed something it didn't in this case involve anal penetration as the mythical move is meant to (supposedly punching the back of your partner's neck as you're about to orgasm makes the sphincter tighten even further), you're instantly courting attention and potential opprobrium. Although I haven't seen Skins, Donkey Punch has been compared in its attitude and filming to it, and coming from the Film 4 stable, it's not exactly surprising. Perhaps a better comparison though would be to the one-off late night versions of Hollyoaks, except with better actors, a much improved, wittier script, more bloodshed and a tension which although doesn't quite reach the heights or gory excesses of Wolf Creek, or the aptly named Haute Tension, still builds up to a fairly pleasing denouement.

Three young working class women from Leeds, either in their very late teens or early twenties have escaped from northern drudgery to Mallorca. Going out partying, they meet three southern middle class lads, one of whom swiftly steals a bottle of Champagne after one of the girls requests it. Suitably impressed, they retire to the beach, where they inform the girls that this is their last weekend in Mallorca and that they've been working on a yacht, whose owner has conveniently flown off somewhere and left them in charge. After a slight amount of hesitation from Tammi, played by Nichola Burley, who herself wasn't sure of the trip to begin with, they go out to sea, where the debauchery begins in earnest. Drugs, and then sex are the order of the day.

So far, so predictable, and so pedestrian. Having taken ecstasy and a hit off something resembling a crack or meth pipe, two of the girls have had their inhibitions lowered enough to allow themselves to be filmed naked kissing, which nonetheless still rings alarm bells of credulity, before the more audacious Lisa, played by Sian Breckin, invites the suitably dense and achingly nonchalant cool guy Bluey, played execrably by Tom Burke to engage in coitus. Filming all this for posterity is the shy, impressionable and younger Josh, who thinking he's only going to be able to jerk off while watching the two young women fuck his friends, is kindly allowed by Lisa to take over from Bluey while he grabs hold of the camera. About to climax, Bluey tells Josh jokingly to "go on, do it!" While it's not clear whether he's alluding to the previous discussion of unusual sexual practices, where donkey punching was mentioned, or to Josh blowing his load, Josh takes it upon himself to do the former. Tragedy occurs.

It's here where Donkey Punch finally comes into its own. The male group understandably panic, and figure that if they dump Lisa's corpse out in international waters, and say that she fell overboard, all of them will get off and put this terrible incident behind them. The two remaining young women, terrified, but not bowed, also understandably disagree. Their refusal to go along with the plan doesn't matter; Lisa is to be fish food.

At this point the film could have all gone to pot: as satisfying as a I Spit on Your Grave style rampage of revenge from one of the girls for what's happened to thier sister, even if not in blood, would have been, it would have stretched the film to breaking point, even if they had been further brutalised. Instead, it turns into a dripping, almost classical in scope orgy of chaos as one by one the bodycount increases. Incidentally, Amanda Platell has got the complete wrong end of the stick in her own criticism, mainly because what's clear is that the revenge that does come is being meted out by the females against those who have first tricked them, abused them, tried to control them and then finally resorted to out and out murder. If you wanted to get close to Pseud's Corner territory, you could even see it at a large stretch as a film depicting the class war in actual motion: the northern proletariat striking out at the southern, public school educated bourgeois twits who have oppressed and exploited them for most of the film's length, even if at times they have been too trusting to begin with and gone along with their enemies. When Josh, even after the death of Lisa orders the two remaining women, surrounded by the lads to sort them out a meal, it's impossible not to see the sexist overtones which are afterwards hurled back in the most vicious way. In a way, it's little more than an updating of the laughable, ideologically bankrupt cautionary message of Last House on the Left, but both films equally have far more power than just to shock and wag the finger.

The one overwhelming problem which almost blunts the attack is that moments of comedy horror creep into two of the death scenes. If accidental or through sloppy film-making it could be understood, but it's clearly meant to be seen that way. As a result it undermines the tension that has been built up, and almost breaks the spell completely. It's mainly down to the subtle but excellent performance by Burley as Tammi that the momentum is not affected.

Despite Platell's endorsement, much of what's here, apart from the orgy and punch itself, which are as you would expect fairly graphic, there's nothing here in the violence or gore stakes that you won't have seen before, mainly because it would be out of kilter with the film itself if there was. It's also perverse to see it as part of the torture porn genre, which is purely nihilistic and indulges in depravity because it can; the script here is too strong, the characters, if not completely three-dimensional fairly well-drawn, and the social commentary far too prevalent. If there was one word to describe the torture-porn genre, you'd be inclined to use grimy, as both the locations, the filming and the scripts are exactly that. Here instead there is gloss, and while I wouldn't say that it is anything approaching realistic, up until the film's title sequence it's nothing that is beyond the realms of imagination.

While not a classic by any means, Donkey Punch stands above most of the recent American offerings that share similar motivations, and does suggest that a new generation of British film-makers and also actors can escape from the drama/comedy/soap-oriented hell to the big screen without making such drivel as Sex Lives of the Potato Men or Three and Out, Daily Mail approved or not.

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Sunday, March 09, 2008 

Film review: Diary of the Dead.










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Saturday, July 07, 2007 

Film review: Hostel: Part II

(This review contains spoilers.)













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Wednesday, April 04, 2007 

Film review: 300.

Out of all those influenced or inspired by the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans allied with 700 Thespian volunteers managed for three days to hold back the overwhelming Persian forces, the most infamous was how it was exploited by the Nazi propaganda ministry in the lead-up to the fall of Berlin, trying to inspire an already broken German people to further resist when all was already lost. Hitler, deluded to the last, wanted to take the entire German nation down with him.

Politics then are always going to play at least some part in any re-imagining of a battle that enabled the Greek empire to regroup and repulse the Persian invasion. A previous attempt at filming it,
the 300 Spartans, made with the co-operation of the Greek government was noted for its cold war overtones. Based on a comic by Frank Miller, not noted for his political sensitivities or his subtlety (his Sin City, filmed by Robert Rodriguez, involved one of the heroes rescuing a little girl who repays him once she's grown up into Jessica Alba by banging him) the omens were perhaps not good from the start.

The one bright spot was that Zack Snyder, who previously directed the Dawn of the Dead remake which eschewed the consumer society eating itself satire of Romero's original to go for full-on zombie action instead, was signed up to do the honours. Unlike his Dawn however, 300 doesn't just make the subtext obvious like it was in Romero's Dawn; it slices your head off and then screams it down your neck.

For 300 is so completely overbearing in apparent modern day "war on terror" clash of civilisations subtext, something that Snyder himself less than convincingly denies, that it stifles everything else in the film. The Spartans, led by King Leonidas, played reasonably well given what he has to work with by Gerard Butler, aren't just holy, beautiful, Western warriors, fighting for freedom, justice and presumably the Greek equivalent of apple pie against barbarian, ugly, mystic Asian hordes who want to overthrow the only bastion of rationalism and modernity in the world, they're the only remaining hope for humanity as we know it.

Did I mention that the Persians are hideous? For they are; in fact the only somewhat decent-looking Persian depicted here is Xerxes himself, and that's in a homoerotic, body-pierced, hulking giant form of beauty. Played by the Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro, he stands at least two foot taller than Leonidas, his sculpted pectorals not quite as pronounced as the Spartans' own heavily digitally enhanced chests, but still definitely the closest that Spartans come to a mirror to themselves, albeit a greyed, evil version. The rest of the Persians are either black, smirking Arabs with strange facial hair and more piercings who quickly meet a unsavory end, masked warriors whose choice of facial covering more than resembles that of modern-day mujahideen, or the deformed Immortals, who wear steel Scream-type masks to hide their leper like faces.

There is no in-between when it comes to good and the bad, the attractive and the imperfect. The good, righteous Spartans are universally beautiful, their bodies sculpted to either being perfectly muscular or waif-like, depending on their sex, the exceptions being the elephant-man like Ephilates who betrays Leonidas for rejecting him from the frontline due to his inability to raise his shield and the traitorous, peace-mongering priests who tell Leonidas not to go to war after consulting the gorgeous, auburn-haired, nude Oracle. The Persians instead are the opposite, as described above, with even their women being bulky, their bodies pierced, and decidedly brown compared to the pale but bronzed Spartans.

The little dialogue that there is, substituted instead to get as much blood-drenched, limb-flaying, head-chopping carnage on screen as possible in the two-hour running time is dedicated to shouted impassioned pleas for/to Sparta, defending freedom while everyone else sits back and just lets these throwbacks enslave the whole of Greece. This couldn't be more symbolised by how Leonidas refers to the culture of Athens being devoted to "philosophers and boy-lovers", while the treacherous politician Theron, opposed to Grecian deployment to support Leonidas, pledges to do the opposite, but only if Leonidas' Queen Gogo submits to him sexually. Just to rub it in, he not only seemingly sodomises her, but tells her that "this will not be quick, you will not enjoy this." War, slaughter and blood-letting are for heroes, who'll be immortalised forever as the beautiful people, while those who oppose it are cowardly traitors, defined either by being in the pay of the enemy or by their resemblance to mutants.

As for the look of the film, Snyder couldn't have piled it on more thickly or monotonously. Everything is meant to make you permanently alert, at least one of the battles is introduced with hardcore power chords, and it all becomes enormously tiresome. The battles are at least to begin with competently shot, although the constant fast cutting soon overstays its welcome.

It's wrong however to see 300 as directly being a plea for war against Iran, against modern-day Iranian culture or in any way supporting President Bush: doing this in the same sledgehammer way as the film's lust for war would have been too much and take too long. What's more than apparent though is that it certainly is at the least a paean to neo-conservative ideology: might is right, defending our values of democracy in the battlefield to the death is noble, heroic, and in no way counter-productive. Anyone who opposes it is worthy of derision. In fact, 300's portrayal of martyrdom is actually closer to the fundamentalist Islamic love of death, designed to send a message to the corrupt kafir Muslims to rise themselves up in the holy jihad. It certainly couldn't be further from the dark, ugly side of American might we saw put into practice by the grunts at Abu Ghraib.

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