The Berlinale is always good for a surprize. But it’s always the same one: No surprizes.
How original, sort of. Hopeless romantics that they are, politically correct Germans everywhere will be as enamored as they should be in this latest “political love story” about (with?) the RAF, “If Not Us, Who?”
Specifically, it’s about two fine young terrorists who fell in love, made love and then went on to become key figures in that wacky and fun-loving leftist group that carried out a bloody campaign of kidnappings and murders in the 1970s. You know, kind of like the Manson clan only, this being Germany, their madness was more political?
It’s a film that wants us to truly understand these folks with, I dunno, understanding, understanding how their political consciousness arose, with a special emphasis being placed on the conflict between the Nazi and postwar generations–an aspect that has never ever, ever been addressed here in this country before, ever, not once, honest. In other words, they were the victims (again).
Be sure to see it. It’s so… Political. And Romantic with a big R. If it doesn’t win the Golden Bear than… If not them, who?
Observing Hermann 
Please God, no. Not another German love-poem to the RAF. Fricking hell. I first lived in Germany back in 1985 and each time Germans brought up the RAF, their eyes grew moist at how “dedicated” and “engaged” and “German in their thoroughness” the Baader-Meinhof gang was. It was like listening to Germans say that even though the gas chambers were used to kill Jews you still have to admire how efficient they were and how innovative their design and construction was.
That was twenty-five years ago. And today — this is actually hard to believe — it looks like the nostalgia for the dedicated terrorist has even increased among Germans. Damn. Oh well, on the bright side, Germans are dying out as a people, so we might be able to wait this madness out.
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