The Baader-Meinhof Complex

Wow, two cracking German films in one week. Like The Wave, TBMC is very much concerned with politics. It doesn't make many concessions to those with no knowledge of the period and milieu that produced the RAF. Apart from the main trio of Baader, Meinhof and Ensslin, characters appear and disappear with practically no introduction (often via the images crossed off wanted posters), and the 2nd and 3rd generation members of the RAF cross the screen with bewildering frequency. As Baader tells the police late on, the murders and kidnappings committed to try and free the leadership are being perpetrated by people he's never even met.
What the first half of the film does extremely well is to capture the political climate of the time which convinced many young people that violence was the only option to defeat the forces of oppression. These people, unlike those in The Wave, are intensely aware politically. The previous generation allowed Nazism to rise to power and they can see remnants within the West German state. They also regard American imperialism as another form of oppression of the poor and weak. The cumulative weight of events (a student killed by police during a demonstration; the attempted assassination of a radical student leader; the ongoing war in Vietnam) convince the main characters that there's a real danger of fascism returning. Ironically the actions of the RAF bring about some of the things they feared.
Far from glamourizing terrorism, the films shows the numerous faults of the members of the group. Baader is a racist, misogynist boor; Ensslin and Meinhof turn on each other once they are in jail; the training camp in the Middle East highlights their insensitivity to the customs of others and their willingness to dispose of anyone they feel has betrayed them. The murders, especially by the later generations, are brutal and pointless (Baader himself warns the police that worse will follow) and achieve nothing. The film ends on a suitably grim note as the cycle of violence continues.