> REVIEW
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If Not Us, Who? (2011)
Say you want a revolution…
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By Matt Arnoldi | March 2012
DIRECTOR: Andres Veiel
WRITER(s): Andres Veiel/Gerd Koenen (story)
Documentary filmmaker Andres Veiel makes his feature debut with the ambitious re-telling of the feisty love affair between young German activists Bernward Vesper (August Diehl) and Gudrun Ensslin (Lena Lauzemis) from their idealist student days through to terrorist action in the 60s with the Baader Meinhof gang. Ensslin was to later team up with Andreas Baader, leader of the terrorist Red Army faction.
Inspired by Gerd Koenen’s book “Vesper, Ensslin, Baader – a Prehistory of German Terrorism”, Veiel, opens the film in 1949 as tearful 6 year old Vesper is told by his father Will that he has just shot his cat as a punishment for killing a baby bird. He goes on to assert that cats are ‘the animal kingdom’s Jews and don’t belong here’.
It’s a memory that will haunt Bernhard, who as a student longed to be known as someone other than the son of a favoured Nazi writer (Will Vesper’s work being admired by Hitler). When he meets the impressionable Gudrun, who also wants to distance herself from her own father, Bernward tells her ‘writing is like punching society in the face’ and the two hit it off instantly. They begin a publishing business, move in together and indulge in a thoroughly bohemian lifestyle.
By 1964, they have a child and move to West Berlin to join forces with other activists, becoming part of the spreading global uprising and inadvertently bringing Gudrun into contact with the dangerous Andreas Baader (Alexander Fehling).
Baader and Bernward are from opposite sides of the tracks. One believes in changing minds, the other is out to blow up department stores. Unfortunately for Bernward, Gudrun has become jaded with writing as a form of protest and is looking for something more radical. A fascinating part of Andrew Veiel’s film is to see how Gudrun becomes brainwashed by the enigmatic Baader.
Played out against news footage of the period (the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and the rise of the Black Panthers), and boasting a varied musical soundtrack, Veiel tries to put into context the changing views of young students in post-war Germany. He partially succeeds but as an outsider looking in on this uncertain world, it’s easy to become bogged down trying to understand the politics put forward by those in power and the differing doctrines shared by activists perpetuating change.
The performances are persuasive, particularly Lena Lauzemis as Ensslin, which results in the magnetism and vulnerability of this feisty relationship becoming more fascinating than the political stances taken by the anoraks in cold cellars endlessly debating issues.
An exploration of how someone becomes a terrorist is largely left unexplored. Veiel’s stance is clearly on the side of Bernward in a sympathetic showing of his mental breakdown. And even if we don’t quite see what drove Ensslin and Baader to turn to terrorism, Veiel offers the possible explanation that the assassination of JFK in the US, a revered figure in Ensslin’s eyes, may have led to a greater disillusionment with the status quo and a need to take more direct action.
Overall, Veiel’s film is slightly uneven and arguably a little too diffuse in its attempt to grip you with the political debates shared by many activist students, but does show a fascinating relationship that was dynamic, destructive and fractured. It also offers an engrossing glimpse into what led to student protests in a wounded country, arguably lacking clear direction after the shock of being at the heart of two World Wars.
Script…………………………………………………………………………………………….
Veiel’s narrative is fleshed out with a little too much doctrinal dialogue, but the
relationship and the barbed repartee between the two leads keeps it engaging. 3
Direction………………………………………………………………………………………..
Veiel’s feature debut certainly doesn’t lack ambition, perhaps too long and dull
in parts, this remains an admirable effort. 3
Verdict…………………………………………………………………………………………..
For those interested in what lay behind student radicalism in post-war Germany
or for those who possess a bookish literary and a socio-political historical mind,
If Not Us, Who? will certainly have appeal. 3
