Wer wenn nicht wir (2011)

Directed by: Andres Veiel | 121 minutes | drama, history | Actors: August Diehl, Lena Lauzemis, Alexander Fehling, Thomas Thieme, Imogen Kogge, Michael Wittenborn, Susanne Lothar, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Vicky Krieps, Johannes Allmayer, Carmen-Maja Antoni, Joachim Paul Assböck, Peter Benedict, Lutz Blochberger, Greta Bohacek, Martin Butzke, Heike Hanold-Lynch

When ‘Der Baader Meinhof Complex’ was released, director Uli Edel was accused of ‘hero worship’. It was felt that the filmmaker would express too much appreciation for the terrorists of the RAF, who play a leading role in his film. Although ‘hero worship’ may go a bit far, one can indeed wonder whether all the action scenes have indeed clouded the view of reality somewhat in Edel’s film. After all, the action genre makes you rather quickly cheer for the one who pulls the trigger.

In that respect one can see ‘Wer wenn nicht wir’ as a second chance. This film also tells about the RAF, but exchanges the spectacular bombings and massacres for an intimate portrait of co-founder Gudrun Ensslin. It is not the ‘highlight’ of her life that is central here, but the political maturing of the girl Ensslin who in her youth tries to deal with the Nazi past of her homeland, but just as well with a few personal demons. Even more than ‘Der Baader-Meinhof Complex’, this results in a film that relies on well-acted scenes and fine nuances. What you get to see here is a feature film, which lacks any form of glamour.

What the film focuses on in particular is Ensslin’s relationship with Bernward Vesper, a troubled boy who can’t get over the fact that his father deliberately sided with the Nazis during the war and left him on his deathbed. asks to republish his poems. Ultimately it will be the love for literature that brings him and Ensslin together, but from the start it turns out to be a difficult relationship. The still young student Gudrun appears to have a much brighter character than is good for Bernward and as their relationship intensifies, he becomes more and more involved in the radicalization she is experiencing.

In the end, it would literally turn out to be an unhappy marriage between the radical Ensslin and the somewhat shy Bernward. Where she gets more and more involved in political radicalization, he has more and more trouble keeping up with her and as a result their relationship takes many blows. It is not for nothing that Veiel pays so much attention to this relationship between the two young literature students. Although he has a good eye for the political circumstances of West Germany after the Second World War, which is constantly confronted with its Nazi past and also has to comply with the wishes of the American occupier, Veiel also shows the personal circumstances that formed the RAF. While ‘Der Baader-Meinhof Complex’ paints the picture of a well-considered political movement (at least in the early days), ‘Wer wenn nicht wir’ raises doubts about that certainty. If the relationship with Vesper had been better, Veiel seems to want to say, it remains to be seen whether Ensslin would have allowed himself to be seduced into left-wing activism. Whether ‘Wer wenn nicht wir’ should be seen as a ‘resit’ to tell the story of the RAF will mainly depend on your personal preference how you think history stories should be presented on the silver screen. It is certain that it is a nice addition to the list of films that try to tell the German history of shortly after the Second World War. A history that has not been filmed nearly as often as the war itself, but which is perhaps even more interesting because of its complexity. It should be clear that both this ‘addition’ and ‘resit’ deserve to be seen.