This is a melancholic semi-documentary about the West Germany's traumatic autumn called as "Deutschland Herbst". The prominent businessman Hanns Martin Schleyer who was a member of the board of directors in Daimler Benz and leader in several employer and industry associations was kidnapped and killed by extreme-left RAF. He was formerly SS worked as an important deputy and adviser to Bernhard Adolf, one of the German economic leaders. Schleyer's uncompromising position towards workers made him a target in the West Germany.
The movie plays with different positionalities. Germany democracy is facing with a hard challenge after the WW2. If you do not know much about these events, you better read about it. The Businesman's chic funeral, his ex-SS experience and policies in the West Germany, RAF's actions are all putting you in a mixed feeling. Left and democracy are under pressure with a lack of hope. I felt like RAF was representation of this hopelessness.
It is a very simplistic semi-documentary but very successful. End of the movie was very moving with the song "A Tu Salud". I highly recommend you to see it. Despite you may not know much about Germany or the specific context, it has a lot of relevance to today's democracy and freedom problems.
Plot summary
Germany in Autumn has no typical plot; it mixes documentary footage with standard movie scenes to present the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The film covers 2 months in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped and murdered by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction). The businessman was kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the original leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state. The film has several vignettes, including an extended set of scenes with famous director Rainer Werner Fassbinder discussing his feelings about Germany's political situation at the time. Fassbinder's scenes almost seem to be candid documentary footage, but they aren't. Other scenes include documentary footage of the joint funeral of Baader, Enslin, and Raspe.
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Germany democracy is facing with a hard challenge
Political climate in 1970s Germany
"Deutschland im Herbst" or "Germany in Autumn" is a 1978 film that is a mix of acting and documentary and focuses from start to finish on the current political climate in Germany. These may have been the toughest days since World War II for the country. Extreme left wing terrorism is a clear and present danger when Hanns Martin Schleyer gets murdered by RAF terrorists. This incident motivated some of Germany's most known and most successful filmmakers (such as Schlöndorff, Reitz, Kluge) to come together and make a 2-hour movie on the subject. In there, they elaborate on the current political climate in the FRG and take a closer look on the situation. The film starts with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's segment, in which he talks to his then-boyfriend and his mother about the issue and tries to have a successful discussion, especially with his mother. A very tense watch and performance by Fassbinder. Unfortunately I must say that the film got a lot worse after the first half hour when Fassbinder's segment was over and most of the other filmmakers had little to offer and nobody came close to Fassbinder. I am generally not the biggest fan of his works, but I always thought he was a good actor and in here it shows. He is really the only reason to watch this documentary and I wished the entire thing would have been made by him or would have been about his character in here. So yeah, overall this was a disappointing watch because, unless you have a huge subject in the matter, you will quickly lose interest and the film is simply not interesting enough for 2 hours. I personally recommend not to watch it or to switch it off after 30 minutes. Has not aged well at all.