Let this film lay the German obsession with the Baader-Meinhof Gang to rest.
If Not Us, Who? does spare us another full exploration of the addled middle-class lefty terrorists and thereby any fear that they will be depicted as revolutionary anti-heroes, as they veered dangerously close to being at times in 2008's
Baader Meinhof Complex, by concentrating almost exclusively on the earlier years of Baader's eventual girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, and her partner of the time.
They are quite clearly pathetic figures, carrying far too much baggage to do with their parents' actions in the war years and finding a childishly inadequate outlet in free love and political ranting. This much is good, and at least gives credence to the notion that the director is burying their whole tribe's ethos. But there is also so little to empathise with in them that the film eventually suffocates under their self-involvement.
5/10
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