![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Let it Burn
Jul. 21st, 2003 09:20 amAlmost as counterpart to The Gallant Girls, I watched "What to do in Case of Fire" ("Was tun, wenn's brennt?") yesterday. Is there a 12-step group to help me with my German anarchist obsession? Besides the ISO, I mean.
Who knew there was a movie about anarchist squatters that is a mix of "The Big Chill"* and "The Italian Job"?** Basically, It’s one of those let’s-get-the-gang-back-together-for-one-last-job movies but with the anarchist twist. Still, every gang member has their specialty, except of course for the women who are underwritten,*** and all the individual talents and components come together in the end.
I knew I wasn’t watching "Gallant Girls" very early on. The anarchist-who’s-become-a-mother character goes on a tirade against men. A very mid –‘80s anarcha-separatist, referencing the time period of gender-caucused anti-IMF organizing. Then the beefcake anarchist gives her a smoky look. She then says, "OK women are just as bad."
Alright, back to the action!
Group 36 were a political film collective and squat. Two still live there: the beefcake and the one crippled by police, and they try to remain true to their politics as Berlin is rebuilt upon them. The rest have moved on, becoming an ad exec, a lawyer, a single mother and a woman who dates rich men.**** Unfortunately a bomb they made back in those heady days of the ‘80s blows up 12 years later and destroys a government building that had been unoccupied for years. The police are on their trail, lead by the arch anarchist hunter from the ‘80s. It’s just a matter of time ‘til our heroes get busted because they filmed the entire bomb-making process ("To show our kids we stood up against the pigs!") while being careful to not leave fingerprints on the bomb-casing crock pot. And the police confiscated the film.
Suspend disbelief. Suspend disbelief.
Anarchist-hunter then comes across an ad in the anarchist press of the ‘80s showing that the film collective used the name Group 36 publicly and non-anonymously before signing it to the bombing manifesto that they sent off in 1988.
Wait, we’re supposed to think these people aren’t idiots!
Anyways, hijinks ensue and our gang decides to steal back the films from the police evidence room. Trust is rebuilt, torn away, and rebuilt again. Relationships blossom anew. Just when everything looks bad … something good happens!
While this film could be "The Blues Brothers", "Ocean’s 11" "The Italian Job" or a million other films, it is almost impossible to imagine this movie in an American context, especially when the heroes have planted a bomb. Sure it’s simplistic, corny and does no justice to the politics of the characters or to the concept of continuity or coherent narrative structure. But it still couldn’t be made by Hollywood.
And sure, it’s anarcha-exploitation. But when the wheel-chaired anarchist tries to defend his squat by dropping barbed wire, and rolling heavy barrels at police you can’t help cheering along!, When Beefcake graffitis all the cop cars at the opening of another development in Potsdammer Platz, you’ll jump out of your seat and yell "Bonzen Raus!" And when our plucky heroes commandeer a water cannon and hose down the cops, you’ll start thinking about the possibility that vacant building across town.*****
Go Anarchists! Smash State! More popcorn!
*A more apt comparison would be
Who knew there was a movie about anarchist squatters that is a mix of "The Big Chill"* and "The Italian Job"?** Basically, It’s one of those let’s-get-the-gang-back-together-for-one-last-job movies but with the anarchist twist. Still, every gang member has their specialty, except of course for the women who are underwritten,*** and all the individual talents and components come together in the end.
I knew I wasn’t watching "Gallant Girls" very early on. The anarchist-who’s-become-a-mother character goes on a tirade against men. A very mid –‘80s anarcha-separatist, referencing the time period of gender-caucused anti-IMF organizing. Then the beefcake anarchist gives her a smoky look. She then says, "OK women are just as bad."
Alright, back to the action!
Group 36 were a political film collective and squat. Two still live there: the beefcake and the one crippled by police, and they try to remain true to their politics as Berlin is rebuilt upon them. The rest have moved on, becoming an ad exec, a lawyer, a single mother and a woman who dates rich men.**** Unfortunately a bomb they made back in those heady days of the ‘80s blows up 12 years later and destroys a government building that had been unoccupied for years. The police are on their trail, lead by the arch anarchist hunter from the ‘80s. It’s just a matter of time ‘til our heroes get busted because they filmed the entire bomb-making process ("To show our kids we stood up against the pigs!") while being careful to not leave fingerprints on the bomb-casing crock pot. And the police confiscated the film.
Suspend disbelief. Suspend disbelief.
Anarchist-hunter then comes across an ad in the anarchist press of the ‘80s showing that the film collective used the name Group 36 publicly and non-anonymously before signing it to the bombing manifesto that they sent off in 1988.
Wait, we’re supposed to think these people aren’t idiots!
Anyways, hijinks ensue and our gang decides to steal back the films from the police evidence room. Trust is rebuilt, torn away, and rebuilt again. Relationships blossom anew. Just when everything looks bad … something good happens!
While this film could be "The Blues Brothers", "Ocean’s 11" "The Italian Job" or a million other films, it is almost impossible to imagine this movie in an American context, especially when the heroes have planted a bomb. Sure it’s simplistic, corny and does no justice to the politics of the characters or to the concept of continuity or coherent narrative structure. But it still couldn’t be made by Hollywood.
And sure, it’s anarcha-exploitation. But when the wheel-chaired anarchist tries to defend his squat by dropping barbed wire, and rolling heavy barrels at police you can’t help cheering along!, When Beefcake graffitis all the cop cars at the opening of another development in Potsdammer Platz, you’ll jump out of your seat and yell "Bonzen Raus!" And when our plucky heroes commandeer a water cannon and hose down the cops, you’ll start thinking about the possibility that vacant building across town.*****
Go Anarchists! Smash State! More popcorn!
*A more apt comparison would be
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}