Both of them are about communist revolutionary terrorists in 1970s Europe. If you've seen both, how do you think they compare? And which do you prefer?
I admire the detail and research that went into making 'Carlos' but I prefer 'Baader' because it's more focused and condensed, which is why it's much shorter, and I think this makes it easier to digest than 'Carlos'.
The Baader-Meinhof Complex + Mesrine Parts 1 & 2 = Carlos
Or
Mesrine is to The Godfather as Baader-Meinhof is to Goodfellas as Carlos is to The Sopranos. (Loosely.)
Most interestingly, all 3 (technically 6) are pretty amazing films. I say interestingly because they EASILY could've been HUGE BORING CONFUSING MESSES. They weren't. All were very clear and engaging, exciting, technically virtuosic, beautifully shot and directed and written and cast and acted. I love the genre (70's Euro political crime epics) and am fascinated by the history, but that doesn't mean I give them a pass. They're all great movies INDEPENDENT of my affinity for these types of stories.
All 3 managed to make us empathize with (root for?) the psychotic anti-heroes in each, while not defending or even justifying their actions.
All 3 have overlapping characters. Mesrine references starting a Baader-Meinhof group in France and he works with a left-wing terrorist. The Parisian cop Broussard captures (kills) Mesrine and pops up again in Carlos. The Germans in Carlos worked with Baader-Meinhof before starting their own group in Frankfurt. Carlos and Baader trained at camps in Jordan in 1970. Carlos says he didn't like the camp because there were too many urban leftists there (aka people like Meinhof.)
Mesrine and Carlos are more French in nature. Messier, jumpier, sexier.
Baader is more German. Precise, cool, intense yet removed. Best explosions of any movie I've ever seen.
The character Mesrine hates Arabs. It's implied that his experience in the Algerian war helped form this prejudice. The characters in Baader-Meinhof and Carlos obviously don't (though they do have issues with them.) They're not so much anti-Semitic as anti-Israel and anti-Zionist. The characters in Carlos are even anti-Arafat and Sadat, who were both at least open to the idea of peace with the Israelis.
Finally all 3 are SO MUCH BETTER than most American action flicks.
Hope some of this made sense. Check out Mesrine. It's on Netflix.
I'm extremely offended by your comparison of Mesrine to Carlos and Baader-Meinhof.
The characters in the latter two films were political activists first and foremost, and their causes were righteous and noble, even if their tactics were morally unpleasant or (worse) not at all successful.
Mesrine, on the other hand, is about a criminal interested only in fast cars, chasing tail, and killing Arabs. His political activities include working for a far-right nationalist militia. And what a DISGUSTING racist!
Perhaps all three films belong in the same genre, but they're still worlds apart.
Right, because Carlos and the Baader gang were such sterling examples of humanity. In the Baader movie, Andreas is introduced as someone who's more of a criminal interested in making mischief than a thoughtful potential revolutionary.
Here's your description of Mesrine:
"Mesrine, on the other hand, is about a criminal interested only in fast cars, chasing tail, and killing Arabs. His political activities include working for a far-right nationalist militia. And what a DISGUSTING racist!"
Andreas is introduced as a car thief, a misogynist, someone who has problems with both Arabs and Jews, and of course a cold-blooded murderer with no concern for human life. His journey in the film is that he actually turns into a thoughtful potential revolutionary once he isn't able to act anymore.
Gudrun starts out as a thoughtful potential revolutionary and turns into a cold-blooded facistic criminal.
Ulrike starts out as a law-abiding well-meaning bourgeois and ends up an incarcerated lunatic, as much a victim of Andreas and Gudrun as anyone they bombed/shot/kidnapped in the name of freedom/the cause/whatever.
As for Carlos, he starts and ends as a tail chasing narcissistic gangster (not that much different than Ben Kingsley as Don Logan in Sexy Beast) looking for a cause to join/be associated with (and a name -- you could argue that the inciting incident of Carlos was when he names himself Carlos.) The cause, first Palestinian, then more broadly Islamist, was (at least as framed in the film) an excuse for him to wreak havoc and raise hell. He actually wasn't a great (as in carried out successful missions) terrorist, more a feared man capable of causing enormous destruction, whom the Eastern Bloc and Middle East ended up playing off each other during The Cold War. His journey was a sexual one. Virile to impotent. There was nothing revolutionary about him; he was a troubled rich kid who was a beast and a warrior, and ultimately misguided because he could never channel that energy into something great. It was all just about him spraying bullets and come.
So listen, I'm sorry you're offended, but your definition of political activism is just plain wrong (if not more offensive than how offended you claim to be.) The main characters in these films were all essentially gangsters operating in roughly the same time/place (1970's Europe), one of whom (Mesrine) who tried to justify his actions as that of a revolutionary (in the second film during the interview/Charlie/kidnapping section, not the Gerard Depardieu section you're referring to), whereas Carlos and the Baader gang actually believed they were fighting the good fight, and convinced a lot of other people of that as well. But they weren't true revolutionaries/agents of change because in the end they were unsuccessful, which makes them (relegates, reduces them to merely being) criminals and gangsters and terrorists. Another way of looking at it, is they became unintentional pawns in a much larger geopolitical game -- Middle East, East, West.
Also, please know my knowledge of these folks is colored only by the films and my limited understanding of the historical context. To that end, I bought Stefan Aust's book on the Baader gang and also the book Jackal (am starting the Aust book tonight.) Not sure how objective the books will be. From what I gather, Aust isn't the most impartial observer. My own personal belief is that terrorism (as opposed to secession/wars of independence), especially on the innocent citizens of a corrupt country, is more often than not a way to justify some of our darker human impulses, than to fight an injustice/draw attention to a cause. It's a fine line, but there's a difference between The French Revolution/American Civil Rights Movement/Gandhi and Carlos and Baader. The first group was literally fighting for their lives, be it violently or not. The second seemed to be fighting in the name of something they were outraged by and may or may not have been personally affected by. Bottom line, their lives weren't directly at stake. They had a choice. It's the difference between murdering someone in self-defense and taking the law into your own hands/being a vigilante because you're fed up about crime in general. (The exception here would be WWII, and even then, America shamefully didn't join The Allies until Pearl Harbor.) Even for people whose lives are directly at stake (say displaced Palestinians for example), there's a difference between murdering innocent athletes/airplane passengers and soldiers/governments. Even in war, there are ideally rules (not that superpowers often follow them, but that's the idea/ideal.)
Last thing. I could be totally wrong or naive, but it seems to me that real, legitimate revolutions actually tend to work (social movements, wars of independence, etc.), because they're not about anything else (other impulses, exorcising demons, etc. -- hence the comparison to Mesrine), whereas terror and torture usually don't, because no matter how pure the intentions, the sheer evil of it all turns it into mayhem and crime. It's all very nasty stuff. The cop in Baader put it best. To effectively combat terrorism, we must understand the impulses behind it, be they political, personal, or criminal.
The BMC is head and shoulders better than Carlos - the acting, pacing, direction, cinematography are all light years better.
Looks bobbins.
So far I've seen part one of the Carlos trilogy. I prefer it to TBMC because we are getting better acquainted with Carlos. TBMC, which I loved, is glossy but a bit superficial. I wanted to know more about the two female characters who were central to that group and the film lacked depth in that respect although kudos to the actors who were brilliant.
Carlos takes in more of the time as well as developing his character. I grew up in the 70's and had no idea how much terrorist activity was going on in Europe. It makes me see the decade differently.
As for Mesrine: It can't be compared because Mesrine is the character study of a notorious criminal whose manhunt became international when he decamped to Canada.
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As for Mesrine: It can't be compared because Mesrine is the character study of a notorious criminal whose manhunt became international when he decamped to Canada.
No it's not. Mesrine was a criminal and Carlos started life as a revolutionary/terrorist. The latter's descent into crime was not similar to Mesrine's life in his latter years.
Anyway, after watching the entire min-series I decided I prefer The Baader Meinhof Complex as Carlos lost its way, a little like the man himself.
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They were both violent criminals whose acts in the name of either personal gain/the greater good hurt themselves and those around them more than helped their cause, they both viewed themselves as revolutionaries (Mesrine first as a ploy, then a delusion), they were both affiliated (Mesrine loosely, Carlos directly) with 70's left-wing European terrorists and terrorist ideology. It's the world that's come to view one as an apolitical crook and one as an anti-social freedom fighter, but they were actually quite similar.
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