The very next scene is when the Shah and his wife come to the Berlin Opera, 2 June 1967, which you can see below in a clip from the film. A large group of supporters, all dressed in dark suits and chanting and bearing placards offering various phrases of support, is challenged by another group behind them, wearing paper grocery bag masks bearing caricatures of the Shah and his wife. Between them, a line of policemen.
A can of teargas is thrown, and, dramatically, first one supporter, then others, rip the placards from the small wooden beams, about 2" by 2", to which they'd been mounted. The signs are thrown to the ground, and the dark suits attack the protesters with the 2-by-2s. The police stand by and watch as men and women alike are clubbed and trampled. As the protesters are beaten they try to run, only to be stopped by the police, now behind the attackers. The protesters are not only stymied, they're also set upon by the mounted police, who, incredibly, use their nightsticks on those trying to escape the mayhem.
When the foot patrols finally do go into action, they start using their batons, also incredibly beating on the protesters. The next scene shows the water cannons opening up on the protesters, then two men beating a third man with their sticks; the third man is a protester; one of the attackers is a man in a dark suit while the other attacker is a cop.
Suddenly a shot is fired and a protester falls; the man holding the gun is wearing a dark suit. As a cop watches the man in the dark suit, he tells him, "Lets get out of here." Demonstration follows demonstration. Murder follows murder. Dutschke. Vietnam. Bolivia. Ché. CIA. The Pentagon. MLK. Kent State. Robert Kennedy. Nixon. Agnew. Mexico City. The Mexico Olympics. Czechoslovakia. France. Cultural Revolution. West Berlin. The German Olympics. All these terms are buzzwords or catch phrases from the tumultuous late-1960s onward. Places where huge demonstrations were held. People who were killed. A place where silent protesters, black-gloved fists raised high, Olympic medals around their necks, voiced their silent opinion. An invasion. A vice president forced from office. A president forced from office. And finally, a place where Olympians were killed.
After the beating and shooting of the protesters, demonstrations break out nationwide. Ricky Meinhof was a journalist, covering all these events in one way or another, until she listens in on another reporter's interview with the parents of Gudrun Ensslin, one of the self-confessed arsonists in a Berlin incident, another arsonist being Andreas Baader. As Meinhof writes up her story, she has an epiphany of sorts. Not long afterward, Ricky interviews Ensslin in a cell. At one point, Ensslin says, "People here and in America have to eat … eat and shop, so they can never reflect or gain awareness, because otherwise they might have to do something." She was speaking, of course, about people who see wrongs and do nothing. And Ricky has another epiphany.
Article comments
1 - Lou Novacheck
Talk about timing. One of the members of this group was just arrested yesterday in connection with one of the murders depicted in the film.