Perth Voice Interactive

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER was a German Lutheran theologian who famously participated in the anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War II, including attempts to assassinate Hitler. 

It’s not a spoiler to say that he paid for it with his life.

The movie is clearly a labour of love for scriptwriter, producer and director Todd Komarnicki. 

Using a patchwork of flashbacks to explain how Bonhoeffer ended up on the end of a rope, the film retells his life and heroism with some theological touches.

In one key scene he visually borrows from Spike Lee’s Malcolm X to communicate Bonhoeffer’s saintliness.

An unfortunate aspect of the film is that all the characters speak in English with strained German accents. 

However, when Nazis guards are being particularly unpleasant, they blurt out their orders in German. 

Surely, outside of the USA, audiences can read sufficiently to sit through sub-titled movies?

The film is based on Eric Metaxas’s 2010 book, Bonhoeffer. Its subtitle is Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich, which is a good summation of Bonhoeffer. 

However, in reviewing the book, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works general editor Victoria Barnett scathingly wrote that it “has a very shaky grasp of the political, theological, and ecumenical history of the period”. 

Furthermore, she said it “pieced together the historical and theological backdrop for the Bonhoeffer story using examples from various works, sometimes completely out of context and often without understanding their meaning.” 

The film amplifies some of these failings and adds some more of its own.

Bonhoeffer came from a conservative family and was ordained as a pastor in 1931 after having studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York. While in the United States he attended the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and taught Sunday school there. 

Through that degree of integration into the community, which was certainly unusual at the time, he became aware of the racist oppression of US blacks. 

He saw the Gospel of Jesus as being with and amongst marginalised people, which is very close to today’s radical Liberation Theology.

He saw God as intimately involved in the pain and struggles of the world, particularly through the cross. 

This understanding of a “suffering God” shaped his resistance to injustice and his willingness to endure persecution.

Bonhoeffer always adhered to a Christ-centred theology, based on a personal relationship with Jesus. 

However, he explored notions such as “Christ existing as community”. 

He also started speculating about a “religionless Christianity” for a “world come of age.”

In Harlem night clubs he was exposed to and came to love jazz music. 

The film takes the huge liberty of fictionally expanding on these experiences. 

We see him wander into a Harlem club for the first time only to be called up to the stage by Louis Armstrong to play with his jazz band.

The scene is cringeworthy cultural appropriation. 

Cringeworthy

Bonhoeffer’s formative theological and cultural experiences in New York coloured the rest of his life after he returned to a Germany on the cusp of the Nazi seizure of power. 

At this point the film has him proclaiming to his family that he is “done with theology,” that is, turning to political action. 

That simply isn’t true.

It was at this point that Bonhoeffer began his theological lectures that inspired many of his students to resist the Nazis.

This film spends quite a bit of time on the Nazi drive to produce its Deutsche Evangelische Kirche, an Aryan church, purged of all Jewish or progressive influences. 

In shades of Donald Trump marketing his own Bibles today, the Nazis were intent upon rewriting the Bible in their image. 

This led to a division among Lutherans, producing the opposing “Confessing Church”, which was eventually banned in 1937.

Bonhoeffer played a significant role in this struggle and this is another point where odd script choices crop up.

In the film the courageous act of resistance that was the foundation of the Confessing Church occurs in England, among Anglicans, whereas the establishment actually occurred in Germany in 1934, among Lutherans.

Some important elements in Bonhoeffer’s life are absent from the film. 

One is the fact that his beloved twin sister married a Jewish man. 

Entirely missing is Maria von Wedemeyer, his fiancé. 

Their engagement occurred shortly before his arrest and for his first period in prison she was allowed to visit and correspond with him. 

Their collected letters are a significant part of Bonhoeffer’s literary canon.

There is also some garbling of Bonhoeffer’s theological development and his attitude towards violent resistance to Hitler. 

Bonhoeffer’s theology was deeply practical, leading him to actively resist the Nazi regime, even at the cost of his life. 

He believed that faithfulness to Christ sometimes required political action and confrontation with evil, but he prayed for forgiveness for his association with assassination plots.

Film auteurs have the right to creative licence but here we see Bonhoeffer speaking in 1939 referring to a Nazi massacre of Jews in Poland that occurred years later. 

The production values and art direction of this film are outstanding.

The clothing and other fashion items are period perfect and there is enough dramatic tension to satisfy a general audience. 

Its virtue is that it will introduce a great historical figure to a new public. For those who already know him well there is enough substance to have a deep discussion at the pub afterwards.

by BARRY HEALY