Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin
I recently had a long and spirited discussion with my daughter, the poet Claire Holland. She allowed as how she may love films even more than she loves books… which, knowing her passion for literature and poetry, was saying a lot. I concurred that movies may enjoy an emotional bond with me that even my most favorite novels do not. That said, I see two shortcomings of even the true masterpieces of cinema, when compared to books.
The first is that a film is fundamentally a one-way communication. True, a movie may evoke an emotional response. We may cry. We may laugh. We may shudder. These are just three of many possible physiological and psychological reactions we might have while viewing a film. However, the filmmaker and her/his team are always in the driver’s seat. We the viewers are presented with images, dialog, sound effects and music which collectively stimulate these responses.
The experience of reading a book is qualitatively different. Reading a book is always a two-way communication; a book always has two authors. One author remains a constant. The other changes every time a different reader picks up that book. That reader becomes an active collaborator with the writer. Our imagination processes the words organized and presented by the writer. We create the pictures and the sounds in our own imaginations. The end result is different for every reader, and no two end-products are ever the same.
The second shortcoming of even a great film is that it necessarily must condense a complicated story into an engaging and comprehensible dramatization of at most three or four hours, and more typically today about 120 minutes. This inherent limitation is irrelevant in many movies, including many that are quite good. For example, Indiana Jones portrays a cardboard cutout, loosely styled on the lives and exploits of several real-life archaeologists and adventurers, such as Roy Chapman Andrews. Since Harrison Ford’s title character is merely inspired by the likes of Andrews, the film series’ directors and writers are free to run with their yarns in any directions they like. They can paint in broad strokes, for instance, enhancing the emphasis on action by way of impossible chase sequences, action being the métier of these movies.
When the filmmaker approaches a biopic, however, this second short coming of the medium becomes a more acute challenge. Never has this been more true than with the recently released Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.
The two-hour film’s epilog informs us that German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged by the Nazis in 1945 for his alleged role in a Hitler-assassination plot, left behind some 34 volumes of his writings. Whatever the precise quantity of sermons, essays, articles, and longer works, collectively they chronicle a complex and convoluted inner life that is darned difficult to depict in a film. With a couple of hours to work with and a mandate from the financiers to create a dramatically compelling product for the box office, Director Todd Komarnicki and his team needed to condense subtleties and ambiguities into a comprehensible, compelling narrative that keeps the audiences’ attention and sends them out of the theaters in a positive frame of mind. Thus, as the numerous reviews aptly point out, liberties were taken.
The first of these liberties glares from the film’s poster. It depicts Bonhoeffer toting a Lueger. Not once in the film’s two hours does the star, Jonas Dassler, pick up a firearm of any kind. And, indeed, the extent of Bonhoeffer’s knowledge of the plot by some family members and associates to kill the Fuhrer remains today, as ever, a historical controversy. No matter… the film places him smack in the middle of the conspiracy.
Similarly, the film depicts him pledging allegiance to the Abwehr, Hitler’s military intelligence agency (true) in order to further the assassination plot (not true). It has him cozying up to British contacts (true) in order to get a bomb to blow up Hitler (not true). He’s followed by the film to America, where he spent a year studying at the Union Theological Seminary and worshipping at the Abyssinian Baptist Church (true) and leading a jazz ensemble (not true).
Despite (or perhaps because of) such stretches of the truth, the film is rather compelling. Even the drab cinematography and grueling soundtrack don’t fatally interfere with film’s overall impact on the audience. That’s most likely because it has been released at a particularly propitious moment in American history.
Parallels between Hitler’s rise in Weimer Germany and Trump’s reprise on the American political stage may be alluring to filmgoers at first blush. Bonhoeffer’s epilog asserts that 2023 saw the highest number of antisemitic incidents since the end of World War Two. How many of these incidents are the products of Israel’s Gaza campaign may be a matter of conjecture.
What isn’t conjectural is the distinction between the Weimar Republic of the 1930s and Donald Trump’s America of 2024. The former was a child of Germany’s defeat in the trenches and allegedly ignominious betrayal at the treaty table. Hyperinflation was about as extreme as it can ever get; newsreel footage of consumers lugging wheelbarrows of marks to market document this dispositively. In short, the Germany snatched up by the Nazis was a relatively small Central-European state that had been knocked by the triumphant Allies onto its figurative fanny.
By comparison --- while inflation unquestionably contributed, perhaps dispositively, to Trump’s November 5th triumph at the polls --- the American economy is exceptionally strong. America in the 21st century is larger and wealthier by several magnitudes than Weimar Germany. It also is much more diverse. While The Donald may harbor fascist tendencies, even (some suggest) an admiration of Hitler, he’s hardly in a position to actualize such megalomanic fantasies.
Consequently, while the present political posture of the American presidency may be a boon to Bonhoeffer, it’s not a two-way street. The movie, I maintain, offers little or nothing of value to viewers on the liberal side of the political spectrum.
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