Movie Review

Last night I saw Bonhoeffer, about the German theologian who resisted Nazism and paid with his life. (I don't think that's a spoiler, most people know that already.) I've done a little research and I can tell you that the story follows the general arc of the history. It omits a good deal, which is necessary, and sometimes you would need a bit of background knowledge to understand what's going on. It also includes some invented scenes which are intended to condense larger events or realities into succinct metaphors. It completely fabricates the circumstances of Bonhoeffer's execution, for the sake of a symbolic scene that turns him into a Christ figure, which I consider an indulgence by the writer and in some ways contrary to the main point of the thing, which is precisely not to do that with any human, and which is precisely what Bonhoeffer says at one point from the pulpit.*

 

In any case, the movie is very well acted and the period ambience is created with great conviction. The holocaust itself takes place largely off stage, and the movie foregrounds what was in fact quite a small and futile resistance. The cowardice of most of the clergy and German citizens in general is represented, but constitutes the background. That's alright, I think, because the auteur Todd Komarnicki is trying to speak to those of us who might be inspired to resist. When we see even immensely wealthy and influential people rushing to Palm Beach to kiss the ring even before the malignant clown take office, we know that moral courage is in short supply right now.

 

* It also has Martin Neimoller make a version of his famous statement ending "Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me," from the pulpit before his arrest. He did make statements against Nazism from the pulpit but those exact words were made after the war. He survived 11 years in concentration camps.