Deutsch: Wilhelm Rott und Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am always a little timid about watching movies or videos about real life events. Hollywood can do a lot of things well, and Hollywood does a lot of things profoundly wrong. One thing that Hollywood (generic term for all movie producers) just has a hard time handling is real life. I don’t know why that is. Real life is far more intriguing than fiction, but it does not seem to matter how riveting a story is, it seems like a script writer or a director or a producer feels like they have to “improve” the product. So usually what happens is the story gets corrupted and the whole thing leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth. This is particularly true when the subject matter happens to be somewhat academic or complicated to relate. No problem, Hollywood says, just throw in a sex scene and maybe a good car chase or gun fight.
So, I was really concerned about buying a film version of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I just love the story of his life too much. And it is a deeply twisted and confusing story for a generation that is separated by over 50 years and an ocean and no telling how many layers of philosophical and political differences. To handle the story of Bonhoeffer well, one would have to produce a movie as long as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I would love it, but I’m not sure it would sell that many other tickets.
Bonhoeffer – Agent of Grace produced by D. Judson, K. Krause, R. Nielson, G. Pfandner, K. Rittig, C. Stehr and A. Thies, comes as close to being a well told story of Bonhoeffer’s life as could be made given the time constraints. It is only 90 minutes long, which is simply not enough time to work through all of the details of Bonhoeffer’s life. Even the time period covered is summarized far too briefly. But, you must judge a product by what is there, and not what you wished were there.
Artistically, and historically, this is a well done production. The acting is level, and while not superb, it certainly rises above many “historical” presentations. Some issues are “compressed” because of the time limitation, and there are some characters that are never really introduced, which, if they were, would have made following the story much easier for the Bonhoeffer novice. As it is, if you know the characters in Bonhoeffer’s life you can spot them in the story and the visual presentation makes more sense. The relationship with Hans Dohnanyi is nicely done, but the friendship with Eberhard Bethge is absent. A couple of Bonhoeffer’s lines in the script are not exactly what Bonhoeffer would say. There is the inevitable historical faux pax in that Roeder is shown conversing with Bonhoeffer shortly before his execution, which would be highly unlikely seeing as how Roeder died in a bombing raid long before Bonhoeffer was killed. One of the things I noticed in watching the film again is that Bonhoeffer made two choices that virtually condemned him to death when he could have avoided it. One was in returning to Germany before hostilities broke out between Germany and the U.S., and the second was in not escaping from Tegel prison with the guard Knobloch when a detailed (and likely successful) escape had been thoroughly planned. In both choices he put the welfare of others above his own life. This is beautifully depicted in the video.
One of the things that makes Bonhoeffer’s life so complicated to understand is that for much of the early 1930′s Bonhoeffer was fighting a three-headed dragon. The first head was his own vocational choices. He was wrestling with whether to be a full-time academician or to go into full time pastoral work. So there was an intense personal struggle going on. The second head of the dragon was the “Church Struggle” between the national “German Christian” church movement which was overtaking the Lutheran Church at that time and the “Confessing Church” of which Bonhoeffer was a leading figure. And finally there was the political struggle that increasingly came to overtake all the others, and that was the battle with the Nazi Party over the soul of the German nation. A biography of Bonhoeffer, or a feature film of his life, has to keep these three battles in focus or we lose the impact of Bonhoeffer’s theology. In this video we get an occasional glimpse of each of the three, but nowhere near the full treatment that his life deserved.
In retrospect, much of what I have written in review has been negative – and I do not want to leave the reader with that impression of this video. I came away from the video much impressed and thankful to have purchased it. It definitely is a video worth buying and keeping in your library. It is beautifully scripted and performed. The actor chosen to portray Bonhoeffer is very convincing. Bonhoeffer’s story is gripping, and the director does a good job of setting the story and then getting out of the way. This production is clearly not over-wrought.
I guess my main regret is that with so much potential, the movie only delivers so far. I have fervent hopes that one day someone will make the definitive Bonhoeffer movie – one that takes this video and expands on its strengths while eliminating some of its weaknesses. We need to see and hear Bonhoeffer’s story, and a visual presentation can do so much more than a written version.
So, bottom line – definitely buy and watch this video if you are interested in Bonhoeffer’s life. You will be encouraged to go and learn more about the life of this pivotal theologian. But, do not expect a “cradle to grave” narrative, nor an explication of some of his more profound theology. For that we must await a more in-depth movie.
Let’s just hope there is a film maker somewhere (in Hollywood or elsewhere) who wants to step up to the challenge and make that movie. Ron Howard, are you listening?
Updated 10/4/12 at 3:00 pm
