"Bonhoeffer" - A Movie Review

The impact of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's friendship with a Birmingham, Alabama native, Franklin Fisher, is brought to light in the biopic, "Bonhoeffer", now showing in movie theaters across the country. A German Lutheran theologian, Bonhoeffer, moved to America in 1930 where he studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Coming from a highly educated German family, Bonhoeffer was not very impressed by the classes being taught at the seminary. But, his friendship with Franklin Fisher, an African-American student from Alabama, who introduced him to the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the jazz scene in Harlem, greatly impacted him. As through his friendship with Fisher he learned first-hand some of the iniquities of the time period with which African-Americans were confronted. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer became convinced that the spiritual songs of the Southern African-Americans, "represent some of the greatest artistic achievements in America."

As depicted in the film, filled with zeal for his faith and a desire to bring such excitement for Christ back to his home country, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany only to find with astonishment that it was being taken over by a foreigner, the Austrian Adolf Hitler. To Bonhoeffer's utter dismay, not only the state but the German Church was being taken over by Adolf Hitler, as well. Horrified that the German Church was acquiescing to Hitler both out of fear for their own heads and out of the worldly delight in having their Church pews being filled to capacity again, Dietrich soon becomes a leader among the daring seminarians and pastors who disagree with the Church being in complicity with such an entity. With Bonhoeffer even becoming a founding member of the Confessing Church, a German movement within German Protestantism in Nazi Germany that was in opposition to the government-sponsored efforts to unify all of the Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church.

In Western Civilization, my Freshman year of college, our professor posed the question, "Why the urge to empire?" And in the times leading up to and during World War II, the answer is that Adolf had a bizarrely outsized narcissistic lust for power. So much so, that once he took over the German Church, he even replaced The Bible with his own version. A version that replaced The Ten Commandments with twelve commandments. The additional two "commandments" being orders for people to worship Hitler, himself. Although relegated to the underground resistance, Bonhoeffer and his pastor friends could not abide by such a sacrilege. And recalling his experiences in the USA, Bonhoeffer even risks his own life to help jews escape from the Nazis into Switzerland.

An avowed Pacifist, Bonhoeffer's faith is quite stirring throughout the first half of the film. However, when Hitler's oppression seems to meet with no end, and Bonhoeffer decides to join a plot to assassinate Adolf, the lines between right and wrong become a little blurred. For while Adolf certainly merited a despicably ignoble death, Bonhoeffer's rationalizing of his faith to participate in the murder plot is uncomfortable. It is certainly understandable why Bonhoeffer and his seminarians felt the need had come to accomplish what the German army should have done from the beginning. But, it might have been better to just admit they were breaking the sixth commandment of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" rather than trying to rationalize it with their Christian beliefs.

Nevertheless, hindsight is better than foresight, and Bonhoeffer's sincerity in helping the oppressed and his home country of Germany is indisputably clear. With the agony of his suffering while imprisoned in a Nazi Concentration Camp being very well portrayed by the German stage and film actor, Jonas Dassler. In sum, "Bonhoeffer" is a riveting motion picture that is clean, but rated PG-13 due to some of the Nazi violence depicted in the movie. The running time for the movie is two hours and thirteen minutes. And it is a powerful depiction of the life and beliefs of the author of "The Cost of Discipleship", Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Luisa Reyes is an attorney in Tuscaloosa with a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Judson, a master's degree in library science, and a law degree from Samford's Cumberland School of Law. She is also a piano instructor and vocalist.