Bonhoeffer (2024)
Directed by: Todd Komarnicki
Premise: Based on true events. Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Jonas Dassler) resists the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany, first by speaking out from the pulpit and later by acting as a spy and assassin.
What Works: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who campaigned against the rise of Nazism. This film uses Bonhoeffer’s life to tell a story of integrity. Some of that integrity is personal. Bonhoeffer is dramatized as a principled man who spoke out against the Nazis, raised awareness of what was happening to Jews, and later took direct action against the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer put his life and his family’s well being at risk in order to do the right thing. However, the film Bonhoeffer is also about institutional integrity. As presented here, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an intellectual who understood that the church had to be separate from the state in order to maintain its independence. The film depicts Bonhoeffer objecting to the way the German church abetted Adolph Hitler and the way the Nazis coopted the church and used it to justify their actions. The filmmakers do an excellent job drawing these ethical lines and inciting righteous rage on the part of the audience; the development of Bonhoeffer’s moral indignation tracks with the audience’s viewing experience. This is also a political thriller and Bonhoeffer is quite tense in a few sequences. The film has a contemporary urgency, given the rise of authoritarian movements around the world. The filmmakers use Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life to plead with viewers to be active and to resist antisemitism and ethnonationalism and their pitch is made effectively through the drama.
What Doesn’t: The story of Bonhoeffer is told out of sequence. At the end of the war, Bonhoeffer was captured and imprisoned by the Nazis. The film starts there and flashes backward, occasionally returning to Bonhoeffer’s time in prison. There’s no reason to tell the story this way and the time shifts interrupt the narrative momentum. Bonhoeffer tends toward the hagiographic. At no point does Bonhoeffer express doubt or despair or make errors in strategy nor does he have any character flaws. It’s a rather flat interpretation of this historical figure and the character’s perfection has one cringy moment in which Bonhoeffer visits a New York City jazz club and immediately starts playing with the band despite having never heard jazz music before. The costumes and makeup of Bonhoeffer are a little too clean. Their clothing looks like it just came off the rack and their hair is always perfectly combed and shaved. These details undermine the reality of the movie.
Bottom Line: Bonhoeffer is an effective historical drama. It has an unmistakable political message and the film’s didacticism flattens some of the characterization. But the movie works as a thriller and its politics are mostly embedded in the drama.
Episode: #1026 (December 8, 2024)