BONHOEFFER (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

Bonhoeffer, Angel Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 21, 2024

A significant tenet of Christian theology is the idea of loving one's enemy. How, though, could anyone of religious faith or fundamental morality love a man like Adolf Hitler? That question is put to the protagonist of Bonhoeffer, a biographical account of the life, theology, and activism of the eponymous German pastor. His answer might not seem in line with that of Christian dogma, and that is what makes him such a fascinating figure.

Writer/director Todd Komarnicki's movie gets at that complexity of thought and contradiction of philosophy, although the means of accomplishing it are, perhaps, too simplistic for a figure like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It's tough to make a movie in which the driving force is a philosophical debate, especially when that debate takes place entirely within a person's mind and soul, so Komarnicki's screenplay becomes more about the events of Bonhoeffer's life, occasionally sprinkled with speeches, sermons, and monologues that plainly tell us what the man is thinking and why he has come to those conclusions.

It doesn't help that the movie's structure basically tells us where Dietrich, played by Jonas Dassler, will land in his moral and theological assessment before the question is even asked. After a brief prologue to his childhood playing spy with his older brother, the adult Dietrich is first seen on a bus, being led by SS officers from one prison to a barracks, where his fate will be determined. There, he has some long, dark nights of the soul, contemplating eternity—by repeating the word over and over again—and praying, as his life basically flashes before his eyes.

In those flashbacks, we follow Dietrich from his brother's death in the Great War, to his time at a seminary and becoming part of a Black church in New York City, to his return to Germany after Hitler and the Nazis begin gaining in popularity and power, and, finally, to his words and works against that inhuman regime. The real Bonhoeffer's life seems to have been devoted to much contemplation, teaching, and writing, especially after becoming an exile by joining a Protestant sect that split from the national German Church.

The main branch had taken to seeing Hitler as a god-like figure, above even Jesus of Nazareth and any of the older prophets, who were essentially removed from a new version of the Bible that excised any Jewish influence. It even added two more rules to the Ten Commandments, although one wonders who received those laws in a Nazi iteration of the story. The success of cults, like those fomented by religious fanatics and secular authoritarians, demands that such questions aren't asked, because only the answers and the person providing them matter.

What's fascinating about this character is that he is a man who asks such questions, of the absurdity of the regime and the murderous oppression of its actions and even himself and his role in fighting against it all. What's frustrating about the movie is that it isn't nearly as thoughtful as the man at its center. Komarnicki shows us a good, decent man—who doesn't have the stomach to witness injustice, while also wrestling with how his religious beliefs could allow him to battle wrong-doing—and then tells us that he figured out that paradox. It just kind of happens here, and even Dietrich himself seems surprised to learn, after being presented with a plan to assassinate Hitler, that he did the philosophical work to determine the solution.

While the movie may come up short on an intellectual level, it almost makes up for that lack by way of its own moral certainty. That's not saying much, of course, when the subject is whether or not fighting against the Nazis and their genocidal deeds is a worthy cause. Then again, as nationalistic groups and governments rise around the world yet again, maybe it is a cause worth remembering. Humanity does have an unfortunate tendency to forget, ignore what's right in front of them, or hope that history surely cannot repeat itself again, despite a whole history of evidence to the contrary.

There is a level of passion here, both for the broad ideas of theology that Dietrich preaches and for the simple notion—often difficult in actual practice—that good people must fight against bad ideas and acts. It's tampered by the biographical restraints of Komarnicki's screenplay, which is more about the defining events of Bonhoeffer's life than the thoughts that drove those events to happen.

Meanwhile, that odd flashback structure hurries through the past narrative and transforms those final days of the war into an extended section of suspense about the man's fate. One imagines the real Bonhoeffer, facing almost certain death, had deeper thoughts than a recounting of his own life, but in a movie that's mostly about providing the basics, who has time for genuine contemplation?

This is far from an unsuccessful movie about a figure from history and modern Christian theology, who finds a way to reconcile what he wants to do for the former with his understanding of the latter. Bonhoeffer simply doesn't live up to promise of watching a man who must find that way against the tyranny of the Nazis and within his own mind. It's a compelling idea of a story that, in practice, just tells us what happened and treats the intellectual work as a secondary concern.

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