Bonhoeffer

"Bonhoeffer" is dedicated not to enrapturing you while you're in the theater but providing you with weighty matters to ponder after you've left it. For a variety of unavoidable reasons, this documentary about the life of the titular German theologian is as visually uninteresting a movie as you'll ever see, mixing stock-photo pan-and-scans, scene-setting archival footage and interviews with people involved in these events of over half a century ago to little effect. But if ideas capture your imagination as much as sights and sounds do, you'll be a satisfied (if depressed) cinematic customer when you leave "Bonhoeffer"; his life leaves a lot for us to contemplate, especially now.

To put it short: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran in his early thirties when Hitler rose to power. Through various contacts and influences, notably those made while in New York on a teaching fellowship (at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, among other places), he became increasingly convinced that the church had an obligation to preach peace and to intervene in the affairs of man when God's peace was threatened. The Lutheran Church in Germany, showing once again its shameful cowardice in the face of anti-Jewish violence, abdicated responsibility for events here on earth and formed the Reich Church. Bonhoeffer operated outside the Church and the state until, finally, he became convinced that the only way to act as an agent for peace in his world was to assassinate the man driving his country to war. As you know if you read any history at all, the conspiracy he entered into to accomplish this goal did not succeed; Hitler had Bonhoeffer and other conspiracy members put to death just as the Reich was about to meet the same fate at the hands of the Allies, early in 1945.

Bonhoeffer left an indelible imprint on any future debates about the means and ends of pacifism, the duty of the church to involve itself in politics, and the idea of a justifiable murder. However, he did not leave an imprint on any archived film that anyone knows of, with the result that he is shown static in photos throughout the film; you start to really notice changes in his weight and hairstyle, though he wears the same wire-framed glasses all the time. Martin Doblmeier narrates as well as directs the film, and his narration is rich-voiced and solemn and, well, a little boring, which makes it a lot like his visual presentation. All of the interviewees are passionate, but few are notably eloquent; one could have stood a lot more reading from Bonhoeffer's letters and other writings. Luther's hymn tunes, Bach cantatas, a Beethoven sonata, and spirituals liven up the soundtrack somewhat, but it's not much.

So why not just read a book? Because movies tell us different things than books do. Sitting in the dark watching a screen is an immersive experience, and some of the images in this film stay hard with you: for example, a gaily lit swastika as the crown to an enormous Christmas tree with a congregation singing "Stille Nacht" ("Silent Night" here). I cannot possibly describe how disgusting that scene is. And seeing it gives you a more visceral feeling of what Bonhoeffer was opposing, just as seeing the respect and admiration that still fires the eyes of Bonhoeffer's seminary students tells us something about the man, just as seeing Bonhoeffer himself often enough seems to give us a clue to the man.

This is not to say that I don't plan to read a book about Bonhoeffer now. But this movie set my mind afire with deliberations and speculations and applications as soon as I left the theater. (One wonders whether Bonhoeffer would have been in favor of military action in either Iraq or Liberia, for starters.) If you enjoy cinema that gives you something to ponder, movies don't come with much more pondering material than "Bonhoeffer."

THAT WOULD BE LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN'S SONATA NO. 32 IN C MINOR, OP. 111, SPECIFICALLY THE "ARIETTA" SECOND MOVEMENT

Thank you. Not integral to the review, but wanted to pass that along.

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