23/48
As the world teeters on the brink of destruction, Dietrich Bonhoeffer joins a deadly conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, risking his faith and his fate to save millions of Jews from genocide. Actor Niemoeller August Diehl previously played an SS Gestapo officer in The Dishonorable Men (2009) and a German citizen who resisted conscription into the German army in A Hidden Life (2019). Dietrich Bonhoeffer: We have no defense against stupidity. Neither protest nor violence can touch it. Argument is useless. Facts that contradict personal prejudices should simply not be believed – the fool can counter them with criticism, and if they are undeniable, they can simply be dismissed as trivial exceptions. Well filmed and acted. However, the film spends an inordinate amount of time on Bonhoeffer’s 1930 trip to New York and his alleged fascination with gospel and jazz. His later prison letters indeed reveal the lasting influence of Paul Gerhardt’s traditional Lutheran hymns and hymns on his theology and piety. There is no mention of his engagement to Maria von Wedemeyer (eighteen years his junior), with whom he exchanged dozens of letters in prison (1943-1945), later published as “Love Letters from Cell 92.” Maria’s grandmother financed the seminary of the Confessing Church in Finkenwald, where Bonhoeffer preached a kind of “new monasticism” for seminarians – with traditional hymns and organized psalm prayer. The story that weaved Maria into the end of Bonhoeffer’s life raises some interesting questions, such as: Why get engaged when the end/your world is near? Still, it’s good that a Bonhoeffer film has been made, bringing the story of the fight for justice to a wider audience.