37/46
As the world teeters on the brink of destruction, Dietrich Bonhoeffer joins a deadly plot to assassinate Hitler, risking his faith and fate to save millions of Jews from genocide. Niemoeller actor August Diehl previously played an SS Gestapo officer in The Wicked (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 protests nor force can touch it. The verdict is meaningless. Facts that contradict personal prejudices simply cannot be believed – indeed, a fool can withstand criticism of them and, if they are undeniable, can simply be cast aside as trivial exceptions.. Well filmed and acted. However, the film spent a disproportionate amount of time on Bonhoeffer’s 1930 trip to New York and his alleged fascination with gospel and jazz music. In fact, his later prison letters reveal the lasting influence of traditional Lutheran chorales and Paul Gerhard’s hymns on his theology and piety. There was no mention of an engagement to Maria von Wedemeyer (18 years his junior), with whom he exchanged dozens of letters during his imprisonment (1943–1945) and later published as “Love Letters from Cell 92.” It was Maria’s grandmother who financed the seminary of the Confessing Church in Finkenwald, where Bonhoeffer advocated a kind of “new monasticism” for seminarians—with traditional chorales and a prayer arranged from psalms. A story that dragged Mary Bonhoeffer to the end of her life would have raised some compelling questions, like why get engaged if your world is about to end? All that said, it’s good that a film was made about Bonhoeffer, bringing his story of the struggle for truth to a wider audience.