By Charles Gardner —
A new movie focusing on a Christian pastor who stood up to the Nazis over their persecution of the Jewish people has been described by its director as a love story.
Todd Komarnicki, who has previously worked with Clint Eastwood, was referring to Bonhoeffer, an epic film about the man he rates as one of the greatest heroes of our time, who paid the ultimate price for his courageous stand.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (played by Jonas Dassler) risked life and limb to speak the truth at a time when Third Reich propaganda was spreading through his country like cancer despite most Germans claiming to be Christian.
The nation that had been so heavily influenced by Reformation leader Martin Luther nevertheless betrayed their Lord by raising the Fuhrer to a status reserved only for God while also permitting the publication of a Bible denuded of its Jewish roots.
In an interview with Dan Boot of the Church’s Ministry among Jewish people, Todd recalled his favourite two scenes in the movie. The first was when Bonhoeffer used the pulpit to denounce the “whitewashed tombs” (church leaders) who had caved in to the authorities, saying that “no-one has ever hated religion more than Jesus Christ” and that the gospel was a message of love, not power.
He said it was a complicated scene requiring lots of rehearsing but finished with 250 extras spontaneously breaking into applause. “It was a Holy Spirit moment.”
I also loved that scene, especially when Dietrich’s adoring mum – so proud of his courage – said: “You painted a target on your chest which got bigger with every word you spoke.”
The other scene came at the end of the film when Bonhoeffer shared bread and wine with his fellow prisoners as well as a Nazi guard who had offered to help him escape and who he clearly loved as a brother in Christ.
Choking back tears, Todd recalled how all the actors then came together to embrace each other, “not for the scene but because of what they’d experienced together”. The darkness was being disarmed with love, he said.
Todd, 59, had resisted the offer of taking on the directorship for some time, but it was his wife Jane who eventually decided they should move to Europe for the project. It was part of “the rescuing work that comes with marriage”, he explained. “It’s liberating to love someone with your whole heart, and to learn every day how to lay down your life and put her first. The Lord tells us after all to love our neighbor as ourselves, and she is my closest neighbor.”
The gospel (and this movie) is likewise a love story, he said, describing Bonhoeffer as a “Garden of Gethsemane” Christian who understands the requirements of sacrificial love and looks to God to give him the strength to follow it through.
Brought up in a Christian home, Todd went off into a dark place until he realized that “the God I had rejected never rejected me and embraced me like the father of the Prodigal Son who welcomed him home. Thank God for Jesus is all I can say.”
For Bonhoeffer, it was his time spent with black Americans in New York that changed him from a theologian to a passionate Christian filled, like them, with the joy of Jesus.
As for our relationship with the Jewish people, Todd said it was “crazy” that Christians should be antisemitic. “There is no Christianity without Judaism. It should be a love story, a kinship as we humbly seek to connect with our Jewish brothers and sisters.”
