Contrary to what its detractors have claimed, Angel Studios’ new film Bonhoeffer is not trying to endorse a modern political agenda. That’s according to the film’s director Todd Komarnicki, who says he’s grown frustrated at how critics are linking this film with “the opposite of what it’s trying to do.”
My top ten all-time favourite movies include two that are owed to the creative genius that is Todd Komarnicki.
He was the brilliant producer of that most beloved Christmas comedy, Elf and also wrote the screenplay for Sully: Miracle on The Hudson, the Tom Hanks film about the pilot who landed a passenger airliner in the Hudson river in 2009, thus averting a fatal crash.
Now Komarnicki has directed a brand-new film called Bonhoeffer (reviewed here), based on the life of a young German Christian who died 80 years ago this year.
A real depiction
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been a hero of mine for a long time, but recently with right-wing politics on the rise across Europe and America, I have been drawn back to his attempts to speak out as the Nazis infiltrated the church claiming that God was on their side. Bonhoeffer also spoke up against the increasing populism and racism that paved the way for Hitler’s tyranny.
He is most well-known for calling the Church to the costly discipleship that Jesus modelled, but he also called the Church to be a community of resistance against toxic ideology, compromise and injustice. It was a stance that cost him his reputation, his freedom, and his life. He was executed in Buchenwald concentration camp on 9 April 1945, just three weeks before the end of the war.
Ironically, some have sought to commandeer Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and legacy to justify a form of Christian nationalism. One of those is Eric Metaxas, author of a best-selling biography of Bonhoeffer, and an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump. His other books include Donald Drains The Swamp and Donald Builds The Wall, which seek to explain and glorify Trump’s most extreme and cruel anti-immigration policies to children.
For this reason, many people, myself included, had concerns that the Bonhoeffer film would be a reinterpretation of Bonhoeffer for Make America Great Again Christianity. However, having seen the film, and spoken personally to Todd Komanicki, I am very glad to say that this could not be further from the truth.
Director’s notes
As Komarnicki explained to me, “My movie is clearly anti-fascist, certainly anti-nationalism. I have had to spend the bulk of my time around the release of the movie refuting lies. It really has frustrated me that people are linking this film with the opposite of what it’s trying to do. And I say, come and see, have a look, make your own mind up. Don’t let someone else decide that for you. Because I think this film is exactly what we need right now. Bonhoeffer has a prophetic voice for this moment in our time, not only to the Church, dabbling with making some really, I would say, bad decisions about acquiescing to power and despotism and fanaticism, but also to the culture which is siding with one minority group over another minority group.”
When Komarnicki first became a Christian in his early 20s, he was given a copy of Bonhoeffer’s classic book, The Cost of Discipleship. He kept the book on his bedside and read it over and over. He realised that he was probably reading it in the same way that Bonhoeffer - also in his twenties - had written it: slowly unpacking his faith, thinking it through, learning to articulate it.
Komarnicki compares The Cost of Discipleship to Paradise Lost by John Milton, to Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, and even to Revelation by John the disciple: each of those spectacular works, he believes, are connected by an individual’s discovery of a deep understanding of faith.
“I got tracked down by the story.” Komarnicki replied to my question of why he settled on Dietrich Bonhoeffer for a movie. “I said no to writing it. After I wrote it, I said no to directing it. And then I remember standing on the set. It was the 10th day of shooting, and we were in a cathedral in Brussels. And I’m surrounded by all these props and set dressers and Nazi soldiers. And I looked around and I said, okay, okay, God, I will direct this movie. I accept. That’s how that’s how long it took me to catch up with his actual speed and momentum.”
But it was the next part of Komarnicki’s answer that really resonated with me: “[Bonhoeffer] is a magnetic force. No matter what you believe or how you see the world, Dietrich lived the best version of how we would hope we would behave in dire times. Yeah, he spoke the truth. He traded his life for the help of others. In scripture, no greater love has a man than he lay down his life for a friend. That’s not just a belonging to one faith. There’s this belief that this is the highest way to live. And so I think when people meet Dietrich, they’re drawn to that first, and then they unpack it and they find out, wow, okay, this guy took serious only the words of Jesus and he lived his life accordingly.”
A model man
I would be honoured if someone said about me that I took serious only the words of Jesus and lived my life accordingly. The sad thing for Dietrich Bonhoeffer was that while he was alive, he only found a handful of other Christians who would stand with him against the Nazis and the insidious way they misled the German church and coerced it into supporting genocide against the Jews instead of following Jesus.
While Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s reputation is now more widely recognised, it is also in danger of being distorted to justify ideologies that run counter to the very principles he stood for. For this reason I recommend Komarnicki’s film. It will also help anyone who is prepared to take seriously the uncomfortable truth of Bonhoeffer’s discipleship - that it tried to transcend political affiliation or nationalistic cause in order to put Jesus at the centre.
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