November 12, 2024
by Carla Hay
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.”
Directed by Todd Komarnicki
Culture Representation: Taking place from 1914 to 1945, in Europe and in the United States, the dramatic film “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” (a biopic of German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by Nazis in 1945, was an outspoken pacificist and activist against the Nazi regime that caused the Holocaust and other atrocities.
Culture Audience: “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in World War II-era historical dramas and faith-based films, but this heavy-handed movie distorts facts to make it look like Christianity was the driving force for the anti-Nazi movement.
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” is an example of a faith-based movie that tries to pass itself off as a credible historical drama but has alarmed many experts on the film’s subject matter for how this movie could be used for a Christian nationalist agenda. This tedious and inaccurate biopic of German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes his suffering from Nazi hate look more important than the non-Aryan targets of the same hate. Several cast members have condemned any Christian nationalism co-opting of this movie. Even without this condemnation, “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” is a misguided movie that’s a hokey and jumbled mess.
Written and directed by Todd Komarnicki, “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” (formerly titled “God’s Spy”) seems to have very good intentions in its messages of how Bonhoeffer was an activist against Nazi hate. And to be clear: “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” does convey the same messages that say Nazi ideology is evil and poisonous to humanity. However, the offensive preachiness and inaccuracies in the movie have to do with sidelining people who’ve experienced the worst punishments from Nazi hate, in order to make it look like Bonhoeffer had a brand of “white savior” Christianity that deserves the most praise in fighting against Nazi hate.
The International Bonhoeffer Society and several principal cast members from “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” have, according to a statement, “distanced themselves from possible misuses of the film. They stand behind the calls from Bonhoeffer scholars, church leaders, and extended members of the Bonhoeffer family to stop the distortion of Bonhoeffer’s life and legacy to justify Christian Nationalism and political violence.” Read the full statement here. The International Bonhoeffer Society is a non-profit group “dedicated to advancing the theology and legacy of German pastor-theologian and Nazi resister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the academy, church, and world,” according to a description on the International Bonhoeffer Society’s website.
The 10 cast members who have disavowed this movie being used by Christian nationalists or to justify political violence:
- Jonas Dassler (who plays the adult Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
- August Diehl (who plays German theologian Martin Niemöller)
- David Jonsson (who plays American Baptist Church worker Frank Fisher)
- Moritz Bleibtreu (who plays Karl Bonhoeffer, Dietrich’s father)
- Nadine Heidenreich (who plays Paula Bonhoeffer, Dietrich’s mother)
- James Flynn (who plays Dr. Rascher, a Nazi medical doctor)
- Lisa Hofer (who plays Sabine Bonhoeffer, Dietrich’s twin sister)
- Felix von Bredow (who plays Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorf, a German intelligence officer)
- Patrick Moelleken (who plays Walter Bonhoeffer, Dietrich’s older brother)
In “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.,” there’s plenty in the movie that shows Dietrich as a pastor. But there’s a bare minimum showing him as a spy and even less showing him as a would-be (not actual) assassin. Adding to the misleading title, the movie’s main poster shows Dietrich holding a gun, which goes completely against the real Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s pacificist beliefs.
The movie’s marketing materials make it look like “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” is about a vengeful religious crusader who’s intent on murdering Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to stop the Holocaust and to be a World War II hero. In real life, in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who was 39 years old at the time) was executed by hanging in Flossenbürg, Germany, after he was accused of money laundering and a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. In the movie, this death is depicted in a way that looks uncomfortably like a toned-down and misleading version of what really happened to someone imprisoned by Nazis for an accusation of planning to assassinate Hitler.
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” begins in 1914, by showing 8-year-old Dietrich (played by Phileas Heyblom) having an idyllic childhood in his hometown of Breslau, a city that was part of Germany at the time but is now part of Poland. Dietrich’s psychiatrist/neurologist father Karl Bonhoeffer and Dietrich’s teacher mother Paula Bonhoeffer are depicted in the movie as having six children, including Dietrich’s twin sister Sabine (played by Luise Landau) and eldest child Walter, who was Dietrich’s most beloved sibling. An early scene in the movie shows Walter playing hide-and-go-seek games with Dietrich.
Dietrich’s childhood bliss is shattered in 1914, when Walter goes away for military service in World War I and is killed during this military duty. The movie’s timeline jumps all over the place in a way that will cause confusion for anyone who doesn’t know Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s story. After Walter’s death, the movie cuts to a quick scene of Dietrich in a Nazi prison in Buchenwald, Germany, in 1945, with no real context for why he is there until much later in the movie.
The movie then abruptly cuts to 1930, to show the origins of Dietrich becoming a Lutheran pastor. But even that part of his history is truncated, because the movie completely omits his university education in Germany, where he received a Ph.D. in theology from Humboldt University of Berlin in 1927. The first time that movie shows Dietrich as a theology student, it’s in 1930, when he’s a German immigrant at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
Dietrich is considered to be a brilliant student in this American seminary, where he gets some jealousy and curiosity from other students in the seminary. While at Union Theological Seminary, Dietrich meets and befriends fellow student Frank Fisher, who introduces Dietrich to jazz nightclubs and the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where Frank is a member of the congregation. And the next thing you know, Dietrich is instantly accepted as the only white member of the congregation, and he becomes a Sunday school teacher for the church.
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” pretends that any realistic racial tension or racial skepticism that Dietrich might have experienced just didn’t exist for him as a white person who hung out with only African Americans. Instead, the movie makes it look like he was able to seamlessly and easily become a part of the African American community with no racial obstacles whatsoever. At a jazz club, Dietrich becomes a star attraction due to his piano-playing skills and gets even more applause and more attention than the African American musicians who regularly play there.
Dietrich is invited to a group dinner at the home of Reverend Powell Sr. (played by Clarke Peters), the leader of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Frank is also a guest at this dinner. Once again, Dietrich is the only white person in the room, but he is treated like the most important person in the room. His thoughts and needs get the highest priorities.
When Dietrich makes an apology on behalf of white people about the white supremacist racism that he hears is rampant in America, Frank tells Dietrich that he expects Dietrich to set an example to other white people on how not to be racist: “We don’t need to you to be sorry, D. We just need you to show the world.” At this point, Dietrich might as well be wearing a T-shirt that says: “I’m a being propped up as a white Christian savior in this movie.”
The closest that “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin” comes to showing the brutality of white supremacist racism in America is in a scene where Frank wants Dietrich to learn a lesson by seeing this type of racism firsthand. When Dietrich and Frank are on a visiting trip in Washington, D.C., Frank tells Dietrich to rent a room at a nearby inn. Dietrich is able to easily rent the room from the white innkeeper (played by Scott Winters) on duty at the front desk. The manager is polite and helpful to Dietrich.
Within a few minutes of Dietrich renting the room and getting the room key, Frank goes into the inn and tells the innkeeper that he’s a friend of Dietrich’s and will be sharing the room with him. The innkeeper’s attitude immediately turns hostile. The innkeeper pulls out a shotgun, points it at Frank and Dietrich, and orders both of them to return the room key and leave the building. Dietrich is shocked, but Frank is not shocked at all.
Once again, Dietrich becomes the center of attention as the “white savior” when he insists that Frank should be allowed to use the room too. The innkeeper violently reacts by using the gun to hit Dietrich on the forehead and causes a bloody wound from this assault. The innkeeper doesn’t do anything to Frank except call him a racial insult. In real life, Frank would be more likely than Dietrich to get physically attacked by this racist, but “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” is insistent on making Dietrich look like a saintly hero who suffers and sacrifices himself more than those he’s trying to save.
As Frank and Dietrich leave the inn, Dietrich has the nerve to say to Frank about this blatant racism: “I’m so fortunate that we don’t have this in Germany.” Frank replies, “My brother, hate comes in many colors. Your eyes haven’t been fully opened yet.”
The movie never really shows Dietrich getting to know the African American people in this church community except in the context of what he can do to teach them as a white person in a “theologist knows best” role. There are never any honest or meaningful conversations about racism in this movie. What “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” has is racial condescension that doesn’t think it’s racial condescension.
By 1933, Dietrich is back in Germany with his family. He has become such a jazz aficionado, he plays jazz for his family to show off his knowledge of this new type of music that is exotic to his family. Dietrich also announces that he’s giving up his theology studies because, as he says,”In Harlem, I saw real faith.”
Dietrich is surprised and alarmed when he hears about the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. And quicker than you can say “problematic and preachy movie,” Dietrich has become a pastor who gives blistering sermons that scold anyone in his congregation who directly or indirectly supports the Nazis. Dietrich is warned about the dangers of being an anti-Nazi activist, but he still carries on with this type of preaching.
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin” gives only surface-level depictions of the horrors of the Holocaust. The movie has more scenes of Dietrich being distressed by himself in a prison cell than scenes of persecuted Jewish people being sent to Nazi death camps. Any scene of Dietrich interacting with captured Jews on their way to a death camp is brief and superficial, like he’s just a pastor dropping in to give some comfort, but then he can easily go back to his own home because he has the privilege of being a white German Christian.
When Dietrich goes to England and back to New York City to visit, he is shown doing more preaching and rehearsing of speeches. He decides to return to Germany because he feels it’s the right thing to do to fight Nazism there. But even when Dietrich returns to Germany, he goes back into “preaching from the pulpit” mode and seems very aloof from the difficult activism that the real Dietrich was involved in with the Resistance movement against the Nazis.
Dietrich’s allies depicted in the movie include Bishop Martin Niemöller, who goes from being a skeptic of Dietrich to a supporter; adult Sabine, who has become the sibling who’s Dietrich’s closest friend since the death of their brother Walter; and Hans von Dohnányi (played by Flula Borg), who is married to Dietrich’s sister Christel (played by Jade Matthew). Hans is the one who comes up with the idea to assassinate Hitler. Dietrich is portrayed as someone who reluctantly goes along with the idea.
“Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin” shows Dietrich first and foremost as a recruiter for Christianity, with his Resistance activism in support of Jewish people often being secondary. When Dietrich rehearses an anti-Nazi speech, he talks about Jesus Christ and asks the intended recipients of the speech: “Will you follow him all the way to the cross?” It’s a speech that doesn’t take into account that you don’t have to be a Christian to be against Nazis.
Dietrich was obviously a Christian pastor, which undoubtedly influenced his religious views. But his brand of anti-Nazism has a somewhat condescending tone to Jewish people in this movie. No one in the movie is seen meeting with Jewish leaders to help fight the Nazis. Dietrich is only shown making plans with other Christians. And that in itself sums up the attitude of this misguided movie.
The fact of the matter is that people of many religions—as well as atheists and agnostics—joined forces to fight against Nazis during World War II. And this war against the Nazis was not just fought by white people but also by people of many different races. But you’d never know that factual history if you only believed what is presented in “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.”
The movie’s acting performances are adequate but offer nothing that deserves awards. The film editing and screenplay (which is filled with drab and trite dialogue) are so muddled and tiresome, even if this movie had been told in chronological order, it still has problems with its selective rewriting of World War II history as it related to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The cinematography is dull and makes the movie look washed-out.
The epilogue to “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” gives emotionally rousing captioned statements about the Holocaust and the evils of Nazism, but it’s told with a very biased religious perspective of Christianity being the main reason why the Nazis were defeated in World War II. “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” might be praised by people who aren’t very knowledgeable of the real Dietrich Bonhoeffer and World War II history and just want to see a movie about a Christian pastor who preached against Nazism during World War II. The “assassin” part of this movie’s title is very misleading, so anyone expecting this film to depict assassin antics against Nazis should watch the 2009 Oscar-winning action flick “Inglourious Basterds” instead. And there are several documentaries and dramas about Dietrich Bonhoeffer that are far better than “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.”
Angel Studios will release “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.” in U.S. cinemas on November 22, 2024. Sneak previews of the movie were held in U.S. cinemas on November 11, November 18, and November 20, 2024.
