Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.

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Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. is a 2024 biopic about Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945), a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi resister. Bonhoeffer was written and directed by Todd Komarnicki. Komarnicki produced Elf, a Christmas comedy, and wrote Sully, about Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who, in 2009, landed a damaged passenger jet on the Hudson River. John Mathieson, the BAFTA-award-winning cinematographer of Gladiator, is the cinematographer on Bonhoeffer.

The cast is mostly German. Twenty-eight-year-old Jonas Dassler is Bonhoeffer. August Diehl has played a Nazi who is shot to death in Inglourious Basterds and Allied. In the 2019 Terence Malick film A Hidden Life, Diehl was Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic Austrian farmer who refused to fight for Nazi Germany. Nazis beheaded Jagerstatter. Here Diehl gets to play another resister, Martin Niemoller. Moritz Bleibtreu, who played Goebbels in Jew Suss: Rise and Fall, here plays Dietrich’s father, Karl. German comic and body-builder Flula Borg is surprisingly excellent as Dietrich’s brother-in-law and anti-Nazi conspirator Hans von Dohnanyi.

Bonhoeffer is two hours and twelve minutes long. It’s an independent film with a modest budget of $25 million. It was released in the US on November 22, 2024.

Bonhoeffer is a passion project for 59-year-old writer and director Todd Komarnicki. Komarnicki has said it took him seven years to get the film made. When he was in his early twenties, Komarnicki, a new Christian, was inspired by Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship. About seven years ago, producers Emmanuel and Camille Kampouris invited Komarnicki to write and direct the film they would eventually devote twelve years to creating. Mr. and Mrs. Kampouris credit Eric Metaxas’ bestselling 2011 bio, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy as their inspiration.

Bonhoeffer was picked up for distribution by Angel Studios. So far, Angel’s most successful releases have been 2023’s Sound of Freedom, about child sex trafficking, and 2024’s Cabrini, a biopic about Mother Cabrini, an Italian nun who developed charitable organizations.

Bonhoeffer is one of those love it / hate it movies. As one might guess, many hate Bonhoeffer for political, rather than aesthetic reasons.

Professional reviewers at Rottentomatoes award Bonhoeffer a meager 63% score, but fan reviewers rate the film at 93%. Rottentomatoes’ critical consensus reads, “Bonhoeffer more or less gets the job done as a righteous thriller, but its glossy treatment of history flattens this remarkable true story into a formulaic matinee.”

America, the Jesuit magazine says that Bonhoeffer is “earnest, too solemn or too jolly, and transparent about its messaging – all mortal sins of cinema … Before the movie got to about 1933, I wanted to abandon ship.” America is one of the few major press organs to review Bonhoeffer. On the other hand, many amateur movie fans love the film, award it ten out of ten stars, and praise it as inspirational.

A summary of the film, below, is followed by my own reaction and then a discussion of the controversy around the film.

Bonhoeffer opens on a couple of handsome German lads playing hide-and-seek around a picturesque Teutonic mansion. The younger boy, Dietrich, with bright blonde hair, looks to be about eight; the older boy, Walter, is about ten years older. He’s wearing the distinctive suspenders associated with that most Germanic of garments, lederhosen. Dietrich runs to his beautiful mother; she promises him that strawberries will make him invisible.

This scene conveys that Bonhoeffer was born into a large, loving, and exceptional German family. The Bonhoeffers are an accomplished clan with money and status. Distinctive German garb in such a happy, wholesome scene communicates that not all Germans were evil.

The action switches to 1945. Bonhoeffer is now an adult man, a prisoner of Nazi soldiers. He is writing in a journal about his brother Walter.

The film switches back to 1918. Walter is killed in action in World War I. The Bonhoeffer family stands in a grim, monochromatic churchyard. Dietrich and his father gaze into an empty grave. Back in the family home, as loved ones gather for the funeral, Dietrich plays Walter’s favorite song on the piano. Dietrich suddenly stops. “No one is listening. No one cares,” Dietrich tearfully protests to his mother.

Back to 1945. Bonhoeffer and his fellow concentration camp prisoners see a smoking pile of human corpses. A previous prisoner has etched into the wall of Bonhoeffer’s cell, “It will all be over in one hundred years.”

Action switches to Manhattan in 1930. Bonhoeffer is a student at the Union Theological Seminary. He is bored by a lecture. Bonhoeffer chats with his fellow student, a black man, Frank Fisher. Fisher takes Bonhoeffer to Smalls Paradise Club. Louis Armstrong is playing. The band dares Bonhoeffer to join them. Bonhoeffer mounts the stage and plays Bach on the piano. Armstrong extemporizes a jazz piece in response. Bonhoeffer similarly extemporizes.

Bonhoeffer worships at Abyssinian Baptist Church, presided over by Adam Clayton Powell Sr. Bonhoeffer begins teaching Sunday school at Abyssinian. He has dinner with Rev. Powell. Powell challenges Bonhoeffer to report on how and when he “met Jesus.” Bonhoeffer informs Powell that meeting Jesus is not a German Lutheran thing.

Frank Fisher resolves to educate Bonhoeffer about Jim Crow. The two travel to Washington, D.C., and attempt to rent a hotel room. The desk clerk spits at Bonhoeffer and threatens him with a gun. Fisher and Bonhoeffer retreat to the Lincoln Memorial, where they talk about racism in America. “There’s nothing like this in Germany,” Bonhoeffer says.

The action switches to Bonhoeffer in the Nazi concentration camp. SS doctor Sigmund Rascher (James Flynn) now shares the cell. Rascher was a real person and he really was imprisoned, for a time, with Bonhoeffer. Rascher conducted sadistic and deadly experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Rascher and his wife supported their fake claims of super fertility by kidnapping babies. Both Rascher and his wife were discovered and imprisoned in concentration camps and eventually executed. The film does not detail Rascher’s crimes; it merely identifies him as a Nazi who crossed Nazi higher-ups, as Rascher puts it in the film, who “made the mistake of not pretending Hitler was smarter than me.”

Rascher is arrogant to the end. He tells Bonhoeffer, “I should be fitted for a crown … Our season has ended but it will come once again.”

“Your season ended long ago … a light came into the world, and the darkness did not overcome it,” Bonhoeffer says, alluding to the first chapter of the Gospel of John.

“Look around you. How much light do you see?” Rascher taunts Bonhoeffer.

The audience knows that in spite of his horrific circumstances, Bonhoeffer will remain true to the light of his faith.

The action switches to 1933. Bonhoeffer is back in Germany after his time in the U.S. Bonhoeffer says he wants real faith versus dead religion. Bonhoeffer has been deeply changed by the spontaneous, full-bodied and heartfelt worship style he encountered at Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Nazism is on the rise. Bonhoeffer and his twin sister, Sabine (Lisa Hofer) relax on his bed and smoke. “Something’s coming, and it’s unstoppable,” Sabine says. Bonhoeffer replies, “Nothing is unstoppable.” The twins reminisce about how, when they were children, they would try to fathom the concept of “eternity.” They repeat the word “eternity” in an attempt to understand it.

In a church, Bishop Ludwig Muller praises Nazism in a sermon. Muller was a real man, a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. Muller voiced racist antisemitism before Hitler took power. He committed suicide in 1945 after the Nazi defeat.

Also in a church, Bonhoeffer preaches from Matthew 23. He quotes Jesus’ condemnation of hypocrisy. Jesus harshest words, he says, were not for sinners, but always for the religious.

At a 1933 Berlin rally, Reinhold Krause advances his concept of a purely German, antisemitic, neo-Pagan Christianity. Krause was a real person, a high school teacher and leader of the so-called “German Christians.” He had been working on his revision of Christianity since 1921. Nazis enter churches and confiscate crucifixes and saint statues. The swastika is raised inside churches. This action was part of the “crucifix decrees” that ordered the removal of crucifixes from German public life. Nazis introduce new commandments, including honor your Fuhrer and master and keep your blood pure.

Bonhoeffer is in England, meeting with Bishop George Bell, a heroic figure from the Church of England. Bonhoeffer declares, “Silence in the face of evil is evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. The church should be the first to make that announcement, not the last.” The Confessing Church, opposed to Nazism, is formed. “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” Bonhoeffer becomes a teacher at an “underground” anti-Nazi seminary at Finkenwalde.

Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938. Niemoller delivers an anti-Nazi sermon. The congregation applauds. Nazis arrive at Niemoller’s house and arrest him. Nazis close Bonhoeffer’s seminary. Bonhoeffer sees secret concentration camp footage. He comes to realize the depth of Nazism’s evil. He joins a plot to assassinate Hitler.

Bonhoeffer transports seven Jews to freedom in Switzerland. Swiss border guards refuse to allow Jews to enter their country. Bonhoeffer bribes the guards, and the escaping Jews are allowed entry. Nazis begin to trace the money that funded this operation. That investigation will eventually result in Bonhoeffer’s arrest.

Bonhoeffer returns to New York in 1939. Reverand Powell tells him to return to Germany. He does. On the way back, he meets with Bishop Bell in England, pleading for help in resisting Hitler. “My country was invaded from within!” he shouts.

Action shifts back to Bonhoeffer the prisoner. A guard offers him the chance of escape. He declines. Bonhoeffer presides over a communion service. One of the Nazi guards attends. Bonhoeffer hands his journal to a guard. Give this to my mother, he says. Tell her, he says, that I could not find a strawberry. Bonhoeffer preaches briefly from the Sermon on the Mount. He is hanged. Nazis executed Bonhoeffer on April 9, 1945. American troops liberated Flossenburg concentration camp, where Bonhoeffer was executed, on April 23, 1945.

I wanted to love Bonhoeffer. Instead, I just liked it. I’d give it seven out of ten stars. I especially liked Nadine Heidenreich as Bonhoeffer’s mother, Paula. Paula was the granddaughter and also the daughter of prominent German theologians. A devout Christian, she homeschooled her children and was an active anti-Nazi early on, and also an opponent of antisemitism. Young Jonas Dassler is excellent as Bonhoeffer. I liked seeing a film about a righteous, Christian hero. I’m glad I spent money on a ticket. If we want more films about truly heroic figures, we need to pay money to see films about truly heroic figures.

Bonhoeffer’s script was, metaphorically, written with a magic marker, and I would have preferred a script written with a fountain pen. Bonhoeffer is very much directed at a mass audience. I would have preferred more subtlety, originality, complexity, and depth.

Some biopics try to cram the subject’s entire history into two hours of screentime. That approach necessitates shallower characterizations and some jumbling and incoherence. For me, Bonhoeffer‘s switches between times and places didn’t work. I never understood how Bonhoeffer, who opposed Hitler early on, ended up working at the Abwehr – the Wehrmacht’s intelligence service – as a double agent. The film’s rushed and superficial dramatization of Bonhoeffer’s life-changing exposure to Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church came too close to being reduced to a Magical Negro stereotype.

Biopics that limit their timeframe and position their main character in a significant dilemma that reveals character allow for greater depth. Steven Spielberg’s 2012 Lincoln focuses on Lincoln’s efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. The 1966 classic, A Man for All Seasons, focuses only on Saint Thomas More’s refusal to sign one document and take one oath. I hope, someday, to see a film that focuses on Bonhoeffer’s decision to broadcast his first anti-Nazi speech on February 1, 1933, two days after Hitler became chancellor. A film focused on that moment of daring courage would reveal much about Bonhoeffer’s character.

The film attempts to dramatize the rise of Nazism and how that rise affected the church at large and Bonhoeffer and other individuals. Martin Niemoller begins, as was true in real life, as a supporter of Nazism who made antisemitic statements. Niemoller grows into a critic of Nazism and a concentration camp prisoner.

The film’s attempt at outlining history was sketchy and for me, unsatisfying. Yes, Hitler was an exceptionally evil man. But when Bonhoeffer insists, “My country was invaded from within,” I shook my head.

After a series of historical blows, including the World War I defeat, the Versailles Treaty, hyperinflation, street chaos, and the rise of Soviet Communism, too many Germans were willing, not just to hand over power to an exceptionally evil man, but to worship him.

Nazism’s twisted foundations, including a perverted form of nationalism, neo-Paganism, social Darwinism, and scientific racism had been percolating in Germany throughout the previous century. Hitler was not the first powerful German to speak of genocide. Otto von Bismarck spoke of “exterminating” Poles; movements like Kulturkampf and the Eastern Marches Society were at least culturally genocidal. The term “Reichsfeinde” or “enemies of the Reich” was common to both Bismarck and Nazism. The first recorded genocide of the twentieth century was carried out by German colonial rulers in Namibia.

The point is not that it was inevitable that Germans would embrace Hitler; rather it is that after a series of difficulties, Germans acted on destructive aspects of their own culture and history. On July 6, 1940, Hitler returned to Germany after Germany’s invasion of its peaceful neighbors, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Belgium and France. Germany had invaded Poland eleven months earlier. That invasion rejected any concept of just war or the Geneva Convention. Einsatzgruppen had already carried out massacres of Polish civilians. Dachau had been open since 1933.  Newsreels of Hitler’s 1940 return from military conquest show thousands of ecstatic Germans cheering Hitler. Significant numbers of Germans didn’t just want to conquer hyperinflation. They celebrated a dominant and domineering fatherland. Characterizing Hitler’s rise as an “invasion from within” – as Bonhoeffer does – is inaccurate.

Clark Peters, a dark-skinned African American actor, plays Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. Rev. Powell was culturally black, and according to the “one drop” rule, he was legally black, but genetically, he was clearly white, with pale skin and blue eyes. This historical fact says a lot about race in America, and changing Powell’s appearance distorts that history. It’s also simply jarring to anyone who has seen a photograph of this historically significant figure.

Two departures from literal fact did not bug me. Bonhoeffer is shown duetting with Louis Armstrong. We don’t know if that really happened, though both did attend Smalls Paradise, a Harlem nightclub. The scene dramatizes how black culture inspired Bonhoeffer. In another scene, Bonhoeffer is shown driving Jews to Switzerland. He didn’t, but he did participate in planning Operation Seven, an effort to rescue initially seven, and eventually fourteen Jews, by sending them to Switzerland.

For me, the biggest failing of the film is this. I’m not a Bonhoeffer acolyte. I know that many people are devoted fans and praise his theological works. The movie did not bring me any closer to understanding why Bonhoeffer is held in such high esteem by so many.

Both Bonhoeffer the movie and Bonhoeffer the man get many people very worked up. Controversy swirls around this film.

Some will have a problem with Bonhoeffer because it depicts a white, Christian, German, male as an anti-Nazi hero and martyr. They will argue that millions of Christian Germans supported Nazism and most of those murdered by Nazism were not German Christians. They will argue that celebration of Bonhoeffer’s heroism is an attempt to whitewash dark history. Any such arguments would be incorrect. We must learn about those who, as Bonhoeffer says, “drive a spoke into the wheel of injustice.”

Bonhoeffer himself is a charismatic figure to many. Charisma is power, and power is always contested. Greedy hands grasp for this power.

In 2014, Dr. Charles Marsh, the Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, published Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The book was very well reviewed and it won a Christianity Today Book Award. Marsh reports that there is evidence that Bonhoeffer felt same-sex attraction for his friend, Eberhard Bethge. This observation is peripheral to the main thrust of the book; as Bonhoeffer himself remarked, once he was imprisoned, he would die a virgin. But, again, Bonhoeffer is a heroic figure, and there are partisans on both sides who feel that a gay Bonhoeffer or a straight Bonhoeffer best serves their agenda.

One poster for the film depicts him with a gun in his hand. This poster outraged many Bonhoeffer fans. They insist that Bonhoeffer was a pacifist. Some even question if Bonhoeffer actually had any role in any plot to assassinate Hitler. A 2013 book is entitled, Bonhoeffer the Assassin?: Challenging The Myth, Recovering His Call To Peacemaking. This book, as its title suggests, “questions the assumption that Bonhoeffer was involved in plots to assassinate Hitler.”

The biggest controversy around the film involves current American politics. Eric Metaxas is an author, public speaker, and radio talk show host. His 2011 book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, is a very well reviewed and award-winning bestseller. Metaxas’ biography, though, has been criticized by Bonhoeffer scholars.

Victoria J. Barnett was most recently the Frank Talbott, Jr. Endowed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Virginia. Her bio at the university websites identifies Barnett as “one of the world’s preeminent scholars of religion and the Holocaust, as well as a leading expert on the German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Most recently, Barnett served as Director of Programs on Ethics, Religion and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

In a September, 2010 book review in Contemporary Church History Quarterly, Barnett is critical of Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer book. Barnett writes, “This is a badly flawed book. On one level it is simply a popular retelling of Bonhoeffer’s life drawn from familiar sources.” She acknowledges that the book fills a need for a “readable, shorter” biography. The earlier biography by Bonhoeffer friend Eberhard Bethge is 1,068 pages long. But, she says, Metaxas’ “book is a polemic, written to make the case that Bonhoeffer was in reality an evangelical Christian whose battle was not just against the Nazis but all the liberal Christians who enabled them … The result is a terrible oversimplification and at times misinterpretation of Bonhoeffer’s thought, the theological and ecclesial world of his times, and the history of Nazi Germany.”

Not just concerns about accuracy dog Metaxas. Metaxas is a fervent supporter of Donald Trump. Trump is, of course, controversial. Metaxas’ 2022 book, Letter to the American Church, a film based on that book, and in many public appearances, Metaxas has compared Democrats to Nazis, and those who do support Trump to Bonhoeffer. Though Todd Komarnicki has said that he disagrees with Metaxas politically, and that he did not base his film on Metaxas’ book, many now conflate the film with Eric Metaxas. There are many posts on social media announcing that the poster is refusing to see the film because it is associated with Metaxas, and, by extension, with Trump. For example, at Slate, Angela Denker rages against the Bonhoeffer film, but she gives no indication of having seen the film. Denker bashes Angel Studios and says, “The movie is, then, yet another claim conservatives are making to Bonhoeffer’s legacy.”

On October 17, 2024, Die Zeit, one of Germany’s “newspapers of record,” published an op ed. The English version is online. The editorial begins, “Bonhoeffer was not like that! The resister is now becoming the idol of violent Trump supporters. German and American theologians are protesting against this.” The op ed cites January 6. The op ed mentions the Bonhoeffer movie but never makes clear why or how the film is worthy of condemnation.

On October 10, 2024, Change.org hosted a petition, “Stop Misusing Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Support Political Violence and Christian Nationalism.” The petition condemns a reference to Bonhoeffer in Project 2025. The petition condemns Komarnicki’s Bonhoeffer, but the petition gives no evidence that its author had actually seen the film. The closest the petition comes to critiquing the film is its condemnation of the movie poster showing Bonhoeffer holding a gun. That image is clearly an attempt to communicate Bonhoeffer’s participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler. The petition does not see the image that way. Several Bonhoeffer scholars signed the petition, as have theologians, clergy, Holocaust historians, and members of the Bonhoeffer family.

On October 18, 2024, eighty-six descendants of Bonhoeffer’s siblings released a letter headlined, “Do not distort and misuse Dietrich Bonhoeffer!” The letter criticizes statements by Eric Metaxas and denounces Angel Studios as “right-wing evangelical.” Angel Studios was founded by Mormons whose media includes, for example, Cabrini, about a Catholic nun. In an interview with Glenn Beck, Metaxas dismissed the Bonhoeffer family members as “Jew-hating lunatics.”

The above-described controversies, op eds, open letters and petitions, when they quote specific material that they object to, cite Metaxas’ work and Project 2025. When they criticize Todd Komarnicki’s Bonhoeffer film, they lack specificity. The lack of specific details suggests that these protesters have not seen the film. It appears that they condemn the film because they associate it with Metaxas’ enthusiastic promotion of it. I think that’s a shame. No, I didn’t love this movie, but I did like it. I’m glad I supported Bonhoeffer and not Wicked, a movie whose moral compass seems skewed. I think those attacking the film without having seen it are making a mistake. So far, Bonhoeffer has brought in less than half of the amount it took to make the film. Again, if we want to see good movies about heroic people, we need to buy tickets for good movies about heroic people, even if those movies are not great, but are certainly good.

Danusha V. Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.