L'espion de Dieu

I have been reading what Bonhoeffer has written as well as what has been written about him for nearly fifty years. This movie was easy to follow if you were familiar with the story of Bonhoffer's life. For those who are not familiar with the story, there are a lot of gaps in this movie. Among those were the other five people who attended the movie with me. I had a lot of explaining to do on the ride home. I feel that the 2000 movie Bonhoffer: Agent of Grace, did a much better job in this regard. That being said, I did enjoy the movie very much and would recommend it to others, advising them to familiarize themselves with Bonhoeffer before they go.

This captured the moral complexity of real life and the high cost of doing the right thing excellently. Despite criticisms that the writers took too much liberty with the timeline, the changes worked well for pacing the film and sticking to the main point. It felt complete, leaving the viewer heavy but satisfied.

The acting was strong and the writing was good, despite a couple (only a couple) cliché lines that still fit the moment. The actor portraying Bonhoeffer avoided the cliché perfect hero and showed the weakness of a man suffering for a hopeless cause.

8/10 - this is much better than the press.

I have never really understood the back and forth with timeline's, a glimpse into the past should correlate with what is taking place in the present. Otherwise just play it out in chronological order (just my opinion). We both left the theater (my wife and I) about so much, I was able to get more context in one paragraph on Wikipedia (IE: spent 1.5 years in prison and was tried for participating in the attempt on Hitler and more). The message is good and needed, especially today with so much division in our country. I love what Angel Studio's does, getting quality productions out in the main stream and I will continue to support them. This is just my honest review, not trying to be critical.

There was more to D Bonhoeffer's life that was not covered in the film. In contrast, there was much about his time learning about the African American culture of the 30's with jazz and church life, which I did not see tie out with his strong convictions relating to the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany. Would have liked to see more about his writings and better understand how pretending to join the Nazi helped him fight against them.

I learned about his life and the very sad inaction from the German Christian Church during this time. In our times, the Church, must shed light on evil and not be afraid to do so.

Well-filmed and acted. However, the film spent an inordinate amount of time on Bonhoeffer's 1930 trip to New York and his supposed fascination with gospel music and jazz. In point of fact, his later prison letters reveal the lasting influence of the traditional Lutheran chorales and the hymns of Paul Gerhardt on his theology and piety. There was no mention whatsoever of his engagement to Maria von Wedemeyer (eighteen 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 funded the Confessing Church's seminary at Finkenwalde where Bonhoeffer championed a kind of 'new monasticism' for the seminarians-with traditional chorales and an ordered praying of the psalms. A plot line that wove Maria into the end of Bonhoeffer's life would have raised some compelling questions-such as, Why get engaged if the/your world is about to end? All that being said, it is good that a film of Bonhoeffer was produced, bringing his story of fighting for truth to a wider audience.