[Oe List ...] more on that Bonhoeffer movie

Sun Nov 24 11:54:03 PST 2024

 Dick, I applaud your interest in introducing your Methodist Church to Bonhoeffer with a movie and a movie conversation.If you want to evaluate the various available Bonhoeffer films for appropriateness for your audience and your pedagogical intent, instead of just promoting the latest one that you just saw, check out this listing from the International Bonhoeffer Society:https://bonhoeffersociety.org/2024/10/25/bonhoeffer-documentaries-and-films/
My perspective is that all of these films translate Bonhoeffer into being a character acting in a story the filmmaker wants to tell. Each film may illuminate a facet of Dietrich's life, but we can never know all of his internal process as he struggled to discern the will of God for his life and death.What comes closest to illuminating his personal struggle are the glimmers we catch through reading his writings and what witnesses have to say about his extraordinary presence with others in places like Tegel Prison, for example.I would not want to be the director who had to select an actor who could fully embody this role in a movie, especially if that kind of depth were not even hinted at in the script. And if I had failed as a director to grasp a sense of what the real Bonhoeffer was about.I might wind up with a turkey of a film. But my bottom line is that everybody creates his or her own personal version of who Bonhoeffer was, based on one's individual values, perceptions, and experience of dealing with life questions. Or not.And so the decisional question is, what is each of us going to do with "our" Bonhoeffer? What does "our" Bonhoeffer mean to us?MarshallI've attached my version of a generic list of possible questions for a movie conversation. These are like a 'palette' of colors from which to draw as appropriate for the group and their process. Please improve on this version by adding your own generic questions or questions pertinent to the Bonhoeffer film you decide to show.    On Saturday, November 23, 2024 at 08:35:06 PM EST, Richard Alton via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:  

 Sorry about the money mistake. But I have seen the movie and thought Terry's comments were right on target. I am going to try and get my Methodist Church to go see the movie together and have  an ORID conversation. Will be interesting. Sorry about yours and Sarah's eye problems. Just had a cataract operation. The eyes seem to go first as we age.Thanks, Dick
On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 6:46 PM Richard Alton <richard.alton at gmail.com> wrote:

Marshal. go see the money and lead an ORID conversation with your community.. will surprise you.Dick
On Fri, Nov 22, 2024 at 5:31 PM W. J. via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

I still haven't seen the movie, but a few of us have. Here's my response to a private email from one colleague:Marshall
D**, I'm guessing from your description that the screenplay was not the result of any in-depth study of Bonhoeffer's life or his theology. I bet the screenwriter didn't even bother to read Eberhard Bethge's biography.What I think he did is to create a cartoon Bonhoeffer character by superimposing the skeletal outline of Bonhoeffer's life onto a thriller movie framework.Leaving out the nuances and agonizing complexities of Bonhoeffer's ethical dilemmas as a pacifist.I'm not shocked that this cartoon version of Bonhoeffer has him wishing to "tear down the institutional church." I think the real Bonhoeffer's life was more profoundly nuanced than that kind of statement. His Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship were written while he supervised the underground seminary at Finkenwalde for students who were preparing to serve the dissenting Confessing Church that opposed the official German Church coalition that embraced Hitler. His focus on a "religionless Christianity" is a rejection of the 'smells and bells' and medieval belief system Luther inherited from Catholicism in favor of a radical immersion in the secular life of the world.And also a radical following of Jesus rather than middle class cultural norms.Something like the monastic life of seminary students at Finkenwalde. Or maybe the O:E.
Although Bonhoeffer never abandoned his upper-class entitlement to a rich, privileged life. I believe that the real Dietrich was in love with his young student Eberhard, who was the beneficiary of his will.
Dietrich reluctantly became engaged to marry the much younger Maria Von Wedemeyer only after her grandmother relentlessly pushed her on him and only after Eberhard got engaged to Dietrich's niece Renate.I don't get the sense that he was ever hot to make love with Maria. Perhaps their experience of 'true love' was always from an emotional distance, especially after Dietrich's arrest just three months after their announcement. There were letters and supervised visits. That's all.After both became engaged, Dietrich wrote to Eberhard, imagining that 
Now, we can resume our partnership, and we can travel together in those places where we found so much joy, and we can leave our wives back in Germany, in Berlin, or some place.
In other words, they both acquired beards, and Dietrich longed to renew and pursue their spiritual friendship as 'soul mates' or whatever they decided to call it. But Eberhard was never willing to venture below the belt (as far as we can tell).I'm not at all sure that Dietrich was ever willing to go there, much as he may have longed to do just that. He wrote in prison that he would die a virgin.But since Eberhard's whole life was about Dietrich--especially as his martyred mentor and forever lost lover--how hard is it to understand the depth of his love in return?At least that's my version of Bonhoeffer. Now I'll have to see the damn movie!Marshall
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Was Flamingly Gay-- Deal With It
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Richard H. T. AltonICA Global FundThe Last ChapterUnited Methodist Net ZeroT: 773.344.7172richard.alton at gmail.comMake Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
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Richard H. T. AltonICA Global FundThe Last ChapterUnited Methodist Net ZeroT: 773.344.7172richard.alton at gmail.comMake Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2
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