Reflections of a Frustrated Film
Consultant
By Scott Hendrix
Princeton Theological Seminary
Originally published in the Sixteenth Century Journal
XXXV/3 2004, pp. 811-814.
Luther: Rebel, Genius, Liberator.
Bart Gavigan, Camille Thomasson; directed by Eric Till.
Frankfurt a/M: NFP Teleart with Thrivent Financial for
Lutherans, 2003; distributed by R. S. Entertainment.
Runtime: Germany, 121 min.; U.S., 113 min.
On 26 September 2003, the film Luther: Rebel, Genius,
Liberator opened in selected theaters across the United
States. Directed by Eric Till, whose credits include
Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace, the European-based
production was shot on location in Germany, Italy, and
the Czech Republic, and it featured prominent actors
like Joseph Fiennes as Luther and Peter Ustinov as
Elector Frederick of Saxony. The film attempts to
portray Luther's role in the early Reformation in a way
that is historically dependable and sufficiently
entertaining to compete in the movie marketplace. On the
first point it did not satisfy (for details, see the
review by Hans Hillerbrand in the 1 November 2003 issue
of the Christian Century). On the second, even though
the movie entertained most of the people with whom I
spoke, its reception has been mixed both in theaters and
in the review columns. In Germany, I am told, Luther was
the third largest grossing theatrical film of 2003,
behind only Finding Nemo and Lord of the Rings: Return
of the King. In the United States, where postproduction
delays and a tight budget limited advance marketing,
distribution and audience size varied widely from one
region of the country to the other. According to Dennis
Clauss, the corporate projects leader at Thrivent
Financial for Lutherans, which sponsored the film,
attendance was strong in some markets that are hardly
bastions of Lutheranism. At an afternoon showing in New
Jersey, however, only five of us were in the theater.
When planning for the film began in 1999, Mr. Clauss
contacted Hans Hillerbrand, Robert Kolb, and me and
asked us to consult with the scriptwriter about early
versions of the screenplay. We agreed to the request and
our active involvement, in meetings and individual
responses, continued until 2001 when all three of us
decided not to continue. We also turned down the offer
to appear in the on-screen credits and were not informed
about the role played by those scholars whose names did
appear. Although we were active consultants in the
beginning of the process, we were unwilling to take
credit for the script when our criticisms and
suggestions for improving it, as far as I could tell
(these are my reflections alone), were not taken
seriously and not being implemented.
For me the process began early in 2000 when I met the
scriptwriter in Princeton and discussed her concept of
the story. She emphasized the importance of lively
scenes, believable characters, a simple narrative, and
dramatic tension. I cautioned against a heroic portrayal
of Luther and tried to explain the ways in which
historians over the last several decades have enriched
our perception of the reformer and of the Reformation.
Luther's work as a university teacher and his colleagues
in Wittenberg should receive their due. The pope and the
Roman theologians should not suffer from caricature.
Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther should not dominate the
portrayal of Luther's personality or the motives behind
his conflict with Rome. Luther's appearance at the Diet
of Worms should not be transformed into a courageous
stand for individual freedom of conscience. The
complexity of Luther's character should become evident
but not overshadow the social and political context.
Finally, Luther should be set in the larger story of
reform and his life after 1530 should not be ignored. I
suggested there was plenty of dramatic tension in the
fact that the outcome of the German Reformation was very
much in doubt when Luther died.
When I read the first draft of the screenplay, I found
that little of what I had said seemed to be heard. Like
a responsible advisor, I tried harder. I reiterated my
points in detail and concluded that if the goal was to
present an appealing but still honest and well-rounded
picture of Luther, then more of his story and life would
have to be told, and a positive concept had to replace
what still read like one man's desperate quest for
religious certainty and reform. I concentrated on the
presentation of Luther because, from the beginning, I
agreed that the most important factor to consider was
the overall impression left by the film and not the
details. To get the impression right, however, I
insisted the story should be historically reliable and
based on recent research. Four months later, I discussed
the screenplay again with the writer and with a veteran
of religious films who was also present and remembered
the production of the popular 1954 film about Luther. We
agreed the new film should be more than an updated
version of that heroic tale, and I anticipated the next
draft of the script with curiosity and a flicker of
optimism.
All this time, Professors Hillerbrand and Kolb had been
evaluating the script as well, and in November 2000,
Hans Hillerbrand and I met in New York with the writers,
Mr. Clauss, and several other people whose exact
relationship to the film was unclear to us. At this
meeting the veil of politeness was finally lifted and
the historians clashed openly with the others over the
image of Luther and the concept of reform the film
should project. The daylong discussion ended with
frustration on all sides and a vague plan to reevaluate
the script. Suddenly, in May 2002, after deciding not to
continue, we were notified that shooting was underway in
Germany and that award-winning figures were acting in
the film and responsible for its direction and
production. A London-based screenwriter had been hired
to embellish the script; he inserted a morality play
performed by a troupe of forty professional mimes who
were accompanied by symphonic professionals from Berlin
using authentic period instruments.
By this time it appeared that the script had completely
escaped the influence of historians and I anticipated
the opening of the film with dread. Students,
colleagues, even church and family members would ask my
opinion, and I could think of no reply that would not
make me a spoilsport. Even worse, with all its flaws,
people already in the know seemed to like the film. Some
of the acting was good, at the Diet of Worms Luther said
more than "here I stand," the sets were impressive, and
the story, even though it broke down after Worms,
conveyed some of what was politically at stake. Joseph
Fiennes captured Luther's intensity, but while he
undermined one stereotype of Luther (my sister-in-law
said Luther had to be fat!), he reinforced the other
persistent Luther type: the anxious and impulsive
reformer. The subtitle of the film, "Rebel, Genius,
Liberator," presumably indicates why audiences should
care about Luther in the first place, but instead it
gives away the main problem with the film that Roger
Ebert saw immediately: "Martin Luther's world is ...
sanitized, converted into a picturesque movie setting
where everyone is a type. The movie follows the movie
hat rule: the more corrupt the character, the more
absurd his hat. Of course Luther has the monk's shaven
tonsure. He's one of those wise guys you find in every
class, who knows more than the teacher" (Chicago
Sun-Times, 13 September 2003).
Ebert said he did not know what kind of Luther he
expected and frankly neither did I. Indeed, it is a
complex task to tell the story of a major historical
figure in a way that entertains, reliably informs, and
convinces viewers that it is important to stay to the
end. But I am not a filmmaker. Good films about
religious and historical subjects have been made, even
though making a movie, like writing history, is an act
of interpretation. The process of consulting
(frustrating as it was) sharpened that awareness and
transferred familiar questions to a larger canvas in a
different medium. How much historical detail has to be
included in a presentation of the past that serves the
purpose of informing and entertaining a public that is
largely unacquainted with the story? How many characters
and changes of scene can viewers keep track of when they
cannot reread a chapter or immediately find information
on the web? To what extent can one change or compress
the details of a story without distorting the meaning
and message that scholarly digging has brought to light?
Is historical accuracy the same as historical
reliability? These questions confront every historian in
the classroom and in the study, but they are much keener
when the answers are displayed on the big screen.
In retrospect there appear to be two reasons why we
three historians had little impact on the script and its
eventual transference onto film. One reason was
identified by Mr. Clauss in a reaction to the film that
he sent at my request and allowed to be used in these
reflections. In spite of his enthusiasm for the
production team, he acknowledged that the film was less
than first-class and attributed its flaws to the fact
that no one was in complete control of the project. In
his opinion, the failure "to age and fatten Luther" was
an obvious mistake, and important historical scenes that
had been scripted were dropped on location owing to cost
overruns. Those decisions were made by the production
team alone, and Clauss conceded that "control by a
production team is frustratingly onerous" because, to
sum up his thinking, too many cooks spoil the stew. It
may be true, as he suggested, that a process which
depends on group consensus does not make the best films
and that a single person has to be ruthless about
upholding the film's particular vision. Luther, in his
opinion, "was less than it could have been" because
contracts allowed too many people to have a say and
robbed the process of leadership that could have
maintained the overall vision. Even if our advice had
been well received, its effectiveness may well have been
blunted by the complex political and financial
undertaking that films become and over which, unlike
their own books, historical consultants have no control.
In the case of Luther, however, the vision was unclear
or wrong to begin with, and we historians were unable to
alter it. The second reason for our lack of influence
could have been our own lack of persuasiveness, but I
believe the team in New York was unable to understand
our objections because they thought the script, and
hence the vision of Luther to be presented, were fine
from the beginning and that we were clouding a good,
clear-cut story (i.e, rebel, genius, liberator) by
quibbling about details and calling attention to the
complexity of events like the Peasants' Revolt. In
reference to the Revolt, one person said to us that it
would be easy to portray Luther's role and motivation.
By arguing that it was not easy, we were trying to be
responsible historians, but either they did not want us
to function as professional historians or they did not
understand our critical approach to the past. Both were
probably true. Instead of questioning the story line and
its presentation of Luther on the basis of recent
research, they apparently wanted us to affirm their
vision and recommend only minor adjustments that would
correct or improve their script. In his reaction Mr.
Clauss suggested as much when he said he was dismayed to
read reviewers' criticism of the story line or acting
performances using inaccurate historical perceptions of
Luther. To portray Luther as a rebel, genius, and
liberator through the particular story line of this film
was the accurate historical perception in the minds of
the team, and that basic perception, or preconception,
was impossible for us to modify.
In the last analysis, we failed to have an impact on the
film because we were always responding to someone else's
work. Even though we were individually consulted at the
beginning, we were not invited to develop a vision for
the film based on recent Luther research and our
historical perception. I did not expect such an
invitation and I am guessing that consultants are never
asked to work that way, but now it seems to make more
sense to have the writers and production team react to
historians than the other way round. Instead of
historians reacting to a script in which the writers and
the team have become invested, historians could be most
useful for proposing what the vision of a particular
film should be and then hearing from scriptwriters and
producers how feasible it is and how it would have to be
modified to make a good film. The primary role of
historians should not be to monitor the historical
accuracy of a production, although it is essential that
distortions be minimized. There is room for creativity
in the popular presentation of history since history
itself is storytelling that mixes reliable information
with interpretation. Since historians themselves are
interpreters and shapers of visions of the past, they
can consult effectively only if they are engaged in the
creation of the vision transmitted by the film.
In the case of Luther, the process has increased my
sympathy for writers and producers of historical films
and the challenges they face. It would not be easy for
three historians to craft the vision for a film about
Martin Luther and to sketch the initial storyboard for
its realization. At the same time, the experience with
this Luther was so frustrating and ineffective that I
see no other way for historians, once invited, to
exercise worthwhile influence. Certainly, this Luther
movie, for all its ability to entertain and bring the
era alive, is a missed opportunity to present Luther as
the complex religious reformer, thinker, and human being
that he was instead of touting him as a rebel, genius,
and liberator. Since the new movie was not available as
a DVD, I showed part of the 1954 film to my class and
found its presentation of Luther at some points more
convincing and accurate. Perhaps historians will be able
to shape the vision of the next Luther film before
another fifty years of Reformation scholarship are
wasted.
Dr. Scott H. Hendrix is James Hastings Nichols Professor
of Reformation History and Doctrine at Princeton
Theological Seminary. His research on the German
Reformation has produced articles and books on Martin
Luther and the Lutheran confessions.
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