While "School of Rock" may hardly offer much in the way of substantive education, "Luther" provides more enlightenment and considerably less entertainment. In the course of a fast-moving and mostly rewarding three hours, it summarizes 30 years of one of the most eventful and significant lives in human history.
Beginning with Martin Luther's ordination as a priest in 1507, it shows his struggles with doubt, cynicism, a corrupt church hierarchy, unscrupulous politicians and religious fanatics mobilized by the Reformation he himself unleashed. The thin, aristocratic Joseph Fiennes ("Shakespeare in Love") bears almost no physical resemblance to the bullish, coarse, impassioned and peasant-featured Martin Luther of history, but he performs an honorable job of capturing the great man's inner turmoil and ferocious brilliance. Sir Peter Ustinov steals the movie (and deserves Oscar consideration) as Frederick of Saxony, the pampered, wily prince who became Luther's unlikely protector and disciple. Alfred Molina provides his usual fierce intensity as Tetzel, the mass marketer of indulgences who became the Reformer's arch enemy.
The costumes, sets, locations and crowd scenes provide plenty of eye-popping spectacle that makes the movie look far more lavish than its $25 million dollar budget suggests. The screenplay (by Camille Thomasson, and significantly reworked by a brilliant and unapologetically Christian BBC veteran named Bart Gavigan) takes theology seriously and does a superb job of presenting both sides of crucial Church disputes. Above all, the movie dramatizes the explosive power of ideas-demonstrating the way that a devout priest and professor of theology, relying only on his written and spoken words, became for several decades the powerful and influential human being on the planet.
Unfortunately, the time constraints leave huge gaps in the Luther story, giving only cursory attention to his eventual rejection of priestly celibacy and his happy and productive marriage to a former nun (the luminous Claire Cox). For the most part, the supporting characters (including Luther's kindly mentor played by Bruno Ganz, and his determined churchly adversaries portrayed by Benjamin Sadler, Jonathan Firth and others) get too little screen time to make strong impressions. As the pageant unfolds, the welter or names, faces and colorful costumes will confuse all those unfamiliar with Reformation history.
Nonetheless, "Luther" (rated PG-13 for violent scenes of warfare and its consequences, and a few traces of the Great Reformer's notoriously crude language) succeeds in the major challenge for any project of this sort: it leaves the audience craving to learn more about the astonishing story it tells.
Its emotional highpoints-the nailing of the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg door, the Reformer's stubborn defiance at the Diet of Worms-provide genuine inspiration, and even fleeting goose-bumps for all those who understand the epochal importance of the proceedings. The movie gallops so quickly through its eventful story-line that you scarcely notice the odd but obvious fact that its hero ages not one wit in the course of 30 years.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I spent a few weeks working on this project in a professional capacity, advising the editing process after the shooting (much of it on the original German locations) had been completed. The behind-the-scenes cooperation and dedication that I witnessed between the commercial German production company and the American faith-based producers (associated with Thrivent Financial for Lutherans) proved every bit as impressive as the spectacle on screen. Of course, my involvement with the production means that I can hardly claim objectivity regarding this worthy project, but then all those hundreds of millions of believers who have been personally touched by Luther's teaching and preaching will feel similarly biased in its behalf. THREE STARS.
