10 - Luther in fiction

    The biographical film Luther presents its subject in a very favorable light. The actor Joseph  Fiennes portrays the friar as an attractive man with an earnest, benevolent face.  There is no resemblance to Cranach's painting on Pg. 327 of the textbook Culture and Values, where Luther looks chubby and not entirely benevolent.

 In the movie Luther is horrified at the Catholics' treatment of the sick and the poor (in a moving scene he befriends a young mother with a crippled child). However, he is in favor of  the abolishment of convents, which traditionally offered food and medical treatment to the indigents. The movie gives the impression that the destruction of their convents benefited the nuns, by giving them the opportunity to marry good men, like Luther. In reality, convents were giving shelter to women who, by inclination or because of economic reasons, would not marry. For these women the destruction of their home was a disaster.

    In the film Luther is dismayed by the Catholic Church's promotion of the belief in Purgatory with its physical torments, which pressured the believers to purchase indulgences. There is no mention of Luther's denial of free will and his assertion that performing good deeds does not save people from Hell (Pg. 327). This view will be followed by  the Calvinist theory of predestination (that salvation depends only on the unknowable will of God), a much more pessimistic doctrine than that of Purgatory.

    The movie is visually beautiful, and it gives the viewer a glimpse of  life in the late Renaissance: a pilgrimage to Rome,  the cult of the sacred relics,  the debates at the university of Wittenberg, and what it was like to stand trial in front of the Pope in the Vatican or in front of the council of the German princes.

    The film however, does not touch on the social currents in Germanic countries that gave birth  to the Reformation. For example, the rulers of German nations backed Luther because they wanted to be free of  interference from papal authority – the concept of nationality was starting to emerge – so they were not necessarily motivated by piety (Pg. 329). Also, there was poverty and discontent among the lower classes, which lead to the peasant revolts in Germany (Pg. 329). In this light, the looting of convents by the hungry peasantry makes sense.

 

Portrait of Luther b Cranach

The film also fails to explore any of the negative consequences of the Reformation.  Protestant ideas led to a decline of the visual arts, and to discounting the importance of a humanistic education (Pg. 330-1). It also led to violence. In the movie Luther seems astonished at the Protestants' attacks on Catholics in his country - he seems to think it was an aberration. However, this was just the beginning: there will be persecutions of Catholics in England, and massacres of the 'heathen' population in the New World, at the hand of the Puritans. In the film, Catholics can do no right, and Protestants can do no wrong. As to Luther's personality, I expected  a second Savonarola, but the movie portrays a second Saint Francis.

    The film was produced in 2004, when the  war between the Protestant U.S. and Muslim countries was portrayed as the struggle of democracy and righteousness against despotism and fundamentalism. There was no mention of economic causes, such as the need to control oil supplies. Films like Luther, although interesting and fun to watch, can foster a view that demonizes enemies and glorifies ideology, which is worrisome is these times.

Works Cited.
Luther. Dir. Eric Till. Perf. Joseph Fiennes, Jonathan Firth, Alfred Molina, Peter Ustinov.    
     MGM, 2004. DVD.
Cunningham, Lawrence, and John Reich. Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities.
    Boston, MA: Wadsworth Publishing , 2006 and 2010. Print.