Charles,

I saw it the day after it came out and loved it.  If it's still showing in 
your area, go to see it quickly!

Soli Deo Gloria!

Drew



The Rev. Charles A. Collins, Jr., S.B.R., M.Div.
Hospice Chaplain
289 Hastings Dr.
Goose Creek, SC 29445
Home: (843) 832-6408
Office: (843) 554-4048
E-mail: evanglican@...
Weblog: http://www.palmettoanglican.blogspot.com/



"If there were any word of God beside the Scripture, we could never be 
certain of God's Word; and if we be uncertain of God's Word, the devil might 
bring in among us a new word, a new doctrine, a new faith, a new church, a 
new god, yea himself to be a god. If the Church and the
Christian faith did not stay itself upon the Word of God certain, as upon a 
sure and strong foundation, no man could know whether he had a right faith, 
and whether he were in the true Church of Christ, or in the synagogue of 
Satan."-- Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, Reformer and Martyr





>From: charles scott <crscottblu@...>
>Reply-To: faithandlife@...
>To: faithandlife@...
>Subject: [FaithandLife] LUTHER FILM
>Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 04:53:14 -0800 (PST)
>
>Brothers+
>
>Here is a review of a Luther film.  Have any of you
>seen it?
>
>Charles+
>----------------------------------------
>
>
>Christianity Today, Week of September 22
>
>A Reformer's Agony
>A high-caliber film shows how messy it was when Luther
>helped change the course of
>history.
>Luther, reviewed by Chris Armstrong | posted
>09/26/2003 Christianity Today
>
>LUTHER
>directed by Eric Till
>RS Entertainment
>Before the Reformation, the meaning of life came
>highly structured from the hierarchy of
>the Church. One didn't ask questions. One didn't need
>to.
>
>Many believers, perhaps most, experienced Truth
>through relics, images, and rituals—not
>as oppression but as comfort. To be sure, one did not
>meet God face to face. But one did
>not want to! For the late-medieval rank and file,
>assurance of salvation came not from
>bold access to the throne of God, but from the myriad
>mediating practices of penance and
>devotion.
>
>In Luther, one scene in particular brings home this
>historical reality. Glowing with joy, a
>young mother who has purchased an indulgence (a
>remission of temporal punishment)
>for her crippled daughter holds it out to a gaunt
>Martin Luther: "Look what I bought for
>Greta!" She has been gulled by the rhetoric of the
>charlatan indulgence-seller, Johann
>Tetzel (Alfred Molina).
>
>Luther (Joseph Fiennes) takes the paper and reads it.
>His anger at the corrupt
>establishment rises and boils over. He forgets the
>gentleness he has displayed toward her.
>"This is worthless," he says, crumpling it in his
>fist. "You must rely on God's love."
>Crestfallen, she turns and walks disconsolately away.
>
>At several key moments in the movie, Luther faces the
>charge that he is tearing apart the church. He
>grapples repeatedly with the possibility that he is
>destroying, rather than building, God's kingdom. To
>their credit, though, the filmmakers resist the
>temptation of portraying a Lone Ranger Reformer
>against a thoroughly evil Church. There are enough
>sympathetic figures in the Catholic establishment
>(Matthieu Carriere's Cardinal Cajetan chief among
>them) to create some sense of historical nuance.
>
>Moreover, we get to see some warts of the Reformation.
>Andreas Karlstadt (Jochen
>Horst) takes Luther's teachings to their extreme,
>announcing that the day of the great
>leveling has arrived. Soon we see townspeople dragging
>the monks who have cared for
>them out of their church and pummeling them. Rocks
>crash through stained-glass
>windows. A crucifix is knocked to the floor. (The
>scene involves a bit of historical
>sleight-of-hand: the real Karlstadt, advocating
>nonviolence, had refused to join the
>militant radical reformer Thomas Müntzer.)
>
>Luther is still a medieval man; this anarchic attack
>on authority is too much for him. He
>appeals to the princes, demanding the peasant revolt
>be put down. Soon the blood of the
>peasants runs on the floor of the ruined church.
>
>Surveying the carnage, Luther agonizes: "I have torn
>the world apart." He begins to slide into depression.
>He must force himself out of bed each morning. Until,
>that is—in a moment befitting Hollywood—he meets the
>escaped nun Katerina (Claire Cox). Sunny but
>steel-willed, Katerina leads Luther from the dark
>tunnel and into the summer of the loving marriage he
>has long denied himself.
>
>Of course, this is a Lutheran movie, not a Catholic
>one—it is backed by Thrivent, the major Lutheran
>financial services organization. The answer to the
>question of whether Luther is destroying the church he
>loves or bringing it back to its most basic sources of
>authority is clear. The abuses flowing from the
>"sewer" of Rome are portrayed starkly
>enough.
>
>But writer Camille Thomasson and director Eric Till
>have done well to show something of the anguish and
>desolation that comes with the uprooting of old
>meanings and the conflicted (and always incomplete)
>process toward the new. Even if we are convinced,
>with Luther, that the new meanings are really the
>oldest ones of all—fidelity to Scripture,
>salvation by grace alone, the surpassing love of the
>Father—we can sympathize with the human toll of what
>our age has fashionably called a "paradigm shift."
>
>If there is any misstep in the film, it is the
>relentless niceness of its Reformer. Throughout we see
>Luther filling the void left by the old, corrupted
>symbols of late medieval Catholicism with the simple
>"Jesus loves me" theology of a mainstream Sunday
>school class.
>
>The filmmakers have hardly gotten young Martin out of
>his early years as a psychologically tortured monk,
>convinced God is out to get him, when they remake him
>as a mild '90s Luther. His confessor Staupitz (Bruno
>Ganz) is reduced to blustering: "In all the time I've
>known you, you've never once confessed anything even
>remotely interesting!"
>
>As a student at Wittenberg, Luther insists on giving a
>teen suicide a Christian burial—theological niceties
>be damned. Interpreting the story of the Prodigal Son
>to children in the woods, he stresses the father's
>surpassing love. In the tower at Wartburg, he
>interprets a Greek term as expressing that same love.
>
>All of this is fair enough, though the theme does
>become wearing. In one impassioned sermon, Luther
>takes aim at the villain Tetzel, who emotionally
>blackmails his audiences by unfurling crude paintings
>of hell and then offering to help them buy their
>relatives' way out of eternal agony. Tetzel's problem,
>Luther insists, is that his God is too mean.
>
>"I, too, saw God as sentencing sinners to death in
>hell," Luther preaches. "But I was wrong."
>
>Oops. In a major film for a diverse viewing public
>that sees nothing but an oppressive, hypocritical
>church, this '90s approach may indeed serve the
>producers' religious motives.  But God's sovereignty
>seems to have receded a little too much here. And one
>wonders, if this was really all the Reformation was
>about, why would anyone have objected? Why didn't all
>the Catholics just get on board, singing Kumbaya?
>
>Finally, though, the film does tell us as much as it
>probably can: the Church had been corrupted in many
>ways. It had strayed from the Bible—its best and
>truest authority. And the road back was a rough one.
>
>What it loses in theological subtlety it gains back in
>artistry. This is a dramatically gripping and visually
>stunning movie. More, it is warmly personal: Sir Peter
>Ustinov comes near to stealing the show as Luther's
>wise, wry prince-protector, Frederick;
>Staupitz is another Catholic "good guy" whose concern
>for his spiritual son lights up the screen. The film
>is—as much as can be expected—historically
>even-handed.
>
>Luther matches grandeur of vision to excellence of
>execution. The resulting drama packs spiritual as well
>as entertainment power: it charged the atmosphere even
>of the small screening room where I first saw the
>film. I will be seeing it again.
>
>Chris Armstrong is managing editor of Christian
>History magazine.
>
>Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today
>
>
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