Luther

While there's no doubting the sincerity behind this physically handsome biography of the man who ushered in the Protestant Reformation, Eric Till's Luther is a stilted and ponderous film, undone by a textbook-ish approach and a stiff, undemonstrative performance by Joseph Fiennes in the title role. The film opens with Martin Luther's thunderstorm vow to enter a monastery, briefly sketches the monkish scrupulosity that led him to question the orthodox doctrine of free will, and then quickly deteriorates. No sense of the gradual development of Luther's thought is conveyed; instead he's presented as an immediate firebrand with a fully-formed agenda, and simply contrasted with the Machiavellian forces arrayed against him in Rome. Even worse, his attitude toward the Peasants' Rebellion is misrepresented to make him appear a champion of the common folk (which was definitely not the case). It's all part of a pattern of oversimplification designed to depict Luther as sympathetically as possible by reducing his complexity and airbrushing away his darker characteristics--an understandable objective for a picture made with denominational funding, perhaps, but one that leaves the locations, sets, and costumes offering up more authenticity than the narrative they serve. There is, however, a saving grace in the late Peter Ustinov's canny comic turn as Luther's protector Frederick of Saxony; his dithering and feigned absentmindedness constitute a vaudeville routine more than a performance, but one that's quite fun to watch. Optional. (F. Swietek)