
It is without a doubt that very few people have peddled their faith, much less in the arts, the same way T C Christensen has. There is an overwhelming sense, even just by listening to a title, for the movies “The Fighting Preacher” “Love, Kennedy” “The Cokeville Miracle” “Ephraim’s Rescue” and “17 Miracles,” that there are Latter-day Saint themes infused throughout these films.
This was essentially the case with “Escape From Germany” as well, which Christensen directed, wrote, and filled in as a cinematographer intending to portray a faith-based and spasmodically storied episode during World War 2. The faithful will, as usual, get more out of it than the rest of us as is the case with the majority of Christensen’s films.
In late August 1939, a missionary Elder Barnes (Landon Henneman) is commanded by Heber J. Grant to convey a message to the American consul in Stuttgart. That message was to leave Germany as because of Germany’s hostilities towards Poland Hitler was about to order an invasion. The consul believes that the military experts at the US Embassy in Berlin do not forecast any of these events occurring, and he persuades Barnes that a statement made by Grant, a prophet of God, should be trusted above predictions made by military strategists.
At this moment communication goes from the mission headquarters to all directions in Germany to have all the missionaries evacuate and go to Belgium or Denmark before the Nazis close the frontiers and the war starts. Wood David McConnell also stationed in Stuttgart has a risky assignment for one missionary Bishop Elder Norman Seibold to go alone on a crusade through Germany and get the 20 or so stray missionaries scattered in towns and train stations and arrange for their tickets abroad.
As Seibold engages himself on this tough and dangerous mission, President Wood with Elder Barnes proceed to prepare their luggage and their families to ensure they reach the safe arms of the harbor. This turns out to be an unexpected escapade especially when Wood has to carry out extreme and rather unlawful measures in the process.
In the course of adapting a historical novel, “Mine Angels Round About,” Christenson Bohle Montague does a filling job in Seibold’s search for what appears to be impossible. Right from the beginning there is excitement in the Wood family’s breakneck exit strategy out of the country. There are also suggestions of something larger occurring in the background of these characters; for example, a Jewish family they keep seeing who was trying to leave Germany.
Some of the allusions are however not so flattering as can be, for example, the way a missionary has on several occasions brought to surveillance the way Hitler treated the church’s dietary customs and genealogical research which was factual but not as much a cool thing as the character presumed.
McConnell plays the mission president wonderfully but it’s Wuthrich who steals the show as the sturdy Seibold whom the audience expects to be the hero of the story whilst in a surprisingly well-fitted missionary suit. (Wuthrich is familiar to fans of Latter-day Saint movies having performed as Joseph Smith in the 2021 biopic about the church’s founder which was titled Witnesses.)
The film was made in Budapest and also in the Salt Lake City area and it is an attestation of the talent that Christensen has to be able to utilize so little to increase his budget as well because it is His team outfits the Heber Valley Railroad so that it resembles a European train of 1939 convincingly.
Unfortunately, the author’s style is again a problem, and this is where Christensen’s tendency to turn every plot twist into a Sunday school lesson comes in handy with the most trivial circumstances or any chance occurrences treated as some providential intervention. It is one thing to write screenplays in which there are several miracles it is quite another to imagine them for the purpose of a story.
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