Escape from Germany
No artist has translated his faith into his work as much as Utah filmmaker T.C. Christensen and the Latter-day Saint themes of such films as “The Fighting Preacher,” “Love, Kennedy,” “The Cokeville Miracle,” “Ephraim’s Rescue” and “17 Miracles” are strong and heartfelt.
Such is also the case with Christensen’s latest, “Escape From Germany,” where he tells an obscure pre-World War II story as one of faith and fortitude from behind the camera and in front of it, too. Like most of his movies, believers will like it more than anyone else.
It’s late August 1939, and Heber J. Grant, then president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has a missionary Elder Barnes (Landon Henneman) deliver a message to the U.S. consul in Stuttgart: Get out of Germany, Hitler is about to order the invasion Poland. The consul says their military experts at the U.S. embassy in Berlin don’t see that happening, to which Barnes replies that Grant is a prophet, so his intel may be better than theirs.
From there word goes out from their mission headquarters across Germany to evacuate all missionaries to Belgium or Denmark fast before the Nazis close the borders and start the war. Mission President Wood (David McConnell) in Stuttgart has a tough assignment for one missionary Elder Norman Seibold (Paul Wuthrich). He must travel alone across Germany to round up some 20 stray missionaries who have been abandoned in towns and train stations, get them tickets out of the country.
While Seibold takes on this hard and dangerous mission President Wood and Elder Barnes pack up their bags and their families to get them themselves to safe harbor. This turns into something else altogether when Wood has to take some very drastic steps that aren’t exactly legal.
With an adaptation by Terry Bohle Montague of her historical novel “Mine Angels Round About,” Christensen creates some good tension in Seibold’s hunt, which seems impossible, and the Wood family’s mad dash to leave the country. Along the way there are nods to the larger story going on around them such as a Jewish family they keep running into that is desperate to get out of Germany.
Not all the references are so welcome, like how one missionary keeps bringing up Hitler’s admiration for the church’s dietary restrictions and genealogical studies which is true, but it’s not the flex he thinks it is.
Among an ensemble cast McConnell stands out as a mission president who has both feet on the ground while Wuthrich plays Seibold with enough solidity that we can believe this guy could figure everything out while wearing a well-tailored missionary suit in 1939 Germany. (Wuthrich should be familiar to Latter-day Saint movie fans he played Joseph Smith in last year’s “Witnesses.”)
The movie was shot in Budapest and around Salt Lake City, and it says something about Christensen’s resourcefulness that his crew can dress up the Heber Valley Railroad enough for it look like a 1939-era European train.
Unfortunately, Christensen also falls back into his habit of turning every plot twist into a Sunday school lesson every bump of fate or lucky break being taken as evidence of God’s hand at work. Miracles are great for sermons; they make for lousy screenwriting.
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