Jojo Rabbit: Lightness and sweetness that doesn't flinch in the face of horror-as-normality
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A-plus
Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi’s darkly satirical, “anti-hate movie” - which won the Grolsch People’s Choice Award at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival - is a work of sublime sweetness and beauty.
The film is based on the novel “Caging Skies” by Christine Leunens. But writer/director and actor Waititi has given it a careful comic twist that places it somewhere between a comedy and a satire, and gently delivers a beautiful and potent message. It’s like eating a decadent chocolate truffle that’s good for you too.
Jojo (Roman Griffith Davis) is pep-talked through Hitler Youth camp by his invisible friend Hitler (Taika Waititi)
The Jojo of the title is 10-year-old Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), who lives with his loving, whimsical mother, (Scarlett Johansson), in the fictional German town of Falkenhem. His father, a soldier is away, fighting in Italy. And his mother tries to keep the darkness of the world away from her son to ease his worries.
But she works and so he has a lot of time alone to mull things over. And since Jojo is a sweet sincere kid, he’s also a worrier.
He’s now old enough to join the Jungvolk, or Hitler Youth, and really wants to do well. The war appears to be coming close to an end, things aren’t going well for Germany and he’s all fired up to step up and do his part like his father in Italy. This is his chance to prove himself. And like a lot of tweens, he wants to be one of the cool kids, and maybe even be, dare he dream, a star achiever.
To ease his anxiety, he’s created an imaginary friend to give him advice and support in the form of the man he hopes to impress most, Adolph Hitler (Waititi).
This isn’t Hitler as we know him, but rather a version of him conjured in the mind of a 10-year-old. In other words, he looks like Hitler, he wears a uniform and has an odd moustache. But Jojo’s imaginary Hitler is pretty much a big 10-year-old boy, who acts supportive, but mostly expresses Jojo’s doubts and fears.
Jojo needs the help. The first days at the Jungvolk aren’t the magical time he imagined. He’s bullied, and the teachers and trainers there – headed by Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell in a terrific performance of heart buried beneath weariness and cynicism) - are more like civil servants who have been demoted to their jobs of training kids, aware that the war seems about to end.
But Jojo isn’t easily daunted. He’s determined to rise past his own limitations and become so skilled that even the real Hitler will take notice. He studies the propaganda dutifully, believes the stories he’s been taught about Jews as, basically demons.
Things change abruptly when he discovers a secret. His mother has been hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa, (Thomasin McKenzie), in a secret place in the house.
Depending on your point of view, the idea of making a movie with a comical Hitler (even one played by Waititi who describes himself as a Polynesian Jew) is an idea that is either intriguing or offensive.
In fact, there was a backlash that started before the film was even shown, from people who mischaracterized it as a Nazi comedy, which it most definitely is not.
What is key is that Waititi keeps the movie focused on Jojo, so that we’re seeing the world through his eyes. This is, in part, a movie about a boy’s coming-of-age, but more significantly also how attitudes towards “the other” are formed and reinforced.
Jojo is a boy who wants to do well in the world, to be a good person. But, this is a world that has been defined by others for him, and where to openly challenge authority is a death sentence. The rampant anti-Semitism, the ideas about “the enemy within” form the completely normal (to him) sea in which he’s been swimming for most of his life.
He doesn’t know anything different, or even how to question what he’s been taught. But when Elsa shows up looking and acting nothing like a demon, or the caricature of “the Jew” that he’s been warned about, Jojo’s world is rocked in many ways. He knows that if he reports her, it will destroy what’s left of his family. What’s a 10-year-old boy to do?
Waititi may have started with an audacious idea, but he’s a talented director with an incisive intelligence, a sharp wit and a natural sense of mischief. But he also has depth and the chops to take on a story like this one and make it count.
And with Jojo Rabbit, he’s made a beautifully crafted film, one that that, for much of its running time, maintains a measure of lightness and sweetness without flinching from the ugliness at the center of the story. There’s an old saying that a great comedy should make you laugh and then, make you cry. By that standard, with Jojo Rabbit, Waititi has made a great comedy and a great movie that is a salve for the soul in a troubled time.
Jojo Rabbit. Written and directed by Taika Waititi. Starring Roman Griffen Davis, Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell. Opens wide, Friday, October 25.