‘Jojo Rabbit‘, Taika Waititi‘s film arouses controversy among film critics and viewers. Normal for a satirical comedy dealing with the darkest period in history? Perhaps, however, we should not be so shocked anymore, and not because almost eight decades have passed since the horrific events, but because World War II, the Holocaust and even Hitler’s persona have already been subjects of comedy and satire in numerous films, some even very good – starting with Chaplin‘s ‘The Great Dictator‘, continuing with the French comedies with Louis de Funes, moving on to Roberto Benigni‘s superb and moving film ‘Life is Beautiful‘ and reaching Tarantino. And yet, Taika Waititi was able to make this film only by financing it as a producer and making it as a director and as an actor in the most delicate role – Adolf Hitler’s as an imaginary friend of a ten-year-old boy raised in the poisonous atmosphere of the Third Reich and fanatical in his worship of the Fuhrer and in his hatred of Jews. The film describes the tragic coming to age and awakening to reality of Jojo, the aspiring Nazi child, unable to kill a rabbit, hence the nickname in the film’s title, during a disastrous war ending for the world he believed in and he lived by until then.
The directorial approach and the style in which the story is exposed, at least in the first part of the film, resembles nothing of what I saw on screens in the films about World War II. In fact, the film may be looked at differently: as a combination of coming to age and early exit from childhood movies in extreme conditions (Giuseppe Tornatore‘s ‘Malena‘ would be another example) and an anti-racist and anti-militaristic satire with clear references to the contemporary period. As a film about the war and the Holocaust, ‘Jojo Rabbit‘ does not say many new things. Jojo’s conquering character splendidly played by Roman Griffin Davis, one of the most memorable children’s roles of late, dominates the film. The world we see on the screen is his world, with the fears and imagination of a ten year old boy raised in the shadow of war and educated in a twisted ideology. The relationship between his mother (Scarlett Johansson) and Jojo is a relationship mixing love and fear, the mother’s fear of the monster that her son might become, maternal protection combined with the fear that Jojo may, intentionally or not, denounce her for her opinions and actions.
The film works very well in the first part, the grotesque kitsch of Nazi education and the sick fantasy of the kid’s ‘imaginary friend’ Adolf Hitler managing to create the effects expected by the director. Things get a little complicated when Jojo discovers the “enemy”, a Jewish girl his mother was hiding in their home at the risk of her life, and who, to his surprise, has neither horns nor tentacles. Here begins the process of awakening and coming to age, accelerated by the approach of the end of the war, which brings with it the destruction and death that the fanatical children born and educated in Nazism had been hitherto spared of. The story now slips into melodrama, not before providing one more grotesque and tense scene, when the family home is visited by Gestapo. The ending is less original, and the mix of dream (actually a nightmare in this phase) and reality is no longer as interesting. Until then, however, ‘Jojo Rabbit‘ has already provided many interesting ideas, original and moving sequences, and a lesson that stays with the viewers about the grotesque of hate. Taika Waititi‘s film may not be an immediate public success, but its fame may develop and last into the future instead.
