Jojo Rabbit (Dir Taika Waititi, 1h 48m)

One of the great questions of comedic writing, in cinema and beyond is the question of what, if anything is off-limits. For example, in broad terms, can the Nazis ever be regarded as funny-does comedy in which the Nazis play a major part, from Mel Brooks' The Producers to John Cleese's Fawlty Towers and the work of Monty Python, to the countless Internet parodies of the war room scene from Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall let the Nazis off the hook, so to speak, to somehow negate their atrocities as they are painted as figures of fun? Does it, alternatively, make them seem pitiful, stupid, blundering, Does it actually help to paint them as figures of fun, to make them look ridiculous and absurd, even at the cost of sending a clear and still bleakly salient message about their actions?

There are, of course, a couple of films that do both in beautifully stark and unflinching terms, to make us laugh at the Nazis, but to remind us, in plain and simple terms that these clownish fanatics in uniform plunged the world into war and murdered six million Jews in a systematic mechanisation of death and hate. Benigni's Life is Beautiful, Chaplin's The Great Dictator and now Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit, the tale of a young Hitler youth member, Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), and his struggles to fit in to a Reich on the brink of defeat, including his mother's unexpected charge, the hate and brainwashing of Nazi Germany, and having an imaginary Adolf Hitler (Waititi himself) as his comrade in a story that arcs perfectly between hilarious, starkly horrifying, and heartbreaking, in what may very well be the first classic of this new decade


At the centre of this film are its central quartet; Davis's Jojo is, despite being a fanatic who essentially parrots the Party line is a remarkably sensitive boy, and at the centre of Jojo Rabbit is the idea of, in essence, the brainwashing of Germany which the relationship between Jojo and the buffoonish imagined Hitler absolutely represents. Throughout the film and especially towards its end, Waititi gives a stark performance-it may be played, from the pure ridiculousness of a half-Maori Jewish New Zealander performing an Austrian dictator-but in places Waititi hits the horrifyingly familiar cadence, the hand gestures, the blind dogma of Hitler perfectly-as the situation, both within Jojo's house and in the war in general, we begin to see, despite the blustering blundering Hitler of the imagination of a little boy, something altogether more disturbing and threatening.

After all, as the film painfully reminds us, as the Allies draw in, Jojo is a ten year old boy, caught up in the war, in the blind dogma of a regime utterly blind to its own impending destruction. As his mother, Rosie (a career-best performance by Scarlett Johansson, who at equal points is concerned parent and political sparring partner) states simply: "You're not a Nazi, Jojo. You're a ten-year-old kid who likes dressing up in a funny uniform and wants to be part of a club". For all his fanatical fire, it is the relationship with Elsa (a superb performance by Thomasin McKenzie) that eventually, despite his second-hand hatred of Jews, despite his attempts to force her to assist him in writing a book to identify them, despite everything he accuses and threatens her with, that ultimately redeems Jojo as a character. When the full impact of the war, and the cruelty of the Reich finally leaves an impact, it is in a harrowing duo of scenes that leave you in no doubt as to Waititi's goal.

And yet, despite this bleakness, this unflinching depiction of everyday life for Germany, and for the Jews that Hitler and the Nazis tried to wipe out, there is, undeniably, a comedic sense to this film; the main officers we see in this film are, from Waititi's Hitler, a prattish imaginary friend who seems to exist as much to get Jojo into trouble as to symbolise the group think, the brainwashing of Germany, a sublime comedic performance by Waititi as a childlike and stupid figure. The other Nazis are no different, from Sam Rockwell's preening Captain Klenzendorf, a wounded war hero who finds himself essentially on childcare duties to Rebel Wilson's odious instructor, playing to Wilson's comedic pratfall chops, to Stephen Merchant's sinister but ultimately bureaucratic Gestapo agent

Certainly, Waititi's smartest move is to make the Nazis look ridiculous-at no point, certainly, do we see the spirited Elsa ever made the butt of the joke, with many of the scenes shared between her and Jojo ending up with him second-best. Around this, the film paints the Third Reich as incompetent, desperate and ramshackle-there's a great scene in which the pure bureaucracy of even the Nazi salute is put to excellent use, with Merchant's Gestapo agent and his men heiling back and forth, at one point for nearly a minute, as new characters are introduced to the scene; it is ridiculous because it is meant to be ridiculous, the end-result of a cult that every German now finds themselves trapped in.

The fall of Germany, meanwhile, for all its bleakness, shows us a mixture of idiocy, fanaticism and tragedy, with the final battle scenes showing children, shepherds and invalids trying to hold off the Americans, in which a bizarre subplot of cloned Boys from Brazil are simply dispatched via gunfire and Jojo's friend, fellow Hitler Youth member Yorki accidently blows up a building and is forced to admit, before going home to his mother, that "it's not a good time to be a Nazi". Waititi certainly wants us to laugh at the Nazis, to laugh at his rendition of Hitler, to strip the Nazis of anything but being the butt of ever bleaker and bloodier jokes, and he wants us to regard the majority of his adults as nothing short of idiotic bullies.


But it is also fair to say that Waititi holds no punches throughout this film-for every scene where the Nazis are the butt of the joke, there's another that's unfaltering in its depictions of the atrocities, of the common-place hate, of depicting exactly what it was like in the Reich as the allies closed in-the final battle scene is perhaps the most harrowing moment in World War II set cinema since Saving Private Ryan's beach scene, in which Jojo is merely a child in an adult's war, as buildings explode and people are gunned down around him. The film is bleak, its depiction of the execution of perceived traitors, and child soldiers, and the fanatical hate that even young children have for an entire race of people, utterly unflinching. Waititi may be brave for poking fun at the Nazis, but he is braver in matching this narrative to the history that surrounds it-his Hitler may be a buffoon, but he is, after all, Adolf Hitler, the symbol and mouthpiece for the ideas that we find flowing out of Jojo's own mouth for much of the film.

For, at its centre, Jojo Rabbit is a film about surviving a brutal regime, about escaping the brainwashing of the Nazi party, of removing the spectre of Hitler, as Elem Klimov visceral Come and See does, and learning to live out of the shadow of war. But perhaps Waititi is speaking more generally, on the sense of childish buffoonish figures hoodwinking an entire nation once again, and his message of acceptance, though wrapped up in comedic terms, is bluntly simple-Jojo frees himself from the influence of Hitler, not just the childish best friend version, but the real, flesh-and-blood version, not through violence, but through love; just as Jojo cannot bring himself to kill the rabbit that eventually becomes his mocking nickname, so he cannot truly hate.

Jojo Rabbit, thus, joins a scant few films that manage to match the comic and the starkly historical, to make us laugh at the Nazis, without forgetting the horrors they inflicted on Europe, and indeed on the people of Germany. With it, Waititi becomes one of the great directors of comic cinema, and Jojo Rabbit becomes, unquestionably, the first classic of this decade. It is not simply simply a darkly funny critique of the Nazi regime in a film that runs remarkably close to the bone, but a skilfully crafted and unflinching film about the brainwashing of the German people by the Third Reich and its aftermath.

Rating: Must See [Personal Recommendation]