A Caustic Examination of Indoctrination in Nazi Germany

Rating: 8/10 (13 January 2020)

To say that all Germans by default were Nazis is an unfair assessment especially when living under a political terror where the mind is predisposed to the propaganda machine. The lie and the idea becomes the truth and reality. The mind of a child is at greater risk; susceptible to the indoctrination of violent politics. The imagination is attacked and exploited for extremism. An adult, unlike a child, is at an age of reason; therefore you may find the former abhorrent, but what of the latter? This is the question Jojo Rabbit attempts to explore with caustic examination.
An exploration of how the imagination is hijacked makes for an ambitious topic. Waititi adopts a fitting satire and drama for this purpose, though at times can feel misguided. When balancing two approaches he treads a fine path between the sublime and the ridiculous. If you have ever been around children growing up you know they go through a phase of pretend. They are at play: whether it be with a Buzz Light Year costume or playing with Star War toys a child projects their imagination and identity into the role-play. Would a child in Nazi Germany be any different? The films denotes Nazism as hijacking this stage of growing up, represented in the make-believe Hitler character. This idea is aptly expressed in the imagery of the fuhrer eating a unicorn, a metaphor for the destruction of the imagination. The film's motif is littered with an array of both dramatic and satirical symbolism in the same manner as the unicorn. Mise en scène provides butterflies, knifes, mirrors, shoes and cigarettes representative for Jojo's internal conflict. For example: knifes and cigarettes are objects of assimilation. Mirrors stand in for character duality and shoes for repressed love.