Springtime for Hitler

Rating: 7/10 (29 February 2020)

"Jojo Rabbit" follows in the rich tradition of making buffoons out of Hitler and Nazis, from Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" (1940), Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Mel Brooks's "The Producers" (1967). And, from the start, it's a hilarious successor to those films. The opening credits roll over a montage ludicrously equating Hitler with the Beatles. Beyond the jokes, however, is where I find the picture falters. While some critics appear to fret over the definition of "satire" and beg for a lecture that readily applies to today's politics, all of that is rather irrelevant to Taika Waititi's actual movie. Today, we're far removed from WWII; it's no longer the present of Chaplin and Lubitsch's films or part of mainstream living memory as with Brooks. The historical horrors of Nazi Germany are conspicuously absent from "Jojo Rabbit"--reduced to and rendered mostly by hangings in a town square. Meanwhile, the ground has been softened for a cartoonish Hitler and Nazis recently by re-subtitled videos on YouTube of a scene from "Downfall" (2004) or a movie such as "Look Who's Back," (2015) featuring a Hitler interacting with modern Germans, as well as by everything from "Hogan's Heroes" to those finer films by Chaplin, Lubitsch and Brooks. There's hardly anything enlightening or subversive about the humor here, but it's the picture's inevitable sentimentality and derivative style that are the bigger shortcomings.
I've only seen two of his movies thus far, but it's striking how much Waititi rips off from others' movies. His MCU entry, "Thor: Ragnarok" (2017) stylistically plays like the third installment to the "Guardians of the Galaxy" series, what with the goofball posing to popular music, not to mention the teaming up of misfit prisoners, violent family dynamics and threat of planetary destruction. Now, in this Chaplin-Lubitsch-Brooks-esque black comedy, or satire, or what have you, he lifts the look and sound of Wes Anderson's pictures. Others have aptly compared the Hitler Youth bits and coming-of-age story here to "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012), but with war-mongering white supremacists. Moreover, actors play cute, are framed centrally for cuts back and fourth or are otherwise symmetrically lined up for the camera, bright colors pop, the mood veers wildly between comedic excess and sentimentality, all underscored, again, by popular music, from the Beatles onward. Ironically, Anderson's own picture to be set in the era of WWII, "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014), is an exception musically among his oeuvre. Both directors even include some good cigarette jokes. Jojo's imaginary friend Hitler repeatedly offering the boy a smoke might be the funniest bit regarding cancer sticks that I recall since Bill Murray would suck on up to two of them at a time in "Rushmore" (1998).
Never mind that the real Hitler was the original former smoker turned anti-smoking Nazi. Or that Hitler's vegetarianism is ignored here in favor of his imaginary version feasting on unicorn heads, or that much of Waititi's interpretation of him revolves around anachronisms. This is historical revisionism to the point of pop-culture memes. The bigoted boy scout, Jojo's other secret friend besides silly fÃ¼hrer is, as a Jewish girl living in his attic, helping him to compose a book (in this case, one full of anti-Semitic tropes), a simplistic variation on Anne Frank. There's also the business of dance standing in for freedom here. It pales in comparison to the artistic reflexivity that lifted the works of Chaplin, Lubitsch and Brooks. Chaplin exploited the duality inherent in cinema and the dramedy of humor and horror of his scenario by playing dual roles. Lubitsch did likewise with the play-within-play structure, of actors playing actors. Ditto Brooks. All included sham Hitlers. Waititi's Hitler, on the other hand, is simply imaginary--reflecting the ideology Jojo has absorbed from the culture and propaganda of Nazi Germany. Minus the bigotry of it all, it's not unlike what Waititi has done in his cinematic copycatting. And, in the end, all we get is a trite moral from the boy's budding friendship with the girl in his attic, to not hate... and dance, or something.
Regardless, I still enjoyed "Jojo Rabbit." The comedy is naturally not as edgy as when Chaplin, Lubitsch and Brooks made Nazis the butt of jokes, but even when the humor here is juvenile, it tends to be enough over-the-top to remain fun. Scarlett Johansson is especially a delight in her Oscar-nominated role--perhaps, particularly because hers is the only character that seems to acknowledge the horrors perpetrated by the Third Reich, although she, too, frolics about in the spring with her son, Jojo. Newcomer Roman Griffith Davis, as Jojo, is impressive, besides also looking convincingly like he could be related to Johansson. The rest of the cast is serviceable, including Sam Rockwell reprising his Oscar-winning violent racist who performs a redemptive act of kindness for another from "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" (2017). If the characters here weren't mostly reused caricatures, though, and if Jojo running around when the war finally does reach his sleepy village didn't resemble Corporal Upham hiding throughout a recycled set from "Saving Private Ryan" (1999), if Waititi didn't crib so much from Anderson and others in general and resort to a predictably sugary denouement, I wouldn't be ambivalent in my enjoyment.