Let’s pretend we’re bunny rabbits
By: Jorge Mourinha
Tags: Jojo Rabbit, World War II, Film, Film Reviews, Satire

Let’s pretend we’re bunny rabbits

Much has been said of JOJO RABBIT; let’s just say it has its heart in the right place while wanting to have its cake and eat it too

JOJO RABBIT, US/New Zealand 2019, 108 minutes. Starring Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Taika Waititi, Rebel Wilson, Alfie Allen, Stephen Merchant, Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson. Directed and written by Taika Waititi, based on the novel CAGING SKIES by Christine Leunens. Fox Searchlight Pictures

“You’re not a Nazi! You’re a ten-year old boy who likes uniforms and wants to belong to a club.” There, in a nutshell, is Jojo Rabbit: the story of a kid who is seduced by evil under false pretenses, and, like Pinocchio as he heads into Toyland, finds out later — much too late — what he signed up for.

Jojo, real name Johannes (Roman Griffin Davis), is an awkward tyke living in a small German town in the final days of WWII; his father is away at war and he and his mother (Scarlett Johansson) grieve for an older sister. And Jojo is a fanatic little Nazi who is excited about joining the Hitler Youth; partly because he has been seduced by the sturm und drang presentation, partly because, being a scrawny type, he wants to be accepted by his peers. It’s a classic schoolboy dilemma — with a political twist.

From the very beginning, Taika Waititi’s film, a loose adaptation of a novel by Christine Leunens, presents itself as a satire —it’s there in the way that the Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand (here presented in its German-language recording) underscores the credits’ archival footage of Nazi rallies, how it shows that Hitler’s rise to power was as confounding as the hysteria that surrounded the Beatles’ rise to stardom. It remains one of history’s greatest mysteries how the Germans allowed themselves to be indoctrinated by “fake news”, rumours and outright lies cleverly packaged by cynical, power-hungry opportunists—a “bread-and-circuses” situation that snowballed into a catastrophe that changed the world.

Obviously, Roberto Benigni’s much-discussed Life is Beautiful comes to mind, but that was less of a satire and more of a humanist comedy set in a concentration camp, the main stage of Hitler’s evil. Jojo Rabbit does not go as far in that sense, preferring to settle for Sacha Baron Cohen-ish post-post-modernism that runs the risk of being too clever and glib for its own good. And while the Kiwi actor/director is definitely aware he’s treading on booby-trapped territory, his engagement with the symbolism and the facade of ideology is certainly justified by its satirical aims, as well as potently amplified by the context in which it is made.

Jojo, in effect, is a split personality who embraces Nazism with that same childish eagerness that any ten-year old would feel, say, in joining a soccer team or the Boy Scouts (and the Hitler Youth he joins in the film does look like a mostly over-ideologised lot of mostly harmless kids out for a lark in the countryside). Though he may look like a true believer, he is also innocent enough to not yet understand the true consequences of his actions, but smart enough to recognise something’s not quite right.

But being aware that a WWII satire is a loaded entity and winking regularly to the viewer doesn’t mean Waititi gets it totally right, and, indeed, he wouldn’t be the first to falter when dealing with such a theme. Jojo Rabbit does conform to some historical truth, and makes it easy to point out how cynicism and fanaticism mingled in the final days of WWII. The local Nazis run the gamut: Sam Rockwell’s weary captain Klenzendorf seems to have been caught in something that overtook him, while Rebel Wilson shows up as a fanatic Aryan valkyrie-maiden (Alfie Allen’s faithful adjutant suggests a homoerotic tension with Rockwell the film never really develops). But these characters are essentially surplus to requirements.

Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo, Taika Waititi as Hitler and Scarlett Johansson as Rosie. Credit: Petr Stuna/Fox Searchlight Pictures

The conceptual coup of the satire lies at first in Waititi’s own presence playing Adolf Hitler, as an imaginary confidant of Jojo who shows up to deliver pep talks and egg him on to greater heights. The actor/director/screenwriter projects “Adolf” as a figure out of The Producers, an insecure cabaret artiste playing at being emperor who slowly becomes more menacing, and has fun with the part. Yet the film’s actual heart, revealed only as it goes on, lies in Jojo’s relationship with both his loving mother, Rosie, whom we suspect is far from being a Nazi supporter and is played with fantastic sensitivity and a touching joie de vivre by Johansson, and the fugitive Jewish teenager he finds hidden in the house.

Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), the runaway his mother hides in the late sister’s bedroom, develops initially a confrontational relationship with Jojo, in a Calvin/Susie kind of way. But she also turns out to become a surrogate sister, a replacement for the lost Inge (we never really know what happened to her) and the one beacon that will help Jojo move resolutely ahead. And it’s in their slow opening to each other, as Elsa opens Jojo’s eyes and he becomes more and more aware of the cracks in the pavement, that Jojo Rabbit is at its best and most moving — much helped by the pitch-perfect performances of McKenzie and Davis.

Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo and Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa. Credit: Petr Stuna/Fox Searchlight Pictures

Had the film eschewed more of the slapstick tropes —with the would-be Chaplinesque take on the complete blundering idiocy of the Nazis — that beating heart might have been brought to the fore in a way that would do justice to its characters. But Waititi didn’t want to make just another sensitive WWII drama; he wanted to make it relatable to our days of controversy and polarization.

In that sense, Jojo Rabbit is a sort of modern “problem picture”, but despite everyone’s commitment it’s really not bringing anything new to the table: it wants to have its cake and eat it too, be both a biting satire and an uplifting teenage drama, but it lacks the secret sauce that would make it work. Is it Waititi’s merely illustrative direction (though he does have a way with actors), or is it the fact that the film claims a specific historical context only to then reduce it to a very simplistic, two-dimensional story of the Good vs. the Evil Stupid? Or both?

Jojo Rabbit is hardly a dumb movie. It actually has its heart in the right place and knows what it wants to say: that deep down we’re all just ten-year old boys who want to belong to a club. It just doesn’t necessarily find the right way to do it.