Newport This Week

Uneasy Laughs Make ‘Jojo Rabbit’ a Mixed Bag

FILM REVIEW


Roman Griffin Davis, Taika Waititi and Scarlett Johansson star in “Jojo Rabbit,” opening Nov. 15 at the Jane Pickens Theater.

Roman Griffin Davis, Taika Waititi and Scarlett Johansson star in “Jojo Rabbit,” opening Nov. 15 at the Jane Pickens Theater.

One of the most buzzed-about films at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival was popular New Zealand director Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit,” which opens Nov. 15 at the Jane Pickens Theater. The film earned an enthusiastic ovation from the large audience at its premiere and won the TIFF’s coveted audience award, but it quickly divided critics. Some compared Waititi’s Nazi Germany-set dramedy to Roberto Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful” (1997), a high wire act of humor and pathos set during one of the darkest periods in history.

“Jojo Rabbit” takes place in 1944 Germany (the movie was shot in the Czech Republic) and is a coming-of-age tale about a German boy and aspiring Nazi named Johannes, nicknamed Jojo (played by the terrific young actor Roman Griffin Davis). He’s an ardent member of Hitler youth, spouting the propaganda about Jews that he’s been indoctrinated with at a training camp deep in the forest that seems modeled on the bucolic summer camp in director Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom.” The camp is overseen by the buffoonish Capt. Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell) and Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson), both caricatures.

Loren King is an arts and entertainment writer whose work appears regularly in The Boston Globe and other publications.

Loren King is an arts and entertainment writer whose work appears regularly in The Boston Globe and other publications.

Anderson’s visual and tonal sensibilities continue to influence the film, especially once Jojo is back home in his candy-colored village. His father has disappeared while fighting alongside the Allies, and lonely Jojo engages in conversations with his imaginary friend, a blundering, sputtering, cartoonish Adolf Hitler, who’s played by Waititi himself.

There is a lot to like about “Jojo Rabbit,” not the least of which is Waititi’s bold, brave attempt at an irreverent skewering of the mindless acceptance of dehumanization. But tone is everything with risky material. Waititi’s attempt to balance farcical humor–the tagline for the film is “an anti-hate satire,” whatever that means–against a very real backdrop of Nazi authoritarianism and atrocities will make many viewers uncomfortable at best.

It’s not that Hitler and Nazis are not fair comic game. Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” and Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not to Be” are masterpieces made during the Nazi era. The great Mel Brooks spun comic gold with “The Producers,” a film that serves as obvious inspiration for “Jojo Rabbit.”

Waititi may be best known for directing the superhero blockbuster “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017), but he’s beloved by a mostly young following for his irreverent indies, including the vampire satire “What We Do in the Shadows” (2014) and the New Zealand-set coming of age dramedy “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (2016). He is a gifted filmmaker/ actor with a distinct voice, but he’s no Brooks, Chaplin or Lubitsch, at least not yet.

Jojo’s views start to change when he discovers that his beloved mother, Rosie Betzler (Scarlett Johansson), is hiding a young Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), behind the kitchen wall in their home. Jojo’s relationship with his mother is a highlight of the film, aided by a performance from Johansson that mixes charm and sorrow.

Rosie subtly challenges her son’s beliefs while trying not to antagonize the Nazi stormtroopers in the village. It’s a delicate balance that Rosie walks in the stylish two-tone shoes that will figure in a haunting moment later in the film when Waititi’s light touch takes a darker turn.

McKenzie, who made her mark last year in “Without a Trace,” is the film’s heart and power, along with Johansson, which makes the discomfort that the story provokes more palpable. Elsa is an Anne Frank figure who is self-aware, possessing a world-weary sadness as she matter-of-factly schools Jojo that, no, Jews don’t have horns. The fact that Jojo is an innocent child repeating such absurd things makes them somewhat comical; still, an orchestrated propaganda effort to dehumanize Jews makes it hard to laugh at the effects of lies and hate.

“Jojo Rabbit” has hits and misses. There are chuckles instead of belly laughs and a gentle melancholy rather than rage or despair. There’s no clear comic point or dark satire, despite the advertising tagline. The very real horrors of the war and the Nazi atrocities are kept at a distance.

Ferne Pearlstein’s illuminating 2017 documentary “The Last Laugh,” which is available on Amazon and worth streaming, examines whether it is possible, and acceptable, to make jokes about the Holocaust, using material by predominately Jewish comics such as Brooks, Joan Rivers and Sarah Silverman as examples of those who have done so, successfully or not. Brooks, interviewed in the film, says yes, as long as the jokes work. They don’t always work in “Jojo Rabbit.” But I’m still eager to see what Waititi does next.

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