GOLD STANDARD

Oscar’s best picture list is wide open, for now. Will ‘Parasite’ or ‘The Farewell’ make the cut?

“Jojo Rabbit” as an Oscar nominee? You bet. Don’t count out the crowd-pleaser.

>>>Flying home from the Toronto International Film Festival, I was talking about this year’s Oscar race with an editor from another publication. He told me his boss believed that “Jojo Rabbit,” the strange, slapstick story of a Hitler Youth member coming to realize the awful truth of his hateful beliefs, would win best picture. ¶ I shook my head. My reply: “Pfffft. It’s not even going to be nominated.” ¶ Four days later, the Toronto festival announced that “Jojo Rabbit” had won its coveted People’s Choice Award, prompting me to rewrite the introduction of an early look at this year’s awards season landscape and rethink everything I thought I knew about “Jojo Rabbit.”

Ten of the last 11 movies to win Toronto’s People’s Choice Award — voted on by festivalgoers — went on to earn best picture Oscar nominations. “Green Book” took the Toronto honor last year and then won everything else, including the Oscar. It was a remarkable run that astounded many, angered some and left me surprised that such a conventional crowd-pleaser could prevail with an academy that has so radically changed and expanded its membership the last few years.

“Green Book” was my Oscar blind spot. And I have a feeling that “Jojo Rabbit” might be that movie this year. I saw it in August, shortly before talking with its writer-director, Taika Waititi, who also plays Hitler in the movie.

Waititi added the Hitler character as a comic foil because he didn’t want “Jojo Rabbit” to be a sad Holocaust movie. It isn’t, though there is a scene, signaled by a fluttering butterfly, that will move you to either tears or anger, depending on your ability to stomach shameless manipulation.

The idea of the movie is undeniably audacious: A 10-year-old Nazi whose best friend is an imaginary, goofball Hitler falls in love with an older Jewish girl and learns the error of his ways. But Waititi never quite lands on a

Kimberley French 20th Century Fox Film Corp. IS TAIKA WAITITI’S “Jojo Rabbit” this year’s “Green Book,” the best picture winner some didn’t see coming? Its major festival awards indicate that it might be.