‘JOJO RABBIT’ AND THE LIGHTER SIDE OF NAZI GERMANY
Humor is tragedy plus time,” Mark Twain once observed. That theory gets tested all the time by comedians, and for New Zealand director Taika Waititi, the ultimate test has to be Nazi Germany. His dramedy Jojo Rabbit takes off from a NZ novel called Caging Skies to lampoon the final days of WWII, where a young boy in Hitler Youth Camp, Johannes “Jojo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), has an imaginary friend who looks and sounds a lot like the Führer. But this Hitler is played for laughs — he runs, jumps, frolics, teases and jokes with young Jojo, who looks up to him as a father figure. (His own father is dead, and his mom, played by Scarlett Johansson, is preternaturally wise and progressive.) Waititi (director of smash hit Thor:
Ragnarok) jokes that he ended up playing Hitler himself after “I scoured the earth for the perfect actor,” and applies the sort of Austrian accent you’d find in What We
Do in the Shadows. It mostly works. Waititi’s script takes a turn when Jojo discovers his mom is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic (Thomasin McKenzie, from
Leave No Trace). Sam Rockwell emerges as a disaffected Hitler Youth Camp counselor, Rebel Wilson is funny/scary as a true Nazi believer, and Stephen Merchant is chilling as an SS officer. The jokes, as you’d imagine, lean towards the “plus time” end of the spectrum: it’s funny now, because the Nazis failed so badly.
Waititi, who has considerable comic gifts, goes for a Wes Anderson feel, and he’s genuinely great at directing kids, especially Archie Yates, playing Jojo’s pudgy friend Yorgi who gets promoted to Nazi soldier. There’s a deadpan delivery to the lines that recalls The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonlight Kingdom. Yet Jojo Rabbit also walks a dangerous tightrope between humor and tragedy and sometimes misses a step. The tone is so lighthearted in the first half that the dark turns of the second can feel a little abrupt and unearned. There’s a glibness to this Nazi Germany, where we rarely see actual victims (except in one notable public setting). Instead, we get a journey into Nazi propaganda through Jojo’s scrapbook, full of outrageous cartoons demonizing Jews. Again, very Wes Anderson. Fortunately, young actor Davis is up to the challenge of this coming-of-age comedy, audacious and risky as it is. And it’s hard to completely dismiss a Nazi comedy that’s bracketed by the Beatles’ I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Bowie’s Heroes, both sung in German.