Satire isn’t the easiest genre to get right. It is far too easy to go overboard and miss the target, coming across too silly or too serious, not quite hitting the fine line in the middle where the best satires live. Creating a great satire about a subject that really isn’t funny at all is even harder. Not everyone can make a Blazing Saddles and have it come across as one of the greatest satires of all time. Yet even with Blazing Saddles, some audiences just didn’t get it. I have seen that film in an audience where people got up and left because they found the material offensive and in poor taste, completely missing the whole point of it.
Jojo Rabbit didn’t start out as a satire. It began life as the novel Caging Skies by Christine Leunens about a young boy in Vienna who is a member of the Hitler Youth only to discover a Jew hiding in the walls of his home. This novel was nominated for the Prix Médicis étranger award in France in 2007 and the Prix du roman Fnac the following year. The sharp, biting satire was not there in the novel, nor was it present in the 2017 play that was adapted from the book.
The book wasn’t expected to be a success, initially. Written with North American audiences in mind, it failed to find a distributor. No one was willing to publish it until it finally found a French publisher willing to take a chance, translating it to their language and releasing it there. It wasn’t until the upcoming release of the film adaptation that it finally got a release in America.
Film director Taika Waititi had the idea to adapt Caging Skies all the way back in 2010 when his mother introduced him to the book. The story, told through the perspective of a young boy, fascinated him as he was tired of seeing World War II movies focusing on the soldiers fighting in it. Seeing war through the eyes of a child was hardly new, though. Hope and Glory did the same thing with comedic results in the mid-1980s. But Taika Waititi’s sensibilities were such that he amplified the comedic elements, using them to soften the blow of Nazism to the point that some criticized it on that basis alone. Some felt that there should not be “good Nazis” in our fiction because it lightens up our demonizing of them, something they don’t deserve. Such arguments forget that what we are seeing on screen is filtered through the perspective of a ten-year-old boy and may not reflect what is actually happening. While a great deal of truth is filtered through that perspective, we cannot readily accept everything at face value.
When we are introduced to this ten-year-old boy, Johannes “Jojo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), he is psyching himself up to go off to Hitler Youth Camp where he can learn to be a good Nazi for Germany and for his idol and imaginary friend, Adolph Hitler (Taika Waititi). At this camp, led by the disgraced and demoted Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), his partner and possible lover, uterooffizier Freddy Finkel (Alfie Allen), and Fräulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson), Jojo finds himself bullied by the older boys who call him cowardly like a rabbit, giving him the nickname “Jojo Rabbit”. Determined to prove them wrong, he runs into a live demonstration of the use of hand grenades, steals one from out of the hands of Klenzendorf, and throws it. But it hits a tree, bounces back, and detonates at his feet, causing damage to his legs and his face.
Jojo lives alone with his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), while his father is allegedly away fighting in Italy. She doesn’t see Germany the same way that he does but fears that if she tries to steer him away from his beliefs in Hitler and the Nazis, then he will become a target of the reich. Instead, she allows him to go on believing the way that he does while trying to be a good parent during these difficult times. One day, he comes home and discovers that, hidden in the walls of the upstairs, is a young Jewish girl, Elsa Korr (Thomasin McKenzie). If he exposes her, his mother will be killed, but he fears her, too, believing in the propaganda he has been exposed to over the last few years.
Charlie Chaplin mentioned once that had he known the true atrocities of the Nazis at the time, he never would have made The Great Dictator. Truthfully, though, he still should have. Laughing at the stupidity of this kind of hatred is a way to cope with it and bring to light just how dumb having such viewpoints is. Mel Brooks knew that when he made Blazing Saddles, a film that laughed in the face at the very notion of racism. Taika Waititi knows this, too, and doesn’t shy away from exposing the stupidity of hatred for the Jews.
Jojo initially buys into these beliefs, even those that are so outlandish that it seems ridiculous that anyone would believe them; beliefs like that Jewish people have horns or can read minds and hypnotize people with their eyes. Once it becomes obvious that he cannot afford to expose the existence of Elsa to the SS, he makes a bargain with her to tell him all about the Jewish people’s strange abilities, something he compiles into a handwritten book he calls Yoo Hoo Jude.
Hitler’s regime didn’t just fight against the Jews, though. They also discriminated against the homosexuals, too, which makes the characters of Klenzendorf and Finkel so fascinating. These two are obviously a couple, hiding their relationship while serving the SS. While Finkel is played up more flamboyantly, Klenzendorf is given more of a real character, including an arch. He begins the film leading the youth camp, bemoaning an injury that cost him his eye and his position in the army. By the end, he has been demoted several times and ends the film giving his life to protect Jojo from the American and Russian armies that have taken over Berlin. While he still wears the swastika, his heart doesn’t seem to be in the war or in the persecution of the Jews.
The same cannot be said about Fräulein Rahm, who is portrayed as an overly zealous supporter of the Führer. She boasts having 18 children for Germany and champions book burnings and suicide bombings. Her character is so over-the-top that, though what she is saying and doing is appalling, we cannot take it seriously. Rebel Wilson is one of those comedians who can be polarizing and one-note, but here she is fitting the tone of this picture well.
While much of this film is silly and absurd, it would fail overall were it not for its ability to pull all that back and be serious, too. There is a moment late in the film that is so serious and sad that audiences were shocked into tears when it was first revealed. And Taika teases the moment for a bit before abruptly showing us what has happened. This is so well done and brings back home the true nature of the Nazis in this film that has largely played them up for laughs up to this point. It’s a harsh reminder that there are real stakes at play here, just in case we forgot.
Emotions and motivations are complicated things. This is even more so in the hearts and minds of the young. We see Jojo grow as a person and mature as he experiences not only the war going on around him but his growing connection with Elsa. We can see that growth not only in his interactions with her and his mother but also in how he responds to his imaginary friend Hitler. By the end of the film, he is ready and able to kick that “friend” to the curb.
The tone of this film can be off-putting to some, but it needn’t be. It’s important to laugh at the absurd sometimes; it helps us get past these things. It also helps us understand the callowness of youth and how they look at the world. Jojo starts the film believing what he has been told by the others around him, especially the other boys. So, too, does his friend Yorki (Archie Yates), an overweight boy he sometimes hangs out with. But Yorki is also perfectly willing to not accept what doesn’t seem right to him, such as the demonizing of the Jews by the adults. When he sees some being brought in, he sees that they are no different as a people than he is. He also is excited when Jojo tells him he has a Jewish girlfriend, referring to Elsa as such. Young minds can be shaped in a way that adults often cannot.
Jojo Rabbit is not afraid to play up the humor as well as the darkness. It does so with a deftness that really showcases what Taika Waititi can do when he really cares about a project. This was reflected at the Oscars that following year when it was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for the adapted screenplay. This is a well-written film, reined in by a director who knew he had a difficult task ahead of him in making a film that mocks the very ideals of Nazism while also telling a poignant tale about a boy who learns that all he was brainwashed into believing was lies. It’s a brilliant bit of satire and perhaps the best Taika Waititi has ever been, in front of and behind the camera.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Carthew Neal, Taika Waititi, and Chelsea Winstanley
Best Supporting Actress: Scarlett Johansson
Best Adapted Screenplay: Taika Waititi (won)
Best Costume Design: Mayes C. Rubeo
Best Film Editing: Tom Eagles
Best Production Design: Ray Vincent and Nora Sopková
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Release Date: October 18, 2019
Running Time: 108 minutes
Rated PG-13
Starring: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Taika Waititi, Rebel Wilson, Stephen Merchant, Alfie Allen, Sam Rockwell, and Scarlett Johansson
Directed by: Taika Waititi
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