“You could teach me to be cruel/Like the way they torture you/Teach me to be cruel/Like the way they torture you/It’s alright, twist the knife,” The Chromatics sing on “Twist the Knife,” from their recently released Closer to Grey. Something in the lyrics reminding one of, believe it or not, Adolf Hitler, or at least how he is comedically portrayed by Taika Waititi (who, of course, also directed and co-wrote with Carthew Neal and Chelsea Winstanley) in Jojo Rabbit. The titular character–in Roman Griffin Davis’ first role at age eleven–is a devout worshipper of all things Nazi, therefore, the “ruling god” of it all, Hitler, who, incidentally, provides counsel as his imaginary friend. He’s not exactly the cuddliest sort, but he’s less severe than one would expect.
Like when he tells Jojo not to fret over his mocking new nickname received at a Hitler Youth camp after he can’t bring himself to snap a rabbit’s head when instructed to kill it. Sensitive beneath his veneer of Nazi loyalty, Jojo (formerly Johannes Betzler before the nickname reared its head) finds few people to relate to. Except his own version of Hitler, who assures him that he was picked on too, and look how he turned out. Ah yes, let’s talk about that. Hitler’s early life, peppered with so many disappointments, losses and rejections surely led to him becoming one of history’s most illustrious monsters thanks to an intense desire to claim a power he never felt he had in his youth. Starting with the stain of his father, Alois, being born illegitimately, later adopted by Johann Georg Hiedler (written as Georg Hitler in the register) when he married Alois’ mother, Maria Anna. Rumors that Alois was the illegitimate child of one of the affluent Jewish members of the household where Maria Anna worked could only have sprung that first initial seed of Adolf’s eventual contempt for Jews. For he didn’t exactly have warm feelings toward his father, who kiboshed his dream of going to art school. When Hitler finally did get the chance to apply to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, he was rejected twice. So yes, he knew something about being deemed inconsequential–or, if considered at all, balked at (especially for his distinct lower Bavarian dialect). Like Jojo, his German nationalism began at a young age, with he and his friends detesting Austrian rule over a multi-ethnic empire. It was a vitriol that would, in the end, form the basis for a career, since he had no concrete plans for one after art school didn’t work out.
Jojo Rabbit poignantly commences with “Komm gib mir deine Hand” (a.k.a. The Beatles singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in German) after a rousing pep talk from Hitler about how to deliver the best “Heil Hitler” intonation. Thus the film wields this underpinning allusion to Beatlemania as a means to express how fanaticism possesses many guises, and the sight of hands saluting Hitler and the Nazi party could be just as easily superimposed over a crown of teenage girls losing it over The Beatles. The statement being, there’s a tipping point when dogmatic “passion” for something turns harmful toward others. To the point of using anachronistic song choices for certain scenes, it reminds one of something Sofia Coppola would do (when she’s not making fashion house clip shows these days). Yet more than anything, Jojo Rabbit is saturated in the Wes Anderson aesthetic and tone. Just as another au courant piece of pop culture, Ryan Murphy’s series, The Politician. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that these writer-directors, despite being either the same age or slightly older (in Murphy’s case) were allowed the influence of Anderson’s 1996-2001 one-“three” punch of Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums to wash over them as they settled into what their own style might be at the outset of their careers, evolving into an inevitable return to the patent Andersonian look and vibe.
Of course, in Jojo Rabbit, the deadpan delivery required of a satire is paramount to carrying off the absurdist reimagining of the period. Then again, it was, indeed, an incongruous time, just like the one we’re living in now. And naturally, it’s Waititi’s intent to shed light on the harmful ramifications of white supremacist rhetoric being imparted into a nation’s future–that is to say, its children. While Jojo is devoted to the Nazi cause, it often seems he doesn’t really know why he believes what he believes, it’s simply been indoctrinated. Not by his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), who is an undercover member of the resistance. Though she would never tell that to Jojo, instead encouraging him to do the things that normal ten-year-old boys ought to do, like climb trees or dance. Jojo then informs her that: “Dancing is for people who don’t have jobs.” So, in short, people who are free. Nonetheless, Waititi, in another Andersonian moment, hones in once more on Rosie’s signature two-toned high heel saddle shoes (which will be integral later on) from her perch above him in this particular scene as she shows Jojo that it’s okay to dance, to be happy and free. That all this stern “enforcing”–this ramrod fixation on hatred and violence–is not worth one’s precious time. There is, to be sure, a touch of Life Is Beautiful influence in their parent-child dynamic, with Rosie ever-sure that things have got to get better, even if she knows she might not live to see that better world in taking the risk of undercuttingly fighting and defying the Nazis. Jojo’s absent father, too, is of a certain mystery to Jojo, who is told he is fighting for his country by some, and that he is a deserter by others.
Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell, the sort of Edward Norton as Scout Master Ward figure in Moonrise Kingdom) is about the only paternal presence in Jojo’s life, though he’s the one responsible for Jojo’s sudden facial disfigurement after he throws a grenade without permission at the Hitler Youth camp that boomerangs right back to him, settling at his feet before exploding and also resulting in a slight limp. One would think his commitment to Nazi sentiment would be slightly shaken after that, but no, turns out, it takes the discovery of Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), a young Jewess being hidden in their attic by Rosie–because one has to have that Anne Frank parallel–to tap into his humanity. Try as he might to combat his rapidly growing feelings of warmth toward her. Even if she plays into his brainwashed adversarial stance by telling him things he wants to hear, like how Jews love shiny objects and that she’ll finally grow her horns once she’s older. A back and forth repartee about the amount of great Germans versus great Jews (including Houdini, much to Jojo’s horrified surprise) also provides an at once iconic and comical moment, with the Germans and their beloved Rainer Maria Rilke providing a key quote in the final title card to the film: “Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” As well as when Elsa grabs hold of him and throws him to the floor, afterward remarking, “Superior race, huh?” All of it serves to detail the insanity of those (cough cough, white supremacists) who think there is actually something that separates them on an elevated level from other people. When Jojo asks Elsa what the Jews are like so he can write it down for his tell-all book, she quips, “We’re like you, except human.” Maybe that is the only difference between white supremacists–or supremacists of any kind–and everyone else. Most cockamamie of all, white people thinking they’re better than other types of white people, as exhibited by Yorki (Archie Yates), Jojo’s best friend, who speaks in trepidation of Russians being known for eating people and fucking dogs.
And as the stakes leading up to the bomb and gunfire-filled denouement that is the end of the war escalate, it seems Jojo has this very epiphany as he watches the carnage around him in slow motion. It is both sardonic cautionary tale of how hate is bred at an early age and instant classic in the satire and revisionist history genre. Neck and neck with Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Cue the “Waltz and Chorus” from Faust, which also happens to play in Jojo Rabbit as a signification of Germany’s deal with the devil that was Hitler. A deal that many countries since have made with other “sympathetic” (which you can’t spell without pathetic) “leaders” for their own nationalist reasons.
