Jojo Rabbit (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Jojo Rabbit (2019) – T. Waititi

It may seem a brazen or tasteless move to make a comedy about the Holocaust but Kiwi director Taiki Waititi pulls it off – and he wasn’t the first: Mel Brooks joked about Springtime for Hitler in The Producers (1967), Jerry Lewis’s unfinished The Day the Clown Cried (1972) is embargoed until 2024, and of course, Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1997) won some Oscars with its sentimental comedy taking place in an actual concentration camp.  Waititi’s film has more of a Diary of Anne Frank slant with a young Hitler youth boy (Roman Griffin Davis) whose father is away (purportedly at the front) discovering that his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in a hidden room upstairs.  Waititi himself plays the boy’s imaginary friend Adolf – yes, that Adolf but a lot more goofy than you would expect (but still a jerk who is prejudiced against those who are different).  The vibe here is similar to Wes Anderson’s films – colourful and with pop songs (both Beatles and Bowie singing in German) – which flies in the face of the content.  True, things do head in a sentimental direction (albeit with some jarring events) but Waititi and his writers use their comedic impulses wisely and stick it to the Fuhrer while also championing the stigmatised (Sam Rockwell is great as a subversively supportive Nazi officer).  They also demonstrate some insight into how a fatherless young boy might feel.  I had my doubts but Waititi succeeds at helping us to never forget the atrocities of the 20^th century while being cute and funny at the same time.