Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jojo Rabbit’ on HBO, in Which Taika Waititi Satirizes Nazi Nonsense (and Nabbed an Oscar)

Now on HBO, Jojo Rabbit is a critically divisive, crowd-pleasing, satirical, audacious, comically tragic, Oscar-baiting, Oscar-winning and therefore very, very interesting film. After establishing himself with some oddball indies (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, What We Do in the Shadows) and jumping to Marvel Cinematic Universe superstardom via Thor: Ragnarok, Taikia Waititi wrote, directed and starred in this movie set in the final days of Nazi Germany, playing Adolf Hitler himself, and eventually putting the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar on his mantel. Whether the film is good or bad is almost beside the point, because to read the above conglomeration of come-hither facts and believe it’s not worth watching sounds like utter lunacy to me.

JOJO RABBIT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Joining the Hitler Youth in 1945 would be an act of imbecilic delusional stupidity, not just because you’d be on the abjectly immoral side of World War II, but because by then, the Nazis were getting their asses kicked. But members of that racist Boy Scout organization were impressionable juveniles with not-yet-fully-formed brains who therefore didn’t know any better, not that they had any choice. This is the case with Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), a 10-year-old whose father is a soldier (and deserter, apparently) and who proclaims himself a hardcore Jew-hater and lover of violence who’d love to be a member of Hitler’s personal guard when he grows up and who also sees Hitler (Waititi) in his bedroom, where they share many conversations about manhood and suchlike. And yet, Jojo can’t kill a rabbit upon his Hitler Youth camp counselors’ insistence, and he’s teased and teased and teased, until a mishap with a grenade, and then he’s teased even more for being scarred and “ugly.”

So a mostly convalescent and limping Jojo is tasked with distributing leaflets and pasting posters to poles by his hopeless, and hopelessly barely closeted, superior, Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell) — a demoralizing thing considering he really would rather fulfill his Aryan destiny by joining his prepubescent peers on the frontlines of battle. He lives with his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), who spends her days… well, Jojo isn’t quite sure, mostly because he’s young and stupid, but we, being older and aware of our stupidity, kind of know, because when they see traitors dangling from nooses in the city square, he asks, “What did they do?” and she replies mournfully, “They did what they could.”

Rosie is a wonderful human being, complex and vibrant. She loves her son, she loves to dance, she loves to love; she’s also pragmatic, observant and wickedly intelligent. In other words, she’s a terrible Nazi, and strangely accepting of Jojo’s fanaticism, possibly because she knows 10-year-old boys have flings of interest and then move on, and grow up, and learn things like decency and compassion, unless you’re the exception, e.g., Hitler, who’s perpetually stunted, an intellectual infant in jackboots and Napoleon pants. She masks, and possibly merely accepts, the heartbreak of having lost Jojo’s older sister by undisclosed means, an event that sure seems to have informed why Jojo hears noises upstairs from the attic crawlspace, where Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) hides from persecution and/or death camps — and not because she’s a devilish Jew invading the domicile of superior blonde people, but because Rosie hid her in there.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Producers, of course. Also Moonrise Kingdom, Inglourious Basterds, The Death of Stalin, A Christmas Story and E.T..

Performance Worth Watching: Johansson’s performance — Oscar-nominated, for what it’s worth — is nuanced in its vibrancy. Her every line-reading and gesture is the act of a woman trying to maintain focus on the love and sparkle of life, on her steadfast morality, despite living in a world of crushing vicissitude. The characterization is big and charismatic, but also intensely detailed. She’s a joy to watch.

Memorable Dialogue: Hitler: “Remember, a Jew living in your wall is better than two Jews flying around with their bat wings, climbing up and down chimneys eating innocent Nazis.”

Also, Rosie: “You drink. Champagne if you’re happy. Champagne if you’re sad. You drive a car. Gamble if you want. Own diamonds. Learn how to fire a gun. You travel to Morocco. Take up lovers. Make them suffer. You look a tiger in the eye. And trust without fear. That’s what it is to be a woman.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Waititi’s masterstroke here is maintaining the perspective of a 10-year-old, a period of human development when the innocent brain is as susceptible to washing as it is to perceiving the world and its many horrors as a place of abstract, comic absurdity. Critics of Jojo Rabbit deriding its lack of seriousness in the face of catastrophe perhaps miss how the very, very young Jojo is clearly incapable of understanding the physical and ideological enormity of the conflict.

His point-of-view is influenced heavily by Waititi’s manifestation of Hitler, who’s a clown in an American Indian headdress, eating unicorn meat on a silver platter, describing Jews in extravagantly farcical terms and barking lunatic decrees with the spittle-flinging, terrifying fury we’ve seen in old documentary footage. The terrifying, petulant fury of the eternal child, possibly the product of others’ cruelty. Waititi isn’t afraid to dip a spoon into the darkness with his otherwise dopey Hitler characterization; maybe it’s arch and flippant, maybe it’s broad and pandering, but maybe it’s also deeply satisfying once you cease a defensive posture.

The heart of the film is its contrast of poisonous masculinity, in the form of the ultimate babyman himself, Hitler, and the loving, nurturing spirit of femininity. It poses no question as to which is more virtuous. Johansson makes a profound moment of a wonderfully written scene in which Rosie smears soot on her face like a beard in order to act the part of Jojo’s father; in character, she barks at Jojo and then laments doing so, a sign of a man, a Nazi soldier, in a crisis of conscience. Rosie has no such inner conflict. She can only show her son the war inside his father, and hope he understands. I think he does, as he softens his view of the teenage Jew hiding upstairs, given rich intricacy of character by McKenzie (who’s a wonderment in 2018’s Leave No Trace). The implication here is, the great hardship of the family isn’t the missing father — rather, the loss of Jojo’s sister, and the potential ambrosial richness of Elsa as her symbolic replacement.

With all this said and in mind, Jojo Rabbit is a goddamned delight. What at first seems like a collection of terrific scenes of profundity, comedy and profound comedy became, on my second viewing, tighter tonally and thematically, especially through its necessary, possibly perfunctory third-act shift to a more forlorn timbre. Waititi makes great satire by soundtracking a montage of cavorting Hitler Youthies with Tom Waits’ I Don’t Wanna Grow Up. He casts Rockwell and Alfie Allen as nearly-kissing Nazis, Archie Yates as Jojo’s wide-eyed pollyanna-about-the-Reich best pal and Rebel Wilson as a throwaway fraulein joke-character, and they’re all delightfully spoofy. When the Gestapo knocks, one must Heil-Hitler all the others in a ridiculous round-robin of forced cultic fascism (“I wish more of our boys had your blind fanaticism,” one creepy Gestapo dummkopf says of Jojo).

The movie looks great, clips along fleet of foot on the wind of a quick-witted script; it’s worth noting that the bevy of overwrought German accents is part of the joke. All this, because Waititi wanted to tell a story that’s accessible and meaningful. It surely wouldn’t make sense to make a film about inclusivity and not be inclusive itself.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Jojo Rabbit is consistently funny, but also consistently poignant, layered with meaning and sneakily feminist.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Jojo Rabbit on HBO Max

Watch Jojo Rabbit on HBO