Directed by: Taika Waititi
Starring: Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Scarlett Johansson, Taika Waititi
Rated PG-13, 108 minutes
Recently, I was standing in a buffet line in front of a pork dish when someone else in the line, who knew that I was raised Jewish, pointed to the meat and asked me, “You can’t eat that, can you?” It was an innocent, harmless question, but still an awkward one. His assumption, of course, was that I don’t eat pork because I keep kosher (I don’t), and so, while others passed around us in the line, I had to stop to explain that in fact, not all Jews keep kosher. The moment passed and we moved on, but the question, along with many similar encounters I’ve had in my life, came back to mind several times throughout “Jojo Rabbit.”
A World War II satire about an overzealous 10-year-old boy in the Hitler Youth who discovers a Jewish girl hiding in his house, “Jojo Rabbit” builds its version of Nazi Germany not through scenes of military combat or concentration camps or grim-faced adults, but through the colorful, wide-eyed perspective of children asking pointed and ridiculous questions. The boy, Jojo (first-time actor Roman Griffin Davis), needles the girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie, “The King”), with a steady barrage of questions about Jews, many of them loaded questions based on the outrageous lies he’s been fed. Forced to speak on behalf of all Jewish people, Elsa humors him, surprisingly, giving Jojo Gorey-esque tidbits about Jews: they live in caves, they’re allergic to bread, they sleep hanging upside-down, like bats.
Her willingness to respond to Jojo’s absurd questions with absurd answers is one of the many striking elements that make up the universe of “Jojo Rabbit,” though certainly not the most outlandish. Jojo’s imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler himself (played flamboyantly by director Taika Waititi), while his best friend in real life, a pudgy little boy named Yorki, gets himself drafted into combat and shows up sporadically wielding larger and larger weapons. Jojo’s mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson, “Avengers: Endgame”), smears ash on her face in imitation of her husband’s beard, in order to make Jojo’s father seem less absent; Jojo writes fake letters from Elsa’s fiancé and reads them to her through the wall she lives behind.
These details, all charmingly precise, are a balm for the movie’s more sinister elements. After all, our protagonist is a Nazi, a radicalized devotee who practices his “Heil Hitler” in the mirror and dreams of being invited to dine with the Führer, much to his mother’s silent horror. And while Jojo’s enthusiasm reads as boyish and naive, there’s an undercurrent flowing around him that takes it seriously. In one scene, Elsa, pretending to be Jojo’s sister, endures a “Heil Hitler” greeting from a group of Nazis and must offer her own greeting back. A scaffold stands in the center of town, the bodies of resistance fighters hanging from nooses; Rosie forces Jojo to look at them long and hard. “Jojo Rabbit” has a well-honed sense of fun, but it never loses sight of the stark madness on its periphery.
If these reminders are uncomfortable, it’s only because there is still no comfortable way to talk about the Holocaust. Taika Waititi (“What We Do in the Shadows”) both acknowledges this truism and obliterates it, approaching the heavy historical subject matter directly, while surrounding it with slapstick comedy, anachronistic dialogue, and a bright visual design that feels borrowed from a Wes Anderson movie. Waititi, himself a half-Maori Jew from New Zealand, handily rejects that there is a correct way to depict the Holocaust—just like there is no correct way to be a Jew.
It’s an important lesson right now, with anti-Semitic hate crimes on the rise, with a president who denounces Jews who vote against him as showing “great disloyalty.” It’s too easy to think that anti-Semitism starts and ends with hatred toward Jews; really, its genesis lies in the assumption, so easy to make, that one person speaks for the whole group. “Jojo Rabbit” is many things—a vibrant coming-of-age story, a comedy that grows funnier as it progresses, a showcase for talented young actors playing complex and layered characters—but above all, it’s a back-to-basics lesson about the awful power of our assumptions. There is redemption to be had, if we will only muster the courage of children to find it.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 11/22/19.