The Misguided Whimsy of Jojo Rabbit

You thought my coverage of the films of 2019 was over. After all, what more is there to say? I've shared my own favorite films of the year, and did an in-depth analysis of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' favorite films of the year, and even went over how the Best Picture win for Parasite might affect films of THE FUTURE!

And honestly, I thought I was done too. But even though we're into our third month of 2020, I still felt like I had unfinished thoughts about one particular film from last year. Now, I was fairly vocal in expressing my disappointment in most of the films that dominated the last awards season, but in general I feel like a lot of my criticisms weren't all that controversial. You don't need me to tell you that The Irishman was too long, or that Joker didn't really actually say anything. And, frankly, in general I'd rather talk about films that I do like. I do have a reputation among some friends of mind as a bit of a film snob, but while I love to debate people about films I dislike, I'd ultimately rather champion films that I like than put down films that I don't.

But as 2020 has progressed I still cannot stop thinking about what an offensive pile of bullshit Jojo Rabbit was.

"Vat is dat you're say-ing?"

I've had to defend my stance on Jojo Rabbit far more than for any other film in 2019. When I've talked to fans of, say, Once Upon in Hollywood and mentioned I found the movie boring, they've disagreed but we've both been able to acknowledge each others' experiences watching the film and move on. When I've mentioned my thoughts on Jojo Rabbit, though, fans of the film have gotten rather contentious and flat out told me I was wrong (even though I am a Jewish person telling them, in each instance a non-Jewish person, that I found the film to be Anti-Semitic). In one baffling instance, this even happened when the person I was talking to had not even seen the film. And so my dislike of Jojo Rabbit was a lonely one. Many of the biggest fans of the film are people who I admire and who I usually align with in terms of tastes in movies. And while the film did receive its fair share of criticism (it had one of the lowest Rotten Tomatoes scores of all the Best Picture nominees, second only to Joker), most of that criticism focused on how the film was "cutesy" and didn't really say all that much. While I certainly agree with those criticisms (although I don't find cutesiness to be an inherently bad thing), my dislike of the film went much deeper, and I struggled to find opinion pieces about the film that seemed to acknowledge what I thought were fairly blatant flaws in the film. I began to feel like I had watched an altogether different movie than everyone else. Why was nobody talking about just how bad this movie was?!?!
So I felt like I needed to write this post. My dislike of the film was too specific and too personal for me to let things go unsaid.

For the uninitiated, Jojo Rabbit is set during WWII and tells the story of a Hitler Youth member named Jojo Betzler, whose imaginary friend is a wacky version of Hitler. Jojo's life gets upended when he discovers that his mother has been protecting and hiding a Jewish girl in their home, and he has to reconsider the things he has believed his whole life. The film is written and directed by Taika Waititi, the New Zealand director who is part Māori and part Jewish, and he also plays Hitler. I must admit that until this film I have always been a fan of Waititi's work. He's a delightful figure both on and off the camera, and his films have always had a good deal of charm and wit. And I was genuinely excited for this film when it was first announced. I don't think portraying Nazis, and particularly Hitler, as goofy is an inherently problematic thing. In fact, Nazis have been fodder for humor ever since their existence, often to great effect. Films like The Great Dictator and The Producers come to mind as movies where the scary images of Nazism are subverted and mocked and made silly. And this is not just a trope in film. There are countless examples of "goofy Nazis" being both funny and insightful across all media. There are honestly too many to name, but this "Are we the Baddies?" sketch from the British comedy duo Mitchell & Webb certainly comes to mind. When done well, poking fun at Nazis is both effective and part of a tradition.

Fun!

The problem is that it is not done well in Jojo Rabbit. Everything about the characterization of Nazis here is lazy. In interviews on the press circuit for Jojo, Waititi mentioned that he made a conscious effort to not do any research to play Hitler. "I didn't base him on anything I'd seen about Hitler before. I just made him a version of myself that happened to have a bad haircut and a shitty little mustache. And a mediocre German accent. It would just be too weird to play the actual Hitler, and I don't think people would enjoy the character as much. Because he was such a fucking c*nt, and everyone knows that as well. I think people have got to relate to enjoy the ride." The problem with this, though, is that storytelling relies on specificity. Waititi's strategy in both script and performance appears to have been to just act silly, but in doing so he removed any sense of authority and menace that Hitler undeniably had. I don't think this is offensive, but I do think it's lazy. Waititi is, of course, not playing the real Hitler, he's playing an imaginary friend who happens to be Hitler, essentially a child's version of Hitler. But in that case, I don't see how Waititi's version of the character makes any sense. This is a person that young Jojo looks up to and has tremendous respect for, so why does he imagine him as a complete buffoon? And as the film progresses and Jojo begins to question all the things he believes, Waititi's performance remains pretty much the same. I doubt I would have ever enjoyed this film, but I do think there would have been a massive improvement if there had been literally any moment of menace in Waititi's Hitler. Just a single scene where we see how much of a threat this person really was. Because without that, Waititi's performance, and the film as a whole, lacks any sort of bite. I frequently saw the film described as a satire but if so, I don't understand what the film was meant to be satirizing. As I've already mentioned, the idea of portraying Nazis as silly has been done again and again and again, and is quite simply not shocking any more. There has to be more to it than that. Especially at a time when Nazism is frighteningly on the rise again, you can't make a film about this subject matter and have it be so toothless. Despite good intentions, the idea of throwing such softballs is reckless and, yes, incredibly offensive to me especially as a Jewish person.

And it's not just Waititi's Hitler who's portrayed this way. There are multiple Nazis in this film and they are for the most part all portrayed as hapless goofs, with the most prominent being the Nazi instructors played by Rebel Wilson and Sam Rockwell. Stephen Merchant also turns in a far less over-the-top but nonetheless haplessly bumbling performance as a Gestapo agent. Their work is fine, but as with Waititi's performance, doesn't actually offer any commentary other than to look dopey. The closest the film comes to saying anything at all with any of its Nazi characters is with Rockwell's Captain Klenzendorf, who it is heavily implied is in a relationship with his second-in-command Finkel (played by Alfie Allen). Once again, I thought the writing of this subplot was frustratingly lazy. For one thing, the trope of "Oh this person is homophobic so they must be gay" is tired and, frankly, dangerous. But it also feels tacked on. If these characters are truly gay, why must it only be hinted at? There's a pivotal final battle scene at the end of the film which could have been a great opportunities for these characters to at the very least embrace. And we're given no additional backstory on Klenzendorf and his sexuality. We know that he was aware of Jojo's secretly anti-Nazi mother (Scarlett Johansson, in a bizarre performance that should have never received an Oscar nomination but I DON'T HAVE TIME TO GO INTO THAT HERE), and we know of at least a couple of major moments where he shows his own anti-Nazi sentiments. But it's unclear just how long those sentiments have existed. He's apparently a prominent member of the Nazi party, so has he always been hiding his own beliefs, or are they newfound? Has he always been trying to end the Nazis from the inside, or is this a newfound form of activism for him? It's never explained, and so Klenzendorf ends up being a cipher. As opposed to being an interesting layer to the character, it feels like a sloppy attempt at fleshing out a character. "Oh, we want to make this literal Nazi sympathetic? Okay, we'll make him gay and now he's a good guy!" Waititi certainly doesn't use the existence of Klenzendorf and Finkel to educate his audience on the ways gays were persecuted by the Nazis. The whole thing feels tacked on, and exploitative in its laziness.

Sam Rockwell as Captain Klenzendorf

But the most problematic of all the Nazis in the films is undoubtedly the title character himself, little Jojo. I get the sense that you're really supposed to be rooting for Jojo. The thesis of the film seems to be that he's a sweet kid who is nonetheless brainwashed and swept up in the propaganda of the time. But this is undeniably a character we're supposed to be rooting for. The entire beginning of the film (and, indeed, the title) is about how Jojo doesn't want to kill a rabbit at a training camp, showing his sensitivity. And actor Roman Griffin Davis does a genuinely lovely job of being precocious and cute and altogether innocent. Both Davis as a performer and Waititi as a writer and director draw upon numerous performances of child actors past to craft a familiar creation of pluckiness and heart. The problem is that Jojo is honestly a piece of shit. He is a Nazi through and through, and while of course that's necessary for the plot of the movie, it did make it uncomfortable for me to genuinely root for him. And despite him saving the rabbit at the beginning of the film, Jojo is shown to be capable of immense cruelty. After meeting Elsa, the Jewish girl hiding in his house (played by Thomasin McKenzie, who for the record, is not Jewish), he sets out to torture her. The closest Jojo comes to showing any kindness is when he feels bad after he has tortured her. Towards the end of the film when Jojo is most directly coming to terms with the facts that the Nazis might not be the force for good he initially believed, his response is LITERALLY to stab Elsa with a blunt knife. When this is done he cries and she has to comfort him. I genuinely ask what about Jojo is supposed to make him likable. Because when I look at Jojo Rabbit I see yet another film about the holocaust which includes a Jewish character but makes the protagonist a non-Jewish person. And it's frankly infuriating that this is still a thing. Waititi has stated already that he thinks Jojo Rabbit wouldn't have had as much backlash if more people knew he was Jewish. But whether or not he's Jewish doesn't take away from the fact that this movie is simply not told from a Jewish person's perspective. While we're told Elsa is Jewish, we don't actually see her do anything that would symbolize her as a Jew. At no point does she pray, at no point does she reminisce about anything specific to Jewish culture. No matter his background, Waititi doesn't seem interested in Elsa's Jewishness other than how it advances the character development of a Nazi. Elsa, as a Jewish person, doesn't even get to be the hero in the story. The most heroic character is Jojo's mother, Rosie the political revolutionary. Rosie gets to be portrayed as a hero and a martyr in a way that is not afforded to the one Jewish character in the film: a true goyim savior.

Is it offensive if I call her ScarJew?

Much of the promotion surrounding Jojo Rabbit is that it is a film about "anti-hate." Due to the lack of specificity I keep harping on about, that manifests itself as vague notions of ~tolerance~ that are unfortunately all too common in movies. With 2018's Best Picture winner Green Book, much of the controversy surrounding the film involved asking why we should applaud a character who takes a whole movie to learn he shouldn't be racist. I frankly don't see why Jojo Rabbit is any better than Green Book. In fact, I would argue that at the very least Green Book makes an attempt to say "racism is bad," no matter how misguided that was. I can't even say the same for Jojo Rabbit because by the end of the film Jojo has seemingly learned nothing. In the film's last moments, when Jojo has supposedly gone through his entire arc and learned all of his lessons about how he shouldn't be a Nazi anymore, he continues to exhibit the cruel behavior we've seen him display all film. He runs home and lies to Elsa to tell her Germany has won the war and she has to go into hiding in Paris. How absolutely terrifying must that have been for this poor girl?! She is a Jew who has lost everyone important to her who is now living in a home where she frequently must interact with a Nazi who attempts to torture her psychologically, who then is the only person she can rely on for salvation? It's a fucked up situation and Jojo's actions, which again come AFTER he supposedly would be reformed, are unconscionable. At the very least, when she steps outside and realizes that Germany has in fact lost the war and Jojo was playing a hilarious prank on her, she does get to slap him in the face. And then they do a funny little dance. I'll return to that dance in a couple paragraphs, but the takeaway is that I honestly found Jojo irredeemable as a character.

And it's worth expanding on this idea that the relationship between Jojo and Elsa is an incredibly problematic one. Waititi's portrayal of their relationship is often played for laughs, and he attempts to conjure the nostalgia of a childhood crush. Which...no. For one thing, it undermines any semblance of a redemption arc for Jojo. As he begins to realize that Elsa is not the monster his buddy Hitler tells him she is, is that a true indication of his personal and moral growth if it is rooted in the fact that he finds her cute? Would Jojo's actions have been the same if his mother had been protecting a Jewish boy, or a Jewish person who wasn't Jojo's age? Perhaps I wouldn't be so worried about Jojo's motivations involving Elsa if Waititi had afforded her more depth of character. Instead, we are treated to a portrayal of the only Jewish character in the movie that is as flat and one-note as Jojo's perception of her. And when she does show flashes of a personality, they don't jive with the reality of the stakes at play in the film. For example, when we first meet Elsa, she doesn't show the fear of Jojo one would expect. If anything, Jojo is afraid of her, as she physically overpowers him and threatens him when he considers turning her in. She ends up having the power in that scene. From a narrative sense this makes sense, as she's the obstacle for Jojo and he seems himself as a victim. But that narrative ignores the reality that Elsa is in far more danger than Jojo ever would be. Even if it's an act she's putting on to save face, it's an implausibly risky one. And even if it's supposed to be "subversive," any implication the film makes that Elsa could ever have power over Jojo is an irresponsible one.

Thomasin McKenzie as the girl from The Ring

I know a lot of fans of the film have tried to justify the characterization of Jojo by saying that he's brainwashed and conditioned to act this way, but I just can't buy that. Because Jojo does believe it so wholeheartedly and it frankly wouldn't have been too difficult for Waititi to have written a character who has genuine childlike innocence. I know that because HE ACTUALLY DID THAT IN THIS FILM. The saving grace of this mess of a movie is Yorki, Jojo's best friend played by Archie Yates. If Jojo had been a version of Yorki, this whole movie could have at least been salvageable. Yorki is as brainwashed as Jojo, but he is far less enthused about the whole thing than Jojo is. He seems to accept that Nazism is his life, but also isn't actively torturing Jews (a low bar, I know) and comes across as actually decent. In Yorki, we see the childlike innocence and compassion and enthusiasm that it feels like Jojo was supposed to have for the movie to justify its own existence. Unfortunately, rather than use Yorki to make a point, Waititi relegates him to bumbling sidekick status and utilizes him instead as comic relief (although far more effective comic relief than most of the film).

This kid is honestly an absolute star.

But I want to end this analysis by returning to the end of the film. Because I promised I'd talk more about the dance, and because it really encapsulates the level of bullheadedness this film exhibits. The film's screenplay was adapted by Waititi from the book Caging Skies by Christine Leunens. It's worth noting that the film and the book are almost completely different, with Waititi lifting plot elements from the book and nothing more. For one thing, imaginary friend Hitler isn't a character in Caging Skies, and more generally the book is a straight-up drama with none of the zaniness present in the film. As I've already stated, the film ends with Jojo lying to Elsa about the war ending, and then the two of them doing a little dance when she realizes he's lying. That's not what happens in the book. In the book, Jojo whisks Elsa away without her ever learning that he's lying. They live together, become adults, and even get married, all while Elsa hides away from Nazis believing that Jojo is shielding her from them. Many, many, MANY years later, Elsa learns the truth and immediately leaves him to live her own life. I haven't read the book, but this strikes me as a powerful ending, one which spells out plainly the corrupted foundation of their relationship, and gives Elsa agency to act as her own person out from under the control of both Jojo and Nazism in general. In allowing her this final act, it makes it her story and acknowledges the irreparable harm in Jojo's actions.

But in the movie, they do a funny dance.

Do the Nazi!

Again, Waititi has clearly read the book. And even if he didn't want to keep the same ending as the book (my guess is he wanted these characters to remain as children on the screen) it's telling that the new ending he chose so flagrantly misses the point of what the book is trying to say.

The dance implies that this is something for them BOTH to celebrate, that the win for the Allied powers is as much a win for Jojo as it is for Elsa. It implies that the film is really about childish sensibilities than about the danger and consequences of the war. Perhaps most upsettingly, the dance implies that Elsa forgives Jojo for his lie and his actions throughout the movie. It's a cute little button, a bow Waititi tied around his film and it's honestly infuriating to me. All the lack of substance, all the disregard for the stakes that this film should have possessed can be summed up in Waititi's choice of an ending for the film. Imagine if, instead of the dance, Elsa had simply run away. From Jojo, from her prison, and from everything that reminds her of what she lost. Like with practically every scene in the film, Waititi had the chance to truly say something meaningful. Instead, he sacrificed impact for flaccid charm. And, somehow, got rewarded for it.

Womp womp!

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on this film. It was good to get them all out. As I mentioned at the start of this post, it often felt lonely hating Jojo Rabbit so much. But, shortly before the Oscars, discussion of this film's flaws sort of blew up on Twitter and, for the first time, I saw that there were other people who felt the same way as me. Seeing that really encouraged me to try and clarify my thoughts and write this. It also encouraged me to ask my Jewish friends about their thoughts, and I learned that almost none of them had chosen to see the film because they had heard enough to know they weren't interested. I read a lot of great analysis of this film's problems, and one standout article was this one by Esther Rosenfield. I think that what I say here is different to what she's saying, but I do want to credit her article for helping me verbalize a lot of what I'd been feeling (and for introducing me to the real ending of the book Caging Skies). I've now read quite a few of her reviews and have found them all insightful.