I still don’t know what to make of Jojo Rabbit, a movie about a 10 year old German boy entranced with Adolf Hitler and all things Nazi. Hitler is his invisible friend, appearing to him at various moments to offer encouragement and to remind him of his duty to the Fatherland. He joins Hitler Youth and is proud of his little uniform, just like a boy scout. Unbeknownst to Jojo, his parents work for the resistance. His father has been gone for two years fighting for Hitler, defending Germany, so Jojo thinks; when in reality he was probably killed fighting against Hitler. One day Jojo learns his mother has been hiding a Jewish girl in their attic.
This movie has been promoted as an “anti-hate satire”. But for me it feels too soon to apply satire to the Shoah. I’ve spoken with children and grandchildren of survivors and some of them had less than idyllic childhoods; the Holocaust is the gift that keeps on giving, generation after generation. Hitler is portrayed as a cartoonish, pompous buffoon, and is played by actor Taika Waititi, a Polynesian Jew (!) who grew up in New Zealand. It is some measure of revenge, I guess, that a Jew gets to depict Hitler as oafish, self-absorbed, and not very bright.
My favorite scene is at the end of the movie; the war has just ended, the streets are full of allies (Americans and Russians). Jojo runs into his house, the Jewish girl asks him who won. Jojo tells her the Germans won. He lies because he doesn’t want to lose her; she is all he has, his mother was hung for treason. But of course the lie can’t hold; the two kids walk out of the house and into the street. She feels sunshine on her skin for the first time in many months. When she sees GI’s waving American flags she knows Jojo lied to her and she slaps him. Jojo says “I deserve that” then he asks her “What now?” Then, and this is part of the weird, quirky thread that runs through the whole movie, David Bowie starts singing We Could Be Heroes Just for One Day, in German. (I was unaware he recorded a German version of that song). And the two kids start vogueing each other like they’re in a disco.
I was happy to learn there are Jews in New Zealand. Waititi also wrote and directed this movie.