The simple brilliance of Jojo Rabbit
There are multiple films made about Nazi Germany and the holocaust. It’s even a sure shot way to get nominated for an academy award. But hardly any have been from the point of view of a 10 year old Nazi. Jojo Rabbit is a masterpiece from Taika Waititi, which explores Nazi propaganda in a whole new light.
The film does a great job of not taking itself so seriously while also making sure to not lose sight of the plot. Waititi having an onscreen presence as Hitler himself and a score by Oscar-winning musician Michael Giacchino. The movie could have gone either way but I am glad it went in the good direction.
If you haven’t seen the movie till now, I urge you to stop reading this article and watch this movie and then come back to it.
So, a bit of back story, Jojo is a Hitler youth candidate who has a kid-friendly Hitler as his imaginary friend. One day he finds a Jewish girl hiding in his long-dead sister’s room. What follows this discovery is a hilarious back and forth between the two.
One of the most distinguishing factors that separate war film from the rest is the colour pallet. We have come to expect drab greens and blues from a war film. Jojo Rabbit has thrown this out of the window by using lively and bright colours. Even during the combat-heavy third act, they decided to go with well-lit shots contrary to almost every other movie in this genre.
Then comes the motives that weave through the entire story. The cigarettes offered by the Führer to Jojo. Much like the cigarettes themselves the advice he gives to the 10 year old boy is soothing and comfortably familiar in the moment but is slow corrupting poison. Not only does it play out as a funny joke about the social acceptability of smoking in that era but also works as symbolism. It shows how little Jojo knew about his Führer, it’s a known fact that Hitler was against smoking and was also a vegetarian. So Hitler offering cigarettes and eating unicorn meat confirms that Jojo knew very little about Hitler.
Smoking is not cool and is injurious to health, DO NOT SMOKE… You know what I am not your parent, do what ever you want. It’s your life…
Then came the knife, Jojo first receives it at the Hitler youth camp. There he is instructed to always keep it on him just in case he saw a Jew. The knife is supposed to represent the fictional power and superiority that the Nazis thought they held above everyone else. But the knife at different times in the movie held a different meaning. When he receives the knife, it symbolizes power, but when Elsa takes that knife from him it becomes the threat that Elsa gives to Jojo. After the Gestapo leaves the house Captain Klenzendorf gives the knife back to Jojo as a means of protection. Finally, when Jojo finds his mother hanging in the city square he goes and tries to kill Elsa with the knife, here the knife represents his desire for revenge for his mother’s death and his final attempt at being a Nazi. When he realizes that he was never a Nazi but just a 10 year old boy, he drops the knife. With the drop of the knife, he leaves behind his wish to be part of the club.
The shoes were very carefully shown in close-up shots to emphasize their importance and making sure that the audience can recall them. Now every time I see red and white shoes I think of Rosie Betzler, the way she talked about life, and how she uplifts the spirits of Elsa when she was down. Rosie is one of my favorite characters ever, she is one of those people that makes you look at life in a different way. When Jojo finds her hanging in the city square, just showing her shoes is way more powerful than had we seen her hanging in whole. It also shows that she was not alone in helping the oppressed and fighting the regime. Even in death, the idea of Rosie stayed alive in Jojo, this is seen when he ties Elsa’s shoelaces when they were going out at the end of the film. This scene goes as far as using the same angles they used when Rosie was taking Jojo out for the first time after his accident.
Hitler is the most prominent symbolism in this entire film, from the starting when he and Jojo were talking in the forest about why it’s good to be a rabbit to the end when Jojo kicks him out of the window. The arch of Hitler represented how fascism and authoritarianism work. At the start of the film when Jojo completely believed in the ideology of the Reich, Hitler was this happy, kid-friendly version but as Jojo’s started going against the ideology we start to see the real version of Hitler.
This film has according to me one of the most re-watch value. I have seen this movie at least 10 times while writing this piece. I don’t know that anyone saw it or not, but Captain Klenzendorf and Finkel(Alfie Allen) have a thing for each other. They have somehow managed to create a balance with the story, at no point in the entire film will you find yourself getting bored. And more significantly the tone of the film changes very frequently but also very smoothly as to not break the immersion.
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