A Bunny Hop Into Nazi Germany: A Review of “Jojo Rabbit”
By Oliver Fosten
Taika Watiki’s new satire, “Jojo Rabbit,” can be summed up with the dialogue between the titular character Jojo, a ten-year-old living in Nazi Germany, and his mother, Rosie. Upon seeing a neat line of bodies hanging for crimes against the Fatherland, Jojo asks his mother, “What did they do?” as he looks away. His mother physically forces his gaze back upon the dead, somberly replying, “What they could.”
Jojo is ecstatic, if more than a little nervous, to be attending a Hitler Youth training weekend led by the medically discharged Captain K, who does little to hide his jadedness towards the war. For all of Jojo’s talk about wanting to become the Fuehrer’s personal guard and hunt Jews, his bravado flags during a simulated combat exercise. Honing in on this weakness, some of the older children dare Jojo to kill a rabbit. He refuses, earning the nickname “Jojo Rabbit.” Desperate to prove his worth and encouraged by his bumbling imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, Jojo seizes a live hand grenade and throws it. Instead of asserting his valor, Jojo is caught in the ricochet, left scarred and limping.
His dreams of serving the real Hitler now destroyed, Jojo is relegated to assisting in office work alongside the now demoted Captain K. He arrives home early one day after putting up propaganda posters to find his mother gone and odd noises coming from his dead sister’s old bedroom. Upon investigating, Jojo discovers Elsa, a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl his mother was hiding. Elsa immediately threatens Jojo with outing his mother and getting him killed if he reports her to the Gestapo. Jojo and imaginary Hitler are left at a loss about what to do, especially since nothing about Elsa matched up with the monstrous ideas of Jews that Jojo was taught. He soon decides the best course of action is to play mind games with his mother, neither of them admitting openly that they know of Elsa’s presence, while having conversations with Elsa in order to write a book for the Nazi party about the true nature of Jews.
Any trace of childlike humor is snuffed out in a single frame when Jojo discovers just what it means to get what he wishes, to be a Nazi. The second half of the movie eclipses the first, offering the kind of scathing critique that true satire doesn’t shy away from. As Jojo begins to question himself and all he’s been taught, imaginary Hitler becomes increasingly clingy and berating, the almost lovable caricature melting away to reveal the bellowing, gesticulating figure we today know from film reels. As the allies move in to seize Germany, Jojo is left struggling with his sense of loyalty and self, between his mother’s words and those of the Nazi party he worships. Against his better judgment and imaginary Hitler’s warnings, he begins to see Elsa as a person and a victim rather than a frightening being out to “cut off [his] Nazi head.”
The film isn’t afraid to take a different path from other works about the Holocaust, with its comedic stab at Nazi Germany. Watiki both zooms in on individuals and reflects upon society as a whole by depicting a child such as Jojo’s need to belong in a world of propagandist hate. There is no doubt that hate stems from ignorance, and in speaking with those we fear, we discover that truth and justice don’t automatically align with prevailing powers. Jojo’s mother and mysteriously absent father both make dire sacrifices to create a better world for their children and others. Even Captain K, with his not-so-subtle gay coding, does what good he can while knowing it will never be enough for him to be considered a good person.
Watiki, a Māori Jew, knows how to create jokes around Nazism and its related bigotry that punch up rather than kicking down. The trailer leads the viewer to expect a gut-busting, Mel Brooks-like romp, only for Watiki to judiciously remind the audience that stories such as these rarely ended happily. Even so, there’s hope for the future so long as our hearts are open to one another. We are all born not as soldiers or monsters, but as people with the capacity to love.
Oliver Fosten is an NYU English major who will soon graduate. When they aren’t working on their novels and short stories, they enjoy video games, tea, rain, monsters, and trying to make friends with every cat they come across.