What an original and unique film I just watched. It is extremely hard to compare this movie with previous ones because it is so different that I cannot think of many productions that could justify a proper comparison. The only semi-exception could be the classic "Life Is Beautiful."
In a way, this can be considered the mirror image of Life is Beautiful. That movie was about the life of an innocent Jewish boy during WW2, with a bit of comedy and the always present cloud of tragedy and drama. Jojo Rabbit is about the life of an innocent Nazi boy during the same period, with enough comedy and cute moments in the first half, and a dramatic resolution.
One key difference is that with Life is Beautiful both genres (drama-comedy) are constantly mixed throughout the movie. With Jojo Rabbit we have first a little bit of comedy, and then we have drama, the genres aren't mixed at all.
In Jojo Rabbit, we have a small child that has Hitler himself as his imaginary friend, well a ridiculed Hitler in fact, sort of like a cartoon version or how a small kid would imagine him to be. The kid is totally indoctrinated and believes everything the Nazis say about Jews, the Aryan race and so on. Nevertheless, the movie quickly shows us this is simply a very innocent kid without evil inside his heart.
He lives with his mother and his dad is supposedly fighting the war in another country. He goes to some type of training camp for Nazi kids and it seems the person he talks the most is his imaginary friend, along with his mom of course, who seems like a fine lady. Hard to understand how her child is such a Nazi fan, I guess this is the sort of thing that can happen if the government is in charge of educating the children instead of the parents.
As their country is in war it is inevitable that bad things will happen eventually. There is a surprise that is key to the story but it can't be mentioned because it would be a very ugly spoiler. What I can tell is that the story is extremely original and unique, it provides an impactful exploration of the feelings a small boy can experience when his country is facing a war, and how somehow good people can get wrapped in bad situations that are outside their control.
Doing this sort of movie especially with a production of such a high value will be always something positive for me. However, I would really like to see movies exploring the atrocities of other totalitarians powers that produced even more tragedies in the past century. It is important to always remember all the evil that came to this world thanks to National Socialism in Germany, but I feel a lot of people are not aware of the even greater evil that came uppon this world through Soviet socialism or through Mao's Communist China.
National Socialists weren't the only villains of the past century. In the socialist Soviet Union, the disaster was of even bigger proportions, it covered more land, countries, and people and it lasted much longer. In Mao's communist revolution in China, the number of people that were killed for ideological reasons was multiple times bigger than the number of Jews murdered by the National Socialists in Germany, besides, it is thanks to them that North Korea exists today, otherwise, there would be only 1 Korea and it would be free and prosperous like today's South Korea.
It is sad to see so little movies being produced about these 2 evil political movements as if their victims didn't matter. The tragic stories that can be told about the Polish or Ukranian people, for example, under the rule of Soviet socialism also deserve proper attention and public reflection.
The best
- Roman Griffin Davis does an amazing job as a child actor portraying a Nazi fanatic child that despite his indoctrination still has a good heart.
- Top-notch performances from Scarlet Johansson and Taika David Waititi who besides being the writer and director of this movie, is also the actor who played Adolf Hitler, the imaginary friend of Jojo.
- A lot of fun dialogue from the Nazi child when he speaks nonsense about Jews as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
- Emotional intense moments in the last half an hour that can touch the feelings of even the toughest person.
The worst
- Some people might get uncomfortable seeing a light-hearted movie about Nazism.
More information: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/515001-jojo-rabbit Review: AAA In numbers: 9/10
