Jojo Rabbit

When I first heard the premise of Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit — a boy in Nazi Germany has an imaginary friend, who is Hitler — my first response was “No.”  My second response was also “No,” as in “No, someone who is not Jewish cannot make a movie like this.”

Who knew that Waititi’s mother is Jewish (and his father Maori)?  Not me, though I should have at least considered it — or, at any rate, not doing so seems like a failure to think broadly enough.

Anyway, so I saw the movie.  It was great.  You get why Jojo needs an imaginary friend: he’s scraggly and not very coordinated.  You get why he’s excited to join the Hitler Youth, to become part of something bigger than himself.  You can even see why he admires Hitler (played by Waititi himself, genial and eye-twinkling, and only slightly given to shouty and unhinged speeches).

You’d think that a funny movie about Nazis would tend toward satire, but the main characters are well-rounded, actual people.  I especially liked Jojo’s mother, who tries to be life-affirming in the middle of a calamitous war and who wants to knock some sense into her fanatical son.  Then there’s Jojo’s friend Yorki, the other unpopular kid in class.  Both he and Jojo sound at least twice their age, but the actors can actually pull this off — it doesn’t seem precious or artificial.  “How are we doing?” Jojo asks as the Allies close in.  “Terribly,” Yorki says.  “Our only friends are the Japanese.  And just between you and me, they don’t look very Aryan.”  And there’s another great character… but I don’t want to slip into spoilers here.

Of course there are some caricatures, and some deliberate inconsistencies: “O.M.Gott,” one woman says.  All of this gives the movie a goofy feel, and in places it reminded me of what someone called the Trump administration: the Keystone Gestapo.  I did wonder how Jojo’s mother was able to live in such a beautiful house when her husband hadn’t been home for two years, and why there didn’t seem to be any shortages or hardships in people’s lives, except at the very end — but those are pretty minor problems.

That ending is when the Jojo Rabbit transcends humor and becomes something else, though I’m not sure exactly what to call it.  Life-affirming, like Jojo’s mother, maybe.  But it’s a hard-won, clear-eyed optimism, one that has come through pain and loss and disillusionment and says, And now we can dance.