BEFORE: Well, it's pretty clear that I haven't changed my 2020 schedule THAT much, not yet anyway. This is exactly where I planned to be, back when we thought that NYC movie theaters might still open up in 2020, and when "Black Widow" still had an opening date in early November. Like so many things this year, that didn't happen. Admittedly, cancelling (or re-scheduling) is par for the course this year. We had only one set of trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, and my wife wouldn't even let me answer the door. She has a valid point, I don't know where those kids have been, and kids are very efficient at spreading germs. So I guess that half-bag of candy left from 2019 won't be given out until next year. Sorry, kids.
Next up, will Thanksgiving be cancelled as well? I'm no longer surprised by the coincidences I encounter, and this film appearing so close to Election Day is just another one of them. What am I supposed to make from a film about Hitler turning up NOW? There's got to be something about fighting fascism that I can work with here. Let me watch the film (admittedly, I'm watching BEFORE election results come in, and reviewing AFTER, so the fix is in today) and I'll have more to say, for sure.
Taika Waititi carries over from "Hunt for the Wilderpeople".
THE PLOT: A young boy in Hitler's army finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.
AFTER: It's 10 pm on Election Night as I'm writing this, and at the moment Joe Biden is ahead in the projected electoral college count, which means I'll probably be up late tonight trying to figure out how the Democrats are going to manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. On the other hand, Biden's ahead, he's been ahead so far and maybe he'll stay that way - my wife just went to sleep convinced that Biden's going to lose, somehow, and it would be great if she woke up to an unexpected result, which would karmically balance the one in 2016 when she went to sleep fairly confident that Hillary Clinton would be the next president. History is sometimes decided in the wee hours of the morning - but we've also been told that some races are so close to call that we may not have a definitive result for several DAYS, a week even. For all the talk of a "blue wave" and a possible landslide, this thing now looks like it's going to come down to a nail-biter, even if we factor in California's 55 electoral votes that will almost certainly go Biden's way.
For all the talk about the change that the USA needs, for all the rightfully placed anger over this President's lack of coronavirus preparations and response, for all the disenfranchised women and minority voters who set out to strike a blow for all the other women and minorities, for all the hundreds of politicial scandals in the last four years which had Trump at their core, the race is still, at the moment, too close to call. How the heck does this happen? Most of the polls, and nearly all of the rhetoric since the debates, indicated to me that we were on a positive, righteous, non-lazy path. We all know what the right things to do are - look after each other, take care of the disenfranchised, make sure we all move forward together, protecting not just our own rights but the rights of others, take care of the only environment we have, and just generally be excellent to each other. But yet somehow there exists a large portion of this country that either doesn't know what to do in these regards, or would just rather not do them. It's the lazy man's more seductive path, and it comes with a heavy, heavy price, or at least it should.
But look who we have as an example, the man who's personified our political process for the last four years. Nothing bad has happened to him, as yet, for anything bad that he's done. He's skated on his taxes, he's skated on every lawsuit ever brought against him, done very little actual work over the last four years, again always skating, mostly golfing and watching TV, and what are the consequences that have befallen him? Nothing bad, instead he gets to eat a bunch of fast food every day and meet with sports champions and rap stars. I had such hopes that the bill for his laziness and incompetence would finally come due, and he'd be ousted from the White House at the very least, and either impeached or convicted of something at best. So far, that hasn't happened. I can't take another four years of this, and I don't think our country can either.
Let me try to bring this back to "Jojo Rabbit", after pointing out that Trump, in many ways, is like the American Hitler. Remember, also, that Hitler was freely elected, and he wasn't a dictator at first, either. But once in power, some people tend to do everything they can to remain in power, and therefore use the powers of their office to remove or discredit all of their political opponents, and also denigrate and make life difficult for any minority groups they don't like. Sound familiar? Trump's gone after Mexicans, Chinese, and Muslims, denigrated women, people with disabilities, mocked every Democrat who's ever disagreed with him and then even members of his own staff who've done the same. He claims, for some reason, to have the best interests of black Americans and LGBTQ Americans at heart, but I think we all know that's just another smokescreen, right? Outside of those rap stars, when has he ever done anything for black Americans? Just go back and see what he said about the Central Park Five (who were later exonerated, BTW).
Hitler, on the other hand, made the trains run on time. There was a feeling among Germans that this was the guy who could get things done. Just don't ask where all the Jewish people have gone, or the disabled, or the gays, or the gypsies. Again, sound familiar? Trump's the guy whose reputation says he'll be better for the economy (just ignore all his bankrupt businesses over the years) and for mostly personal, selfish reasons, to many people that's more important than listening to scientists about how to deal with a deadly virus. And just don't ask why there aren't many senior citizens around any more, or why the big cities aren't as crowded as they used to be, or have as many working restaurants. Hitler had concentration camps for Jewish people, Trump had essentially the same thing for Mexican immigrant children.
And everything's been so divisive, there are families split right down the middle on the important issues of the day. Yes, finally I'm bringing it back to "Jojo Rabbit", where a young boy is part of the Hitler youth movement, but meanwhile his mother is only pretending to support the government in power, she's actively working to make a difference in the world by hiding a Jewish teen girl in her house's walls. The reason seems to be that she had a teen daughter who died, and she couldn't save her, but she can try to save this Jewish girl instead. When Jojo hears noises coming from his sister's old room, he investigates and locates the hidden girl instead, which makes him very conflicted. He's been trained to report all Jewish people to his superiors in the Hitler youth army, but he also knows that his mother could be in a lot of trouble for hiding her in the first place.
His only confidante is an imaginary Hitler, whom he consults for advice. Taika Waititi (also the director of the film) plays Hitler, and this is intended as a comic character here, in the same vein as what was seen in both versions of "The Producers". Since Jojo admires Hitler greatly but has never met the man, this allows for his imaginary version to be an extreme one, something akin to a cartoon. And this mostly works, seeing Hitler through the eyes of a young boy, unless you happen to look at this from a German point of view. Of course when you get a bunch of British, American and New Zealand actors on board to play Germans, it's never going to be an accurate portrayal of German society, instead it's all going to be played for laughs here, as was done in "The Death of Stalin" a few years ago.
A couple of points here, I had to disagree with the choice to open the film with the Beatles' German recording of "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which they recorded as "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand". I can see WHY they did this, because the song was played over footage of Hitler rallies (again, sound familiar?) and thus there was a connection drawn between the popularity of Hitler and the popularity of the Beatles (crowds of screaming fans in both cases). However, there's two full decades that separate the images and the music, so that song would not have been even CLOSE to existing at the time of World War II, and therefore the opening is incredibly historically inaccurate. (The film also closes with a version of David Bowie's "Heroes", also sung in German, which is even more anachronistic. I know, I know, once you let modern songs into a movie like "Moulin Rouge", on one level all bets are off, but I'm still a purist, and I don't approve of this.) You can't turn 1944 into 1964 just through juxtaposition.
Still, the main message of the film is a tolerant one, and the Nazis are shown on the wrong side of history, which is all good news. And there are actors here who are almost always great in the films they appear in, like Sam Rockwell, one of my favorite actors, and Scarlett Johansson, who's come a very long way, acting-wise, from her teen roles, a fact I learned earlier this year.
Speaking of "earlier this year", if you recall back in April I watched a whole bunch of Nazi and Hitler-based films in a row: "The Reader", "Look Who's Back", "Downfall" and "The Boys from Brazil". (Three of the films had Bruno Ganz in them, but it's still fairly amazing that they all linked together and this sequence didn't break my chain.). I always had the intention of including "Jojo Rabbit" in the mix, and I could have watched it back then on an Academy screener, but this one just didn't link with the others, so I had to postpone it and hope that I could include it later on in the year. So I'm happy that I finally got to it, here in the closing days of 2020, which also happens to be the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. (Still very proud of the fact that I watched "Downfall" on the exact 75th anniversary of Hitler's death.).
Someday, maybe we'll all look back on the Trump years the same way that people once looked back on World War II - namely that it was a difficult time, people were dying all around, and we all had to do our best to survive as best we can, some of us in quiet opposition to the government. (Others, not so quiet.). But I certainly wouldn't want to look back on such a difficult time in history, knowing that I'd sold out my fellow countrymen for the sake of quick-fixing the economy, putting my own financial interests ahead of the lives and livelihoods of others. That would be just as bad as living in Nazi Germany and turning a blind eye to the evil and corruption of Hitler, wouldn't it? Sure, you might argue that "it can't happen here", but to some degree at least, hasn't it already?
Also starring Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie (last seen in "The King"), Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Rebel Wilson (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 3"), Alfie Allen (last seen in "The Predator"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "The Girl in the Spider's Web"), Archie Yates, Joe Weintraub, Brian Caspe (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Gabriel Andrews (ditto), Billy Rayner (ditto), Luke Brandon Field, Sam Haygarth, Gilby Griffin Davis, Hardy Griffin Davis with archive footage of Adolf Hitler (last seen in "What We Do in the Shadows").
RATING: 7 out of 10 propaganda fliers
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