The Third Reich, World War II. Jojo (10) has an imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, and frantically enjoys being in the Hitler Youth. His father disappeared on the Italian front a long time ago. After Jojo is injured from a hand grenade, he discovers that his mother, Rosie, is secretly hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa, in their house. At first angered, Jojo slowly becomes friends with Elsa. When Rosie is hanged for being a traitor, Jojo is devastated. The Allied soldiers storm the town, ending the war. Jojo finally kicks his imaginary friend Hitler out of his life and exits the house with Elsa, who is now a free person.
Even though it is not for everyone's taste, Taika Waititi's satire is a deconstruction of how propaganda works, to such an extent that people indoctrinated by it do not even know how biased they are, and thus "Jojo Rabbit" becomes a giant essay on this gradual realization of 'cognitive dissonance'. This is actual for the time in which "Jojo" was made, the time of fake news and alternative facts. The story starts out with an optimistic film look, featuring a lot of bright lighting dominated by yellow-orange, cheerful colors, in order to conjure up the society in which a dictatorship is trying to show to their people that they are living in a perfect, ideal world, but in the last 30 minutes this is changed, and a lot of darker, grey, washed out colors with shadows are introduced, showing "cracks" in this worldview. As uncomfortable as it is to think about it, but the Nazis were taught that they are the good guys, and that everyone who opposes them is evil. The protagonist Jojo slowly comes to grips with this when he has a hunch that something is not quite right, for instance in the scene in which he has to show his loyalty to the Party by killing an innocent rabbit (the leitmotiv for his good side) or when he walks with his mother and they stumble upon several people hanged on the city square. The most controversial decision was for Waititi to play Hitler, an imaginary friend of the boy, which really is difficult to stomach at times. However, after the viewers get use to it, this concept starts to work: within these parameters of insanity, the story was actually assembled in a reasonable and logical way. Waititi's jokes are often really funny, with the highlight being the arguments between Jojo and Elsa, who says to him: "We Jews are just like you. Just human", or when she describes the German people: "You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't even grow a full moustache!" Audacious and wickedly comical, "Jojo Rabbit" is very unusual—but art has to sometimes be like that to stay creative and fresh.
Grade:+++
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