Jojo Rabbit Review - A Discussion on Tone

It would be simple enough to write a straight-forward review on Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi’s incredible new film.

Taika's Hitler is definitely the selling point of this movie, but surprisingly, he's not the sticking point.

Such a review would surely consist of me sitting down and waxing poetic about how Waititi has done it again, and how this movie is a new instant-favorite, and how Roman Griffin Davis and Thomasin McKenzie are incredible young actors and absolutely carry this movie, but also about Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell give it their absolute best and shine, and how even Rebel Wilson comes out with a great performance. I could talk about the themes of anti-hate, and finding joy in the darkness, and write essays about the masterful messages Waititi writes here. Mostly, I want you all to find that for yourself. It’s true, all of it, but I’m not as interested in writing about it, at least not yet. Rather, I want to use Jojo Rabbit to get at something I’ve been thinking about more and more often. Mostly, I’m going to be talking about this movie’s tone.

This is the movie. This right here.

There is a sort of adage I’ve built up over the last year. I want to say it was a conclusion I came to after stepping out of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, probably my favourite movie of 2018. See, I worry occasionally that some people think I’m overly critical, or stodgy or something. That I look at movies with an eye to tear them apart. And, like, I suppose there are elements where that’s true. When an absolute train wreck of a movie comes around, it does give me a bit of joy to dissect it into parts and find out what on earth went wrong. But mostly, I feel I’m a sentimental optimist. Because at the end of the day, what I’ve realized is this: If a movie can consistently make me laugh, and make me cry, it’s a good movie in my books. Spider-Verse definitely is on that list, the writing is a laugh-out-loud riot from start to finish, and yet the themes of inclusivity and universal heroism, and the whole family dynamic of Miles Morales and his father and uncle just get me every time, not to mention Daniel Pemberton’s soaring heroic theme. A more typical example is probably The Princess Bride. I’ve gone far beyond losing count of the number of times I’ve seen that movie, and yet it’s still hilarious, and the witty banter still catches you by surprise. And, if it were just funny, it’d probably be a decent movie that I came back to every once and a while. But the reason that movie sticks is because of its grand, fantastical views on love, and because Inigo finally getting his revenge never ceases to grab a tear from me. These are the movies that stick with me, that I go back to over and over again. And, so far, that formula hasn’t steered me wrong. There’s something truly special about a movie that can perfectly balance its emotional spectrum. That knows when to unite the audience with a laugh, and knows when to twist the knife. I think it speaks to a maturity of writing, to an authentic ability to speak to the soul. It’s something special.

Everything about these two is perfect and beautiful, and Thomasin McKenzie needs to be in everything now

Just about all of my favourite works fall on this emotional spectrum. And, maybe that’s not the sort of groundbreaking statement I feel like it is. But it’s an idea I keep coming back to. Maybe just because it seems so simple, and yet is so evasive. Our emotions are so easily guided, and it’s fascinating to me that there are basic storytelling structures almost guaranteed to insight an emotional reaction. And in the height of spoiler culture, where we have movies like Avengers: Endgame that are essentially marketed around their lack of information. While, sure, your first experience is an important one, a truly good movie holds up watch after watch. Lord of the Rings still takes me on highs of epic adventure and still crushes me when Sam monologues about hope or when Aragorn bows to the hobbits. John Williams’ score in A New Hope still has me on the edge of my seat as Luke sights up his final Death Star run. And you can bet Steins;Gate still makes me cry over and over again (Yes, that’s an obscure shout-out, but Steins;Gate is actually incredible and no one can take that from me). All this to say, this motif of ‘can it make me laugh and cry?’ is a pretty consistent one. The only movie in that list that I can think of off-hand that might not be as up to snuff is the aforementioned Avengers: Endgame, which is admittedly a messy movie relying a lot on its own lore – but despite all of that, it’s emotional highs hit well, and it was about as good of a conclusion to a series as you could ask for. A piece of art may struggle structurally, but if you can hit me emotionally, I’ll probably stick you out.

The reference to Avengers gives us a pretty clean transition into talking about our boy Taika Waititi. Because I think for a lot of us, Waititi hit the big stage with Thor: Ragnarok. Ragnarok hit well for a lot of us for a variety of reasons. It breathed fresh life into the character of Thor, who could probably have been effectively labeled as ‘the least interesting Avenger’ prior to this movie. I still hold a lot of love for Branaugh’s initial Thor, both for its whimsical fish-out-of-water story and for being my first foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But Ragnarok was a necessary story, a necessary piece of the MCU as it was falling into safe tropes. And Waititi was the perfect man for the job. I can remember being so ready for the ‘dark,’ ‘apocalyptic’ tone that this movie was originally set for, with its very grim initial logo and the presence of nigh-mythical Thor characters like Hela and Surtur. Then, Waititi got on board, and suddenly the logo changed to this weird, 80’s sci-fi aesthetic. My friends and I thought it was a joke at first, wondering how on earth this story was going to be taken seriously. And, I guess the basic answer is that it doesn’t… on the surface. Ragnarok’s claim to fame is its humor, the amazing conversational tone that Waititi strikes in all of its characters. But, while there are a few critiques of the film’s humor overtaking its potential for seriousness at moments, it does a surprising number of things below the surface. It’s a piece about colonialism, and a prince coming to terms with the horrific history of his country. It’s our first movie to really get below the surface of Loki and make any sort of redemption feel earned for him. Valkyrie’s arc is wonderfully understated, as is Hulk and Banner’s. While I’m not sure that Ragnarok quite brings me to that level of emotional complexity that something like Spider-Verse does, I think it definitely nods towards Waititi’s ability to do so. It’s hard to watch Ragnarok and not be kind of curious as to what this guy can do when he’s not on a Marvel contract. And the answer is – amazing things.

Taika Waititi being an absolute gem on set.

Now, I’m not alone in this discussion. There’s a stellar YouTube video out there about Waititi’s ‘Happy Sad Cinema,’ which I frankly have never finished because I haven’t seen all the movies the video discusses. But I still want to bring my own voice to the table, because this is a relatively personal article so far anyway. I’m not really going to talk about What We Do in the Shadows – it’s a pretty solid mockumentary with a lot to offer, but in the end I think it goes more to prove Waititi’s mastery over the weird and finding humour in the mundane, than it does about this power over the emotional spectrum. Rather, I want to highlight Hunt for the Wilderpeople. If you haven’t checked out this movie, you need to. Full stop. It is a stellar rollercoaster about the process of dealing with grief, that manages to be consistently hilarious and thoughtful. The relationship between Sam Neill and Julian Dennison’s characters is an absolute joy to watch, and while the movie takes a nigh-fantastical tone it still manages to touch on relevant themes of homelessness and the foster care system, and even core human concepts like and pain and death. It’s all about communication, all about the family you choose. It’s about so many things wrapped in a quaint, perfect film.

Sam Rockwell low-key steals this movie. Which is typical Rockwell. But he's something truly special here.

When Waititi announced Jojo Rabbit, an anti-hate satire about the Nazi regime, I was fully on-board. Saying ‘screw you’ to Hitler by having him played by a Polynesian Jew? Brilliant. But while I knew that Waititi’s typical blend of whimsical, conversational humor would be on board, privately I yearned for that perfect balance of joy and sadness, humor and severity, that Hunt for the Wilderpeople offered. And as more of the film came to fruition, and the second trailer showed that a major part of the film would be the presence of a Jewish girl living in secret in Jojo’s house, I grew all the more excited. Waititi had the chance to do something next level here; a satire of Nazi Germany while also being a stirring coming-of-age film and a hard-hitting story about the reality of war. It seemed almost too good to be true. And while mixed reviews were coming in of Joker, I heard glowing things about Jojo Rabbit.

What can I say, except that this movie entirely nails it? To go into details is to spoil all the best parts of it, but Waititi nails that combination perfectly. He paints the absolute ludicrous fanaticism of the Nazi party with some incredibly dark humor, giving the blind patriotism of the Hitler Youth all the energy of a summer camp. It’s always funny, but the humor always has a dark undercurrent of ‘this is more or less what happened. This is how you convince a generation to march into unspeakable acts.’ It’s Juvenalian satire to its fullest extent. But lest you grow too uncomfortable with the hard-hitting glance into the Reich, the film gives you Scarlett Johansson’s incredibly endearing mother figure Rosie, who carries a perfect sense of wisdom and wit, and offers some needed truth into Jojo’s idealized vision. And then there’s Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa, possibly one of the strongest written female characters I’ve seen in some time. She’s up there with Dafne Keen in Logan as a tour de force of young female acting, giving many of the heaviest lines of the movie. She’s incredible. And while this movie could have easily just gone about with Sam Rockwell, Stephen Merchant, Taika Waititi and Rebel Wilson as wacky Nazis for the entire film’s runtime, it’s in Rosie and Elsa that this movie finds its weight. Well, there are some surprising other features, too. As a whole, the satire comedy in this movie is just the window dressing, it’s what gets you in the theatre. Where Jojo Rabbit shines is the surprising severity with which it looks at war, and the reality of the cost of hatred. When this movie wants to punch, it punches hard.

I love them so much. They carry this movie and they do it effortlessly.

Ultimately, that’s my take-away. Because in the end, this is a movie that made me laugh, a lot. The comedy is prime and almost always works. But it’s also a movie that made me cry. It’s a movie that struck me deeply, and made me think a lot, and one that I’ll almost certainly go back to time and again. Check out Jojo Rabbit, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Honestly I could watch Rosie and Jojo snark at each other for hours and not get bored. The relationships in this movie are so perfectly laid out.

In other news, Rise of Skywalker is approaching, and so I intend to dust off some of the more critical intents of this blog and discuss something I’ve really wanted to do for a while: trilogy structure as seen through the lens of the Star Wars Original Trilogy. I’ll probably start rolling these out soonish, so get ready for that!