Review of Jojo Rabbit, directed by Taika Waititi

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog, and fell back more into literary criticism. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

One of my main goals before I found a job was to review all of the old content I had half-written, or completed, but never got around to posting. Maybe one day I’ll go into the nooks and crannies of running a website and blog, especially as I’m someone who plans out my content way. When I’m writing this is not when the post is going to come out.

Anyways, I’ve been reviewing all of my old content, and I actually found this blog post written somewhere in the depths of my drafts. I watched Jojo Rabbit a while ago, so I apparently wrote this up and then forgot about it, never for it to appear in the depths of the Internet until now.

So, after all of these years, let’s get into what I thought about Jojo Rabbit! I don’t want to bore you too much in the introduction of the post.

A young boy in Hitler Youth discovers his mother has been keeping a Jewish girl in the attic, leading him to discover what he learned was wrong.

Our main character in this movie is Jojo Betzler, who, at the age of ten, is living in Nazi Germany during its decline at the end of World War II. He doesn’t know this yet, as he’s a member of Hitler Youth and all her really knows in his working memory is being in Nazi Germany. He even goes around thinking that he has an imaginary friend named Adolf, who is a spoof of the actual Adolf Hitler with a more comedic bent.

At the local Hitler Youth camp, which is run by Klenzendorf, Jojo refuses to kill a rabbit and ends up with the nickname Jojo Rabbit. Because it’s kind of something that brings him shame, he wants to prove his worth to everyone, so he literally goes to grab a hand grenade and then drops it, making it go off and scar his leg.

His mother requests to Klenzendorf that Jojo is still included in the activities, so he gives him some things to do like passing out leaflets on the streets. However, things are about to change for Jojo when he discovers a Jewish girl, Elsa, living in his dead sister’s walls in the attic. He wants to report it immediately, but after they quarrel, he realizes this is a bad idea as it would get him, his mother, and Elsa killed immediately.

Jojo continues to visit and talk to Elsa because he thinks he can get Jewish secrets out of her and make a picture book to show what he learned and warn others. But as he continues talking to Elsa, he realizes she’s just as human as he is, and the two start having a friendship despite her knowing that he has the beliefs instilled in him by Nazi Germany.

He does end up developing a crush on her, even when she challenges his beliefs, and his imaginary Adolf friend is not happy with the fact he wants to question everything he once knew. At the same time, Rosie continues her anti-Nazi activities around town, leading the Gestapo to show up at her house.

Klenzendorf shows up to bail Jojo and Elsa out, helping conceal her identity. As Jojo heads into the square, he learns that the dead body he’s sitting by is his mother’s, and he no longer has any parents. He goes home nad tries to kill Elsa, but cries instead, and she reveals that his father is actually alive and working against Hitler from abroad.

Jojo no longer believes in the Nazi Party and begins scavenging the streets to provide for Elsa and him, and the war continues. Adolf kills himself and the Allies push forward. Jojo avoids getting conscripted in the government’s last desperate bid to stay in power. Klenzendorf saves him when the Soviets try to seize him by calling him a Jew, but then Klenzendorf is executed.

Jojo goes back to Elsa and lies, saying Germany won the war. She is dismayed by this, and he fakes a letter from her fiance saying they have to smuggle her to Paris. Elsa then admits her fiance died a year ago, and Jojo seizes the moment and tells her that he loves her. She says she loves him as a brother.

His imaginary Hitler friend shows up, bullet hole included, and tells him that he needs to remember what he learned, but Jojo kicks him out. Elsa sees American soldiers when he does that, then slaps Jojo because he lies to her. They then start dancing, as the war is over and they are free to do as they wish.

Overall Thoughts

This is such a great film, even though its subject might not be something that everyone wants to watch when it comes to their form of entertainment. I can see how someone might either cringe really hard in horror or laugh hysterically when the imaginary friend Hitler shows up.

I personally thought it was tragically comedic, so I laughed. As someone who spends way too much time reading Holocaust literature and watching a ton of documentaries on the subject, as well as specializing in settler colonialism and genocide in graduate school, it was really interesting to see a take from the perspective of a child.

We often see this from a Jewish child’s perspective, but never a German youth that was a part of Hitler Youth and vehemently believed in the Nazi Party until it destroyed everything he knew. That’s a powerful narrative in itself, as it shows how people are so consumed by the system and don’t know anything else beyond what they were surrounded by.

I say watch this one if you haven’t already. Movies are meant to be seen, not read about.

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