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Jojo Rabbit
NEW & SOON-TO-BE-RELEASED DVDS REVIEWED BY GEORGE OXFORD MILLER
Jojo Rabbit (Director Taika Waititi. Starring Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Thomasin McKenzi, Taika Waititi.) This sublime satire isn’t about a cartoonish rabbit, but a cartoonish take on the evil-incarnate Hitler and his program to brainwash kids to hate Jews. Highlighting historical realities that are understandably too painful for many to see treated lightly makes this a love-it or hate-it film. Writer and director Waitiki creates both serious, sobbing scenes of the heartbreaking tragedies of bigotry gone extreme, and goofy Nazi spoofs, like the kooky Hitler (Waititi) that ten-year-old Jojo (Davis) imagines as his father figure. His buffoon Hitler espouses absurd myths and anti-Jewish propaganda to young Jojo, who enlists in the Nazi youth corps. While 16
Jojo is shouting Heil Hitler! and creating a picture book of Jewish monsters, his mother Rose (Johansson) passes out anti-war leaflets and harbors a teenage Jewish girl in the attic. Jojo’s inculcated universe begins to shatter when he finds Elsa (McKenzie) and discovers she is not a bat monster who hangs from the rafters. His heroic coming of age embraces a new paradigm without bigotry, is forged by the horrors of street-to-street combat, tragic loss, and finally, the realization that he can create a new life with trust and love. Davis is astounding as Jojo, and Johansson and McKenzi provide an unexpected pathos that grounds the satire in reality. Somehow Waititi manages to create a feel-good movie about the worst of human nature. (Rated PG-13) HHHHH
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1917 (Director Sam Mendes. Starring George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman.) Inspired by an actual incident that was told to director Sam Mendes by his grandfather, this harrowing tale follows the footsteps of two British soldiers, Schofield (MacKay) and Blake (Chapman), on a death-defying odyssey. With no radio communication and the telegraph lines cut, they must cross many miles of German-controlled territory in order to stop a British battalion from advancing into an ambush. If they fail, 1,600 men, including Blake’s brother, face inescapable slaughter. Mendes uses long takes and tight editing—with no obvious cuts or fades—to create the intimate feeling of actually being at the men’s side. So off we go in real-time through a labyrinth of trenches and booby-trapped tun-
