Jojo Rabbit: A Gut Wrenching Comedy

don't you love it Jojo rabbit a movie that released in 2019 to mostly critical acclaim it's a satirical coming-of-age story about a kid who grew up in Nazi Germany this movie received a lot of great reviews and even an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay but it also received a good chunk of bad reviews so it makes me wonder is there something general audiences missed that makes this movie not all it's cracked up to be well I don't think so I really enjoy this movie and I think there's a lot to appreciate about it but don't let me make that decision for you I'm going to go through the whole movie and talk about the things I think are good and the things I think are bad and then you can make that decision for yourself I don't want to waste any more time though so let's just dive right in the film opens with Jojo talking to himself in the mirror hyping himself up about going to Nazi camp we get dialog telling us that he's completely devoted to Hitler in Germany and this is where we get to see his imaginary friend Hitler and we're already to a point where I need to talk about something this movie stirred up a good bit of controversy when it was released which isn't at all surprising I mean it's a goofy movie about Nazis of course it's going to stir up controversy but it does something that I think is important it shows the Nazis and defamed light it satirizes them in a way that makes them seem completely incompetent and downright stupid at times I think this is a good thing because it doesn't give the people who don't understand satire something to look up to satire is an incredibly thin line to tread and I don't blame anyone who is put off by the Nazis portrayal in this movie obviously you're free to feel any way you want about this movie but this movie's portrayal of the Nazis isn't about making light of a horrible event in history it's about showing people of today that Nazis were stupid ignorant people who committed heinous atrocities for similarly stupid and ignorant reasons the reason I think it was smart to make them seem utterly ridiculous is because satire can sometimes backfire like in the case of the movie American History X a movie that released in 1998 about a neo-nazi gang in Southern California the film was intended to show just how brutally violent and disgusting these extremist ideals can be and don't get me wrong it does an excellent job at this and I really do think it's an excellent film the problem comes when you get people who are already under the sway of those ideals they won't see Edward Norton's character as a disgusting monster they see him as a hardcore that they can look up to and try to emulate and this is where I think Jojo rabbit succeeds because it doesn't give anyone that opportunity I can't imagine any neo-nazi watching this movie and thinking that Hitler seems like a total badass bottom line is though whenever satire is really well done there are always going to be people who either don't get it or don't appreciate it and honestly it's fine either way you're free to feel about it however you will I just think it's important to understand the intentions behind a work of art before criticizing it after Jo Jo gets ready to leave and has sufficiently Heil Hitler we see him running through the streets Heil Hitler everyone he sees and we get these pieces of what seemed to be actual Nazi propaganda and I'm glad they threw those clips in there because it shows us that people like Jojo really could have existed it shows us that there really were people in Nazi Germany so enthralled and captivated by Hitler that they worshipped him possibly in the same way Jojo does now Jojo is that his Hitler youth camp and we get an introduction to Sam Rockwell's character Captain Clinton's and Dorff who was a soldier in the German army but lost one of his eyes and is now forced to run the camp we immediately see that Clinton Dorf is disenfranchised with Nazi Germany as he says that even though the country is on the backfoot and there isn't much hope in winning the war apparently we're doing just fine we also find out that he's constantly drunk and he really doesn't care about doing his job well we also get introduced to rebel Wilson and Alfie Allen's character who really aren't that important to the story although they are an excellent source of comedy for the movie now the kids are told that the boys are going to be learning how to march shoot guns blow stuff up etc and the girls are going to learn how to make beds dress wounds and get pregnant which while hilarious in the film is very likely the way gender roles were taught to the kids back then now we get a little montage of the kids playing war games and doing physical activities that Jojo really doesn't seem to be cut out for during one of the games where there's a small scuffle going on we see Jojo just trying to avoid getting into any fights we also see some of the older kids notice Jojo doing this now we see the kids in a classroom setting where they're discussing what a Jewish person looks like while the ridiculousness of this scene is cranked to 11 in this movie talking about how Jewish people have snakes for tongues devil horns and scales there are accounts of German teachers that would bring Jewish kids the from the for biology lessons where they would point out racial inferiority z' so this is what i'm talking about with the whole satire bit tyco YTD takes real events that happen in history and maxes out the ridiculous meter just to show how stupid and awful it all really was after that we see the kids at a book-burning this part was really powerful to me because we see Jojo who seems almost confused about why he's doing what he's doing but all the people around him are excited and cheering so he joins in which is a great way to portray how unsure a lot of the people of Germany felt back then they may not have fully realized what they were doing but they were being told that they were special and everyone around them was cheering and clapping along so they just joined in but in contrast right behind Jojo we see cleansing door who does realize what they're doing but can't really do anything to stop it and we see the complete disgust on this space as he turns to more alcohol likely to try to block it out now we see Jojo laying in this tent talking to his best friend yorky who steals the show every time he's in a scene by the way about how if he were to ever catch a Jew he would kill it and bring it to Hitler so he could become his best friend even though York he thought he was his best friend and we become best friends the next day however the kids are brought to the woods by the older teenagers one of the teens tells the kids that they have to be willing to kill to be usefull in Hitler's army and he calls out Jojo asking him if he's willing to kill and Jojo tries to act confident by saying of course I love killing so the teens bring out a rabbit and tell Jojo to kill it he's obviously hesitant nervous showing us that he's not the person he wants to be he wants to be a hardcore Nazi that would be so good at killing Jews he would be part of Hitler's personal guard but at his core you can't even kill an innocent rabbit at his core he's a good person and doesn't want to kill anything but now the teens tell Jojo that he's a coward just like his father they start mocking Jojo they say he's as scared as a little rabbit and they give him the nickname Jojo rabbit Jojo runs off into the forest and he gets a visit from Hitler or yes and what happened and Jojo says that he just couldn't kill the rabbit but Hitler tells Jojo that the rabbit is a smart Swift and cunning animal that Jojo should be proud to be this gives Jojo the confidence to run back to camp grab a grenade and throw it however the grenade hits a tree and bounces back to Jojo blowing him up we see Jojo rushed to the hospital and we get to see that he has become and no but honestly they make a huge deal that Jojo looks like a disgusting monster when he's just got you know a couple of scars across his face but this is also where we see JoJo's mother Rosie for the first time this character is played by Scarlett Johansson who else just say now does an excellent job her acting and portrayal of this character are really what sucked me into this story but I really love Rosie as a character she's an amazingly kind-hearted and funny person and you can easily tell just how deeply she cares for and loves Jojo she gives Jojo the confidence to go back outside and she gets him a job at cleansing dorks office his job is to go around town delivering people there conscription and posting propaganda fliers but this is where we started to see the real darkness that this movie has buried underneath it's comical outer layer as they're walking in the town we see Rosie looking at a group of people that were publicly hanged one man with a tag on him this is pre Germany fight the party shows us that these people were likely hanged for treason Jojo asses mother what they did and she just replies what they could this shows us that she appreciates what these people did and she stands behind them Jojo comes home after work to find that his mother isn't there and while searching for he hears a noise upstairs he goes into his sister's room and discovers a door that leads to a crawlspace within the walls inside the crawlspace he finds a girl living there Elsa is a Jewish girl that's been living inside the walls of JoJo's house for some time she knows what will happen if anyone finds out she's living there so she threatens Jojo she plays into the Jewish stereotypes and misconceptions that Jojo has been taught in order to get him to fear her she tells him that if he lets anyone know about her and that she'll tell them he and his mother helped her which will get them all killed so Jojo has a discussion with Hitler about what they should do about her coming to the conclusion that he should try to negotiate after this goes awry we see Rosie coming home she's obviously trying to sneak into the house without Jojo hearing her but he was already waiting by the door we don't know for sure yet but it's easy enough to assume since we already know she was supportive of the Hanged people she was likely out doing things in an attempt to sabotage the German war effort after a conversation with Rosie about hearing noises upstairs we see him standing outside his mother's bathroom with a fire poker standing guard this tells me that Jojo really is just a good kid who thinks he's doing the right thing he's been raised to believe that Jews are evil and harmful so he's just trying to protect his mother next Kaster rosie in the crawl space with elsa telling her that she can't be forced to choose between her and her son and she says that Jojo is a fanatic that it took him three weeks to get over the fact that his grandfather wasn't blonde but she knows her sweet innocent little boy is still in there this is such a tragic situation Rosie obviously is disgusted by the ideology of the Nazis but she's forced to allow her only child to be fully indoctrinated into it in order to protect him now we see Jojo at a pool designed for rehabilitation and while Jojo is on a bed for therapy we get a shot of Rosie's shoes which which I'm sure is completely irrelevant so yeah no need to remember what her shoes look like I don't even know why I'm mentioning yet now Jojo goes and talks to cleanse and Dorf and asked him what he should do if he sees a Jew cleansing Dorf tells him that if he sees a Jew then he should report it and they'll kill it and anyone who helped it and some other people just for good measure if you see it you tell us you tell the Gestapo and they tell the SS and then they go and they kill the truth and anyone who helped the job and because he's a very paranoid time is probably some other people just in case it's a pretty drawn-out process he asks even if the Jew hypnotized someone to help them showing us more of his complete naivety but cleansing Dorf gives Jojo the idea to write a book on how to identify a Jew because without their funny hats it's damn near impossible which was just hilarious to me so Jojo goes to Elsa and tells her that he'll only let her stay if she tells him everything about the Jewish race she tells Jojo that his mother is kind and she treats her like a person but Jojo tells her that she's not a person not a proper person this then sends Jojo into a speech about how he's superior to her because of his ancestry so Elsa grabs him and tells him if he's so strong he should be able to break free she tells him that there are no weak Jews that they were chosen by God and his people were chosen by a pathetic man that can't grow a full mustache this is also on point I just love it and it starts to kick off JoJo's realization that he's not special because of his ancestry there's nothing about his blood that makes him superior to anyone else now Joe Jonah's mother are having dinner and Rosie seems to be happy about something she tells Jojo that the war is coming to an end as Germany is being defeated this enrages Jojo and he tells us that Germany is still going to win the war Jojo then says that he doesn't want the food to go to waste and begins eating the extra food this is because he knows that the extra food is going to else we started to see tensions rise between Joe Jonah's mother in this scene it comes to a point where Joe Joe says that he wishes his dad were here because he would understand so Rosie grabs his coat puts some charcoal on her face and pretends to be his dad and yells at Joe Joe the scene hits me hard Rosie is an incredible mother it's so obvious how much she loves and cares for Joe Joe but it's not in some overt lovey-dovey way you see in so many movies she jokes with Joe Joe she argues with him but she always lets him know just how much she cares now we get another interaction between Joe Joe and Elsa where we find out about Nathan else's fiancee but this conversation is far more civil we see that they're beginning to actually open up a little bit to each other and it's quite lovely now he decides to forge a letter from Nathan I'll let her when Nathan breaks up with Elsa Elsa gets broken up over this she runs and hides in her crawlspace but I love this scene because Joe Joe was obviously upset about the fact that he hurt Elsa he goes and forges a second letter talking about how Nathan doesn't actually want to break up with there this is where we really start to see Joe Joe's worldview shift if he was who he wanted to be at the start he wouldn't have cared at all about hurting her because she wouldn't even be a person to him but that's not Joe Joe he understands she's a person with feelings just like him we then see Joe Joe and Rosie taking a walk outside they talk a little bit about love and romance but during this conversation Rosie tells Joe Joe that life is a gift and that we need to show God that we're grateful to be alive and then we get another shot of her shoes as she's dancing I really don't know why they keep having shots of her shoes but you know whatever it just disregard him like I said they're really not important Joe Joe goes back to the office and asked cleanse and Dorf from about Jews cleanse and Dorf says he has no time as he's trying to plan a defense of the city telling us there will be an invasion soon but he tells cleanse and Orpha by his book that he's writing in cleanse and Dorf laughs at it but he shows Joe Joe the uniform he's been working on which gets me every time the feathers fire dynamics sparkly color to desert day and I mean the boots truly decorative and this is is a Gatling gun mounted with a radio which emits annoying music to disarm the enemy but after that he gets more serious with Jojo he asks him how it's going being the man of the house we know cleanse and orphis friends with Rosie so it's not too much to assume that he is at least sympathetic to the same cause as her Jojo gets a new job walking around town collecting metal for the war effort and he sees his mom drop a note onto the bench outside a note this is the same thing that was stuck to the hanging man we saw earlier we know Jojo was already suspicious of his mother's loyalty to Germany but now he knows it's true his mother has been fighting against the party the amount of cognitive dissonance Jojo must be feeling at this point in the movie is insane this is something he's been a part of practically his whole life this ideology was a core part of his being for a long time and for him to find out that his own mother is risking her life in order to bring it down must really make him think that maybe he's been on the wrong side all along it's tough to get into the head of a ten year old but they do a very good job showing the distress this causes him Jojo is now back home and we see him Gibson colored pencils to Elsa he tries to act like it's nothing hoping to believe he still doesn't care about a Jew but it's easy to tell the underneath he knows he's being kind and it's simply because he cares for her they talk about how he's crippled and Jojo complains that he'll never be kissed by a girl so I also offers to kiss him he tells her that it's illegal for Nazis and choose to hang out let alone kiss but Elsa tells him that he's not a Nazi she knows that Jojo cares for her and that's something and Nazi couldn't do she tells him that he's just a kid that wants to be a part of a club which is an excellent way to portray what I'm sure it was like for plenty of kids growing up under the Nazi regime he's just a 10 year old boy who's told again and again by all the adults around him that the ideologies of the Nazi Party or his one true path to greatness he sees all the kids around him joining the Hitler Youth and being excited about everything they're told it's impossible to blame any kid for falling into this trap and it's the same trap that Jojo fell into at his core he's really just a kind kid who cares for other people but these evil adults have dressed him up in a uniform covered him in swastikas and manipulated him into becoming just like them but that's not who Jojo is and all it really takes at the end of the day is exposure to a different way of thinking to make him realize this through his life he's really only been shown one the Nazi ideology but through exposure to Elsa and realizing what the ideology truly means beneath all the propaganda it enables him to understand what's really going on after their talk we see Jojo and Elsa just hanging around the house as if they're really just friends now but there's a knock at the door and it's the Gestapo Jojo lets them into the house and they immediately begin tearing things apart as if they're looking for something the tension really starts to now as we know Elsa is hiding upstairs they could only be a matter of time before they find her Stephen Merchant plays the main Gestapo officer and damn if he's the huh scary-looking dude however we see cleanse and orphaned Finkle come into the house and they say they were there to drop off some pamphlets for Jojo to hand out now well the Gestapo are searching the house the main officer asked Jojo where his DJ knife is and else it calls out saying that she has it I think it makes sense that she would come out of her hiding place and present herself as JoJo's sister because if she had just been found in the crawl space it would have been no question who she really was it also serves to ramp up the tension as we know that one misstep wouldn't mean she was dead this is made even worse when she's forced to give everyone in the room a Heil Hitler she has to give praise to the man who's responsible for the loss of every single thing in her life and she has to do it eight times he then asked Elsa if he can see her papers this part had me on the edge of my seat because we know that the Nazi intolerance for Jews is so high that she messes up in the slightest bit and she'll be killed after she grabs the papers cleansing door fast for them and he begins to read them he asked for a date of birth and she tells him the first of May 1929 cleanse and orphan looks at her and tells her that she's correct however the officer shouts wait in cleansing dorf hands the papers over to him which now that I'm rewatching it makes me realize just how intense that must have been for cleansing door because a few moments later we find out that Elsa was wrong about Yungas birthday and that cleanse and Orford helped her so we would have absolutely been dead too however the officer walks past cleansing Dorf to find JoJo's book as they're leaving cleanse and Dorff tells Jojo to stay home look after his family and his knife we now see cleansing door for what he truly is he's a lot like Jojo he's a man who is good at the core but he's trapped under this regime we now see Jojo at the dinner table where he's having another conversation with Hitler and we really good to see him as an amalgamation of JoJo's in her conflict obviously this is all in his head so when we hear Hitler questioning JoJo's loyalty that's him questioning his own loyalty he tells Hitler that Elsa isn't a bad person and Hitler delves into a speech to try to remind judge over where his real loyalties are supposed to lie now we see Jojo walking around the town when he sees a butterfly he begins walking after it and eventually flies off Jojo stands up and the camera pans with him to show Rosie's shoes hanging right next to him damn I can't tell you how hard this hit me the first time I watched it these are the same shoes we've seen in previous scenes and every time we've seen them they've been dancing full of life and wondrous Joey now they hang their lifeless all for Jojo to witness Jojo knows his mother was a good person he knows he was always trying to do the right thing and now the full consequences of that are shown to Jojo because those traits were only ever rewarded with death in the Nazi regime and that's what Jojo supported he supported the regime that got his own mother killed and seeing the weight of that on a ten-year-old boy is truly something else it would be hard to watch anyone go through something like this but to see it happen to a child it's painful there's beauty in this though this movie keeps you distracted it shows the Nazis is dumb and cartoony all for the laughs but then at full frontal assaults you with just how disgusting and painful this time really was for people and as hard as it is to watch I can mend this movie for it Roman Griffin Davis is acting in this scene is also nothing short of phenomenal the way he breaks down and hugs her and then trying and failing to tie her shoes it's unbelievably heart-wrenching to watch after this Jojo goes back home knife in hand and stabs else in the shoulder I was confused by this at first why stab her but watching it again I realized that he's a confused kid he just saw his own mother hanging from the gallows he's outraged and needs to take it out on something and he could have rationalized that maybe it was else's fault that she's dead she is the Jew Rosie's been keeping in the walls after all right after he stabs her he turns around and collapses because he doesn't hate her he knows it's not her fault and he's just completely devastated now we see them watching an air raid from afar and Elsa tells Jojo that Rosie loved him and all she ever wanted to do was protect him and that's why she allowed him to become a Nazi and Elsa tells him how her parents were taken to the train station when he don't come back from obviously implying that they were taken to a concentration camp and are most likely dead by now in the next scene we see Jojo walking through the city we can see the destruction caused by the air raids and then we see him scrounging through the garbage to find things to eat I just can't imagine what it must have felt like for the children that were actually going through this that's why I'm glad movies like this exist it can really help give you insight into what other people's lives were like and I really don't think this movie is that far off from reality in terms of the conditions that Nazi Germany was in towards the end of the war now Jojo is out in the city looking for food right at the start of the invasion and this is where we see an intense clash of tones there are funny jokes and mixed in with terrifying war scenes now this is pretty subjective as I can't really tell you what you're going to find funny so if the jokes don't land for you well they don't land for you but personally I find it really well done because to me at least it seems like this is exactly what the movie is all been about it makes us laugh in a historical period that should be looked at with disgust and horror but I really think the purpose was to make you feel uncomfortable after the battle ends though we see Jojo walking around and we see that the Allies have won however an allied soldier spots JoJo's uniform and they send them to where the other prisoners are this is where he finds cleansing Dorf who's also been captured he tells him that it's all come to an end and that the party's over he tells Jojo that his mother was a good person an actual good person then he does one last good deed he rips off JoJo's jacket and yells get away from me Jew and spits on Jojo so a soldier picks up Jojo and takes him away from the prisoners as cleansed endorphins carried away and after he's taken away all we hear are gunshots going off and we get JoJo's reaction oh boy this movie really knows how to punch you in the gut cleanse endure freely was just a good person who was unfortunately placed on the wrong side by fate it's obvious he wasn't really supportive of the Nazi Party and he really did like Rosie and the last thing he ever does is tell Jojo to look after Elsa and then saves his life it's beautiful really but right after this Jojo finds your key and your key says exactly what we're all thinking after watching this movie I'm gonna go home and see my mother I need a couple but he also says that now that the war is over Elsa can finally be free and she can finally leave so Jojo runs home to find her and tell her what happened but he lies to her he tells her that Germany won the war and it's because he just doesn't want Elsa to leave she's the only person he really has left in his life and if she leaves he'll truly be alone but he realizes that he won't be able to lie to her forever so he goes back and fakes another letter from Nathan Jojo tell that he and Nathan have devised a plan for her to escape and that they can live together in Paris and for her to not worry about Jojo this is where we get to see great character growth out of them he went from wanting Elsa dead to becoming a friend to being able to set her free because he knows it's what's best for her even if that means being left uh turley alone but after telling her all this Elsa tells him that Nathan had died last year from tuberculosis letting Jojo know that she's known the whole time that he'd been faking these letters so Jojo tells her that he loves her even though she thinks of him as a younger brother and he tells her that he really has found a way for her to escape but when he's getting ready to leave he gets another visit from Hitler who now has a bullet hole in the side of his head Hitler tells him that he needs to get rid of the Jew girl and come back to where he belongs but Jojo says it kicks him out the window a physical representation of his rejection of the Nazi Party so now Jojo takes Elsa outside where she sees the American flag being flown now Elsa finally gets to feel freedom after years of hiding and the first thing she does is exactly what she said she would do she dances just like how Rosie said that you danced to be free now that else is free she can dance it's hard for me to imagine what it must be like not being able to go outside for years being stuck in a dark crawl space for years and then finally walking outside to the sight of true freedom it's an incredible thing honestly but now the movie has come to an end my goodness I love this movie there are so many things I can praise this movie for so I'm going to start with my favorite part the characters all of the characters in this movie are just so compelling which is incredible once you've realized that the only character that actually goes through any growth is Jojo but Elsa has such a tragic story that it makes you feel like she just needs to escape if she could just get away from this awful regime then everything would be okay slowly seeing cleanse and Orff's true colors is incredible to me but the character that made me fall in love with this movie was Rosie her undying love and care for Jojo was so obvious but written in such a natural way she wasn't constantly telling Jojo that she loved him we saw it from the way she interacted with him the way she joked and lovingly insulted him but still took care of him and cheered him up when he needed it it was all just so beautifully written now speaking of writing the writing was great I think there are a few minor dings I could give it like the fact that cleanse and/or find of just keeps showing up wherever he's needed for the plot I mean they always give an explanation nation for why is there it generally just comes off as contrived most of the time but with that said it's not like the script contains any major plot holes or contrivance a--'s there's no point where the movie falls apart as they say so I guess it's another point of cinema wins being wrong about that go watch my Truman Show video if you don't understand what I'm referencing I'm really not much of a cinematography guy I just don't know that much about it but there were plenty of shots that I loved first and foremost the foreshadowing with the shoes shots are just an incredible way to get the audience familiar with those shoes just so they can rip your heart out with them later I will say however there seems to be like a great tent over a good chunk of the movie which I'm sure was intentional for the tone they wanted but my eyes got kind of tired of the muted colors really not a big deal though I've talked about the acting already but damn I can't think of a single actor who didn't do an incredible job Roman Griffin Davis of course did an excellent job especially for a 12 year old that is on screen for pretty much the entire movie it blows me away tyco YTD is an excellent Hitler how strange as that is to say I appreciate the fact that it really felt like he was just trying to play a goofy version of Hitler rather than just using him for shock factors to try to make his jokes funnier but this brings me to the whole satire bit of the movie it seems like the satire in this movie was you either enjoy it or you don't okay that sounds like a dumb thing to say but what I mean is either you can put up with seeing a group of the most deplorable humans in history being shown as goofballs or you can't either way it's fine but I'll say this there are people out there who don't enjoy subjecting themselves to witnessing atrocities like the Holocaust not that they want to hide from the truth just the fact that having to watch people go through these things can be hard to stomach which is fine I'm not gonna tell you how you need to feel when watching that kind of stuff but movies like this can be important for those people because it gives them a way to be witness to this kind of content in a way that they can handle okay I guess I've given a number for everything I've done so far so I'll do it for this one as well and after everything I've talked about today I think I'd go with an 8.5 out of 10 it's a beautiful movie that will reel you in with comedy gold and then sucker punch you in the gut as soon as you're not looking I don't think the script is as tightly written or solid as The Truman Show and that would be why this movie got a half a point lower of a score but honestly if someone who had never seen either movie asked me they should watch I'd have to go with Jojo rabbit I just feel as though this movie is far more important for Humanity I guess and I think that pretty much everyone should see it but yeah I think that's all I have to say on Jojo rabbit for now thank you for sticking with me through this whole thing if you're thinking of something I may have missed don't be afraid to tell me off in the comment section I love reading and responding to comments l for insight or criticism into my work because it really does help me improve some things I want to talk about just real quick I do have a patreon now I don't really expect anything to come of it yet I wanted to have it you know just in case so yeah if you wanted to support me there that would be incredible I also have a band and that band also has an Instagram page so if you're interested in any of that all the links will be in the description and that brings us to the end of the video so yeah big thanks for watching and I hope to see you again next time American

Channel: MakeBetterMedia

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Id: W82Jxc46Q_s

Length: 27min 2sec (1622 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 11 2020