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Review: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
This was a comedy drama about a German boy learning to handle the changes that came during World War II. It was fine. I understand why it was popular and why it was nominated for many awards. But it didn’t move me that much. That’s probably just a me problem though.
Spoilers.
Story
Johannes “Jojo” Betzler joined a camp for Hitler Youth, where they learned to fight against Jews. They also learned lots of fantastical negative stereotypes about Jewish people. Jojo had an imaginary friend, a version of Hitler, who would cheer him on and hype him up as he was normally a bit timid (normal for a ten year old forced to confront violence). At one point, he had thrown a grenade and injured himself, which pulled himself out of the Hitler Youth program.
Jojo found out that his mother was hiding a Jewish girl Elsa in their walls. She as the friend of his dead sister Inge. He did not reveal her presence because he realized that would endanger his mother as well. So they kind of had a truce. Jojo would regularly talk to Elsa to find out more about Jewish people for a book he was writing. Elsa would straight up lie to Jojo since he was so indoctrinated into Nazi beliefs that he’d believe everything.
One day, the Gestapo came to his home to do a routine investigation. Klenzendorf and Finkel, the leaders of the Hitler Youth Camp who were now demoted to do office work, also arrived at the scene. When the Gestapo questioned why Jojo’s knife was missing, Elsa came to his rescue, posing as Inge with his knife. Klenzendorf questioned Elsa about her identity, and Elsa had gotten Inge’s birthday wrong, but Klenzendorf had let her go, showing that he was a friend to Jojo and Elsa.
Jojo went to the town square and discovered his mother had been hanged. When he went home, he attacked Elsa but was swiftly stopped. Elsa revealed that she had been working as part of the resistance to the Nazi party. Jojo’s father was also part of the resistance. Jojo hadn’t known any of this because they had wanted to keep him away from it.
The war waged on, and Nazi Germany fell in the end. Worried that Elsa could now leave, Jojo lied and said that the Nazis won so that she would stay. Out of guilt, he devised a plan for her to escape. When Elsa stepped out onto the street, a car waving the US flag passed by. She was upset with Jojo for lying to her, but they proceeded to dance, which Elsa said was the first thing she would do when she was free.
This was a story about Jojo learning the truth of humanity, that his Nazi beliefs were not right, and that each person is worthy of living. I guess the WWII backdrop just didn’t appeal to me so I wasn’t too moved.
The comedy writing was fine. It was modern, which very much is the point, but somehow it feels overdone to me, in a “haha Nazis are stupid” kind of way. Yes, I agree that Nazi beliefs were bad, but Nazi jokes just don’t really hit for me.
Production
The production was good. I think the colour palette was nice. Perhaps it’s because our main character was a child, that we got some more colour, because if it was more of a serious war film, I know that this entire movie would have been gray.
The acting was okay. It was a bit hard to take some of the whiplash between serious and comedic seriously. I’ll talk more about the acting below. I do think the child actor did well though.
Characters
Johannes “Jojo” Betzler
Jojo was the main character. At the beginning, he had an idealized view of the world. Hitler as the great hero of the world, and Jojo wanted to be part of his personal security. However, Jojo was a little timid, so he imagined Hitler to be his imaginary friend who would encourage him and help him talk things through in a “what would Hitler do?” kind of way.
A challenge was introduced to Jojo in the form of Elsa. Jojo was first afraid of Elsa, thinking her as a ghost. Then Elsa intimidated Jojo, incapacitating Jojo every time he did anything. Understandably, Elsa resented Jojo’s beliefs because they were the cause of her suffering. Since Jojo realized he couldn’t do anything to hurt Elsa (since he would hurt his own mother), he decided on a stalemate. He spoke to Elsa about Jewish people to get research for his book, but he later realized that no one took him seriously, even the Nazis who indoctrinated him, including Klenzendorf, Finkel, and even the Gestapo.
Another challenge faced him when he suddenly found his mother dead. She stood against everything he believed in, as did his father, and that confused him. I felt that this was a plot hole in the movie, but more on this later. As well, he had grieve for his mother, the one person who had taken care of him all this time. So when after the war, he realized that Elsa would leave him too, he was afraid and tried to keep her trapped. I did find myself anxious at this part for Elsa’s safety.
But Jojo soon realized that it wasn’t the right thing to do. After days of speaking with Elsa, he realized that she was a person, like his sister was. And he realized he had to let her go. He had a fight with his imaginary Hitler, where he told Hitler that Elsa was a girl and deserved to be free like him, and that was that. Jojo understood when Elsa was upset, but she started dancing, so maybe there was room for forgiveness.
The movie was open-ended for Jojo, in the sense that we don’t know what’s going to happen to his home life, if his father will come back, if Elsa will leave. But it was a character journey in which Jojo learned that his extremist views were not the way. However, I can’t really say that this was a coming of age movie for Jojo. I can’t really explain why, but it didn’t really seem to tick that box for me. I didn’t feel like Jojo was fundamentally changed, which maybe was the point. As his mother said, she thought that the sweet boy was still in there somewhere. But if that’s the case, the character journey doesn’t feel as deep because he isn’t changing his views, he’s just uncovering what was there.
Rosie Betzler
Rosie was Jojo’s mom. She was supposed to be kind of a cool mom character. She protected him, and encouraged him.
At one point they did have a fight where Jojo said that he wished his father was back instead of his mother. She was upset as she was doing a lot, both raising a son and working on the resistance effort. But she made up with Jojo soon.
Rosie was the one to harbour Elsa in their walls. It’s unclear how Inge died, but that’s unimportant. Elsa was Inge’s friend and Rosie felt bad for her and gave her a place to stay, while having to hide her from Jojo whom she knew to be a fanatic.
As mentioned, I felt that the contrast between Rosie and Jojo’s views was a bit of a plot weakness. The movie explanation was that Rosie wanted to hide Jojo from her resistance work to protect him. But why would she go so far as to encourage his Nazi activities? Perhaps going to Nazi Hitler Youth camp was Jojo’s idea, but after his injury, why would she let him go back to working for them? If I was a mother, I could have used any excuse to keep him from going back to working under Klenzendorf and Finkel, siting their inability to protect kids.
I also felt like Rosie could have done anything to try to guide Jojo back on the path of…seeing people as equal. Maybe Rosie was worried that rocking the boat with Jojo would compromise her role and her husband’s. What if she told him to consider that maybe Jews were people, and then Jojo said that to another adult who would then compromise her position? I don’t know though, I feel like it would be more interesting to hear Rosie trying to reason with Jojo more.
Rosie died suddenly. I hadn’t even realized that she was the reason for the Gestapo’s visit. Afterwards, her story was told by Elsa.
Scarlett Johansson didn’t really work for me as this character. I felt that she was a bit too scattered and not as coherent. She was most interesting to me when she was with Jojo. She joked a lot and clearly loved him a lot (in which case, why didn’t it bother her that her son was a Hitler youth?). So it kind of boggled me that she seemed a very different person with Elsa. She was a lot more serious, which was fine, Elsa is older. But for humourous people, they tend to be humourous through many circumstances. I also felt that there were some instances in the movie where she was acting for an adult audience instead of interacting with the characters and that was a bit distracting. Like when she was joking about being beautiful. That joke didn’t really land right for me.
Elsa Korr
Elsa was the Jewish girl living in Jojo’s walls (literally). I did enjoy the joke about Elsa being in Jojo’s brains and in his walls. Because she literally was. Jojo was way more bothered about Elsa.
When Elsa first came into the story, Jojo was terrified. He thought she was a ghost, but realized that she was a human, and a Jew. Elsa intimidated him into staying silent. Jojo continued to try to confront her, handle her, but whenever he spouted his Nazi nonsense, Elsa would subdue him. I understand the rage. It was because of those stupid beliefs that she was suffering, and she was not going to let anybody believe those untruths about her.
Elsa in general was easygoing though. She joked with Jojo. Despite her aggression, she knew that Jojo was a malleable young boy. She messed with him for the fun of it, when she knew it wouldn’t hurt her. She knew that Jojo wouldn’t want to hurt her because that would hurt his own mother so she knew she was mostly in the clear. They got to talking and Jojo started to develop a crush on her. She was upset when he posed as Nathan dumping her, but soon Jojo realized he’d gone too far and then apologized (as Nathan again).
Elsa saved Jojo when the Gestapo questioned about his missing knife. She had kept incapacitating Jojo and taking his knife away from her every time he tried to subdue her. She made up the excuse that he kept barging into her room and she needed to fend him off. Elsa was questioned by Klenzendorf about her identity as “Inge.” She’d said her birthday wrong but Klenzendorf had let her go. I thought this part was a bit confusing. I guess she hadn’t gotten a chance to look at her papers before handing them to Klenzendorf (reasonable), but if she was Inge’s friend, wouldn’t she have known? I guess we can only assume Elsa was a friend but not a bff.
Elsa revealed that Nathan, her ex-fiance, had died from tuberculosis, so she knew all along that Jojo was fabricating those letters to comfort her. Jojo had developed a crush on Elsa and that was why he didn’t want to let her go, but he eventually fought with fake Hitler and let her go.
If I was Elsa, I also would have been upset at the lie, but I also would have understood that Jojo was a lonely boy who’d lost his mother and had no one at the moment.
Adolf Hitler
Hitler was a figment of Jojo’s imagination. Whenever Jojo wasn’t able to complete a task, Hitler would encourage him, telling him that he wasn’t wrong for his feelings, and then telling him how he could face his fears. Later on, Hitler became a sounding board to Jojo. When dealing with Elsa, Hitler would provide the Nazi argument, and Jojo would find himself not quite agreeing, showing that Jojo still had capacity for humanity in him.
As Jojo grew closer with Elsa, his relationship with Hitler got a bit rocky, since Hitler wasn’t very happy that he was becoming friendly. In the final fight, Jojo insisted that Elsa was a person and he kicked Hitler away, freeing himself from those restrictive, false, highly discriminatory and offensive Nazi beliefs.
Klenzendorf
Klenzendorf was the captain of the Hitler Youth Camp. He clearly did not want to be there. He was drinking, running the camp similar to how a checked out adult might run a youth camp now. After Jojo’s injury, Klenzendorf was demoted. Still, he was responsible for assigning tasks to Jojo, which happened to be posting posters over town.
Short note, whatever was going on between Klenzendorf and Finkel. I see y’all lmfao. This was for the fujos.
Jojo had asked Klenzendorf what he should do when he saw a Jew. We saw that Klenzendorf wasn’t very committal, he had a very wishy-washy answer, showing that he didn’t really believe in the theories about Jewish people having horns or other fantastical things. As mentioned, when questioned by the Gestapo, Elsa and Jojo were helped by Klenzendorf, which continued to show that Klenzendorf didn’t care so much for the politics.
At the end, when Nazi Germany fell, Klenzendorf found Jojo and comforted him, especially since Jojo hadn’t really had much time to grieve for his mother. However, afterwards, Klenzendorf pushed Jojo away, calling him a Jew, so that he wouldn’t be grouped with the other Nazis who then proceeded to be shot.
Yorki
Yorki was Jojo’s best friend (after the Fuhrer I guess). They both attended the Hitler Youth camp. Jojo was pulled out after getting injured, but Yorki remained, and he served as a parallel to Jojo in the story. I felt that Yorki brought Jojo back down to earth, as Yorki seemed less interested in the Nazism of it all, and was just taking the camp as an activity. He was interested in what most kids were interested in.
Themes
As mentioned, I hesitate to call this a coming of age. I think it was more of a reckoning for Jojo, to understand that his extremist beliefs were not right. But it didn’t really hit that deep for me.
Overall
It was decent. You could get a few laughs out of this comedy drama.
Spoilers.
Story
Johannes “Jojo” Betzler joined a camp for Hitler Youth, where they learned to fight against Jews. They also learned lots of fantastical negative stereotypes about Jewish people. Jojo had an imaginary friend, a version of Hitler, who would cheer him on and hype him up as he was normally a bit timid (normal for a ten year old forced to confront violence). At one point, he had thrown a grenade and injured himself, which pulled himself out of the Hitler Youth program.
Jojo found out that his mother was hiding a Jewish girl Elsa in their walls. She as the friend of his dead sister Inge. He did not reveal her presence because he realized that would endanger his mother as well. So they kind of had a truce. Jojo would regularly talk to Elsa to find out more about Jewish people for a book he was writing. Elsa would straight up lie to Jojo since he was so indoctrinated into Nazi beliefs that he’d believe everything.
One day, the Gestapo came to his home to do a routine investigation. Klenzendorf and Finkel, the leaders of the Hitler Youth Camp who were now demoted to do office work, also arrived at the scene. When the Gestapo questioned why Jojo’s knife was missing, Elsa came to his rescue, posing as Inge with his knife. Klenzendorf questioned Elsa about her identity, and Elsa had gotten Inge’s birthday wrong, but Klenzendorf had let her go, showing that he was a friend to Jojo and Elsa.
Jojo went to the town square and discovered his mother had been hanged. When he went home, he attacked Elsa but was swiftly stopped. Elsa revealed that she had been working as part of the resistance to the Nazi party. Jojo’s father was also part of the resistance. Jojo hadn’t known any of this because they had wanted to keep him away from it.
The war waged on, and Nazi Germany fell in the end. Worried that Elsa could now leave, Jojo lied and said that the Nazis won so that she would stay. Out of guilt, he devised a plan for her to escape. When Elsa stepped out onto the street, a car waving the US flag passed by. She was upset with Jojo for lying to her, but they proceeded to dance, which Elsa said was the first thing she would do when she was free.
This was a story about Jojo learning the truth of humanity, that his Nazi beliefs were not right, and that each person is worthy of living. I guess the WWII backdrop just didn’t appeal to me so I wasn’t too moved.
The comedy writing was fine. It was modern, which very much is the point, but somehow it feels overdone to me, in a “haha Nazis are stupid” kind of way. Yes, I agree that Nazi beliefs were bad, but Nazi jokes just don’t really hit for me.
Production
The production was good. I think the colour palette was nice. Perhaps it’s because our main character was a child, that we got some more colour, because if it was more of a serious war film, I know that this entire movie would have been gray.
The acting was okay. It was a bit hard to take some of the whiplash between serious and comedic seriously. I’ll talk more about the acting below. I do think the child actor did well though.
Characters
Johannes “Jojo” Betzler
Jojo was the main character. At the beginning, he had an idealized view of the world. Hitler as the great hero of the world, and Jojo wanted to be part of his personal security. However, Jojo was a little timid, so he imagined Hitler to be his imaginary friend who would encourage him and help him talk things through in a “what would Hitler do?” kind of way.
A challenge was introduced to Jojo in the form of Elsa. Jojo was first afraid of Elsa, thinking her as a ghost. Then Elsa intimidated Jojo, incapacitating Jojo every time he did anything. Understandably, Elsa resented Jojo’s beliefs because they were the cause of her suffering. Since Jojo realized he couldn’t do anything to hurt Elsa (since he would hurt his own mother), he decided on a stalemate. He spoke to Elsa about Jewish people to get research for his book, but he later realized that no one took him seriously, even the Nazis who indoctrinated him, including Klenzendorf, Finkel, and even the Gestapo.
Another challenge faced him when he suddenly found his mother dead. She stood against everything he believed in, as did his father, and that confused him. I felt that this was a plot hole in the movie, but more on this later. As well, he had grieve for his mother, the one person who had taken care of him all this time. So when after the war, he realized that Elsa would leave him too, he was afraid and tried to keep her trapped. I did find myself anxious at this part for Elsa’s safety.
But Jojo soon realized that it wasn’t the right thing to do. After days of speaking with Elsa, he realized that she was a person, like his sister was. And he realized he had to let her go. He had a fight with his imaginary Hitler, where he told Hitler that Elsa was a girl and deserved to be free like him, and that was that. Jojo understood when Elsa was upset, but she started dancing, so maybe there was room for forgiveness.
The movie was open-ended for Jojo, in the sense that we don’t know what’s going to happen to his home life, if his father will come back, if Elsa will leave. But it was a character journey in which Jojo learned that his extremist views were not the way. However, I can’t really say that this was a coming of age movie for Jojo. I can’t really explain why, but it didn’t really seem to tick that box for me. I didn’t feel like Jojo was fundamentally changed, which maybe was the point. As his mother said, she thought that the sweet boy was still in there somewhere. But if that’s the case, the character journey doesn’t feel as deep because he isn’t changing his views, he’s just uncovering what was there.
Rosie Betzler
Rosie was Jojo’s mom. She was supposed to be kind of a cool mom character. She protected him, and encouraged him.
At one point they did have a fight where Jojo said that he wished his father was back instead of his mother. She was upset as she was doing a lot, both raising a son and working on the resistance effort. But she made up with Jojo soon.
Rosie was the one to harbour Elsa in their walls. It’s unclear how Inge died, but that’s unimportant. Elsa was Inge’s friend and Rosie felt bad for her and gave her a place to stay, while having to hide her from Jojo whom she knew to be a fanatic.
As mentioned, I felt that the contrast between Rosie and Jojo’s views was a bit of a plot weakness. The movie explanation was that Rosie wanted to hide Jojo from her resistance work to protect him. But why would she go so far as to encourage his Nazi activities? Perhaps going to Nazi Hitler Youth camp was Jojo’s idea, but after his injury, why would she let him go back to working for them? If I was a mother, I could have used any excuse to keep him from going back to working under Klenzendorf and Finkel, siting their inability to protect kids.
I also felt like Rosie could have done anything to try to guide Jojo back on the path of…seeing people as equal. Maybe Rosie was worried that rocking the boat with Jojo would compromise her role and her husband’s. What if she told him to consider that maybe Jews were people, and then Jojo said that to another adult who would then compromise her position? I don’t know though, I feel like it would be more interesting to hear Rosie trying to reason with Jojo more.
Rosie died suddenly. I hadn’t even realized that she was the reason for the Gestapo’s visit. Afterwards, her story was told by Elsa.
Scarlett Johansson didn’t really work for me as this character. I felt that she was a bit too scattered and not as coherent. She was most interesting to me when she was with Jojo. She joked a lot and clearly loved him a lot (in which case, why didn’t it bother her that her son was a Hitler youth?). So it kind of boggled me that she seemed a very different person with Elsa. She was a lot more serious, which was fine, Elsa is older. But for humourous people, they tend to be humourous through many circumstances. I also felt that there were some instances in the movie where she was acting for an adult audience instead of interacting with the characters and that was a bit distracting. Like when she was joking about being beautiful. That joke didn’t really land right for me.
Elsa Korr
Elsa was the Jewish girl living in Jojo’s walls (literally). I did enjoy the joke about Elsa being in Jojo’s brains and in his walls. Because she literally was. Jojo was way more bothered about Elsa.
When Elsa first came into the story, Jojo was terrified. He thought she was a ghost, but realized that she was a human, and a Jew. Elsa intimidated him into staying silent. Jojo continued to try to confront her, handle her, but whenever he spouted his Nazi nonsense, Elsa would subdue him. I understand the rage. It was because of those stupid beliefs that she was suffering, and she was not going to let anybody believe those untruths about her.
Elsa in general was easygoing though. She joked with Jojo. Despite her aggression, she knew that Jojo was a malleable young boy. She messed with him for the fun of it, when she knew it wouldn’t hurt her. She knew that Jojo wouldn’t want to hurt her because that would hurt his own mother so she knew she was mostly in the clear. They got to talking and Jojo started to develop a crush on her. She was upset when he posed as Nathan dumping her, but soon Jojo realized he’d gone too far and then apologized (as Nathan again).
Elsa saved Jojo when the Gestapo questioned about his missing knife. She had kept incapacitating Jojo and taking his knife away from her every time he tried to subdue her. She made up the excuse that he kept barging into her room and she needed to fend him off. Elsa was questioned by Klenzendorf about her identity as “Inge.” She’d said her birthday wrong but Klenzendorf had let her go. I thought this part was a bit confusing. I guess she hadn’t gotten a chance to look at her papers before handing them to Klenzendorf (reasonable), but if she was Inge’s friend, wouldn’t she have known? I guess we can only assume Elsa was a friend but not a bff.
Elsa revealed that Nathan, her ex-fiance, had died from tuberculosis, so she knew all along that Jojo was fabricating those letters to comfort her. Jojo had developed a crush on Elsa and that was why he didn’t want to let her go, but he eventually fought with fake Hitler and let her go.
If I was Elsa, I also would have been upset at the lie, but I also would have understood that Jojo was a lonely boy who’d lost his mother and had no one at the moment.
Adolf Hitler
Hitler was a figment of Jojo’s imagination. Whenever Jojo wasn’t able to complete a task, Hitler would encourage him, telling him that he wasn’t wrong for his feelings, and then telling him how he could face his fears. Later on, Hitler became a sounding board to Jojo. When dealing with Elsa, Hitler would provide the Nazi argument, and Jojo would find himself not quite agreeing, showing that Jojo still had capacity for humanity in him.
As Jojo grew closer with Elsa, his relationship with Hitler got a bit rocky, since Hitler wasn’t very happy that he was becoming friendly. In the final fight, Jojo insisted that Elsa was a person and he kicked Hitler away, freeing himself from those restrictive, false, highly discriminatory and offensive Nazi beliefs.
Klenzendorf
Klenzendorf was the captain of the Hitler Youth Camp. He clearly did not want to be there. He was drinking, running the camp similar to how a checked out adult might run a youth camp now. After Jojo’s injury, Klenzendorf was demoted. Still, he was responsible for assigning tasks to Jojo, which happened to be posting posters over town.
Short note, whatever was going on between Klenzendorf and Finkel. I see y’all lmfao. This was for the fujos.
Jojo had asked Klenzendorf what he should do when he saw a Jew. We saw that Klenzendorf wasn’t very committal, he had a very wishy-washy answer, showing that he didn’t really believe in the theories about Jewish people having horns or other fantastical things. As mentioned, when questioned by the Gestapo, Elsa and Jojo were helped by Klenzendorf, which continued to show that Klenzendorf didn’t care so much for the politics.
At the end, when Nazi Germany fell, Klenzendorf found Jojo and comforted him, especially since Jojo hadn’t really had much time to grieve for his mother. However, afterwards, Klenzendorf pushed Jojo away, calling him a Jew, so that he wouldn’t be grouped with the other Nazis who then proceeded to be shot.
Yorki
Yorki was Jojo’s best friend (after the Fuhrer I guess). They both attended the Hitler Youth camp. Jojo was pulled out after getting injured, but Yorki remained, and he served as a parallel to Jojo in the story. I felt that Yorki brought Jojo back down to earth, as Yorki seemed less interested in the Nazism of it all, and was just taking the camp as an activity. He was interested in what most kids were interested in.
Themes
As mentioned, I hesitate to call this a coming of age. I think it was more of a reckoning for Jojo, to understand that his extremist beliefs were not right. But it didn’t really hit that deep for me.
Overall
It was decent. You could get a few laughs out of this comedy drama.