Jojo Rabbit(2019)
dir. Taika Waititi
A Hitler Youth kid and his very silly imaginary Hitler.
Where to watch: Rent on Amazon, Apple TVLetterboxd ↗
Germany, near the end of World War II. Ten-year-old Jojo is a devoted Hitler Youth recruit whose imaginary best friend is a goofy version of Adolf Hitler. Then he discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa, in the walls of their house, and everything he has been taught starts to collide with the person in front of him.
Why it’s here
The punk move is the nerve: Waititi mocks Nazism with slapstick and a ridiculous imaginary Hitler, then keeps turning the screw until the joke stops being funny. The pedagogy is in how it shows indoctrination from the inside. Jojo is a kid absorbing propaganda, pageantry and belonging, and the film shows how easily that happens and how a real person can break the spell. It is a satire, not a history lesson, and some viewers find the comedy too soft on the Holocaust; the film's answer is that ridicule is a way of denying the movement its dignity, not the suffering its weight. Waititi, who is Māori and Jewish, plays the fantasy Hitler himself. Best for teens and up.
Where This Film Lives
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
Different Seasons
Stephen King
How fascism finds the boy next door.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Art Spiegelman
The only comic to win the Pulitzer. Banned anyway.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack
Richard Ovenden
Knowledge was always the target.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Librarian of Auschwitz
Antonio Iturbe
Eight books. One library. One defiant act.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
How Fascism Works
Jason Stanley
Ten tactics. One pattern. Now you'll see it everywhere.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank
Thirteen, in hiding, writing to stay real.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass
At three, he stops growing and drums at adult lies.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Caste
Isabel Wilkerson
India, America, Nazi Germany. Three caste systems. One logic.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST