Weeks
later, I’m still thinking about how great Jojo Rabbit is; if it doesn’t win Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars, I might
have a lot of shouty things to say to my TV. There’s all kinds of stuff I could
ruminate on further when it comes to this film, but today, I’d like to focus a
little on how the setting enhances the story (spoilers.)
Not just
the place, because that’s obvious. Nazi Germany, where Hitler is bigger than
the Beatles before there are Beatles, Jojo idolizes his Führer and goes to
Hitler Youth meetings on the regular, and the bodies of resistence members are
left hanging in the town square. There have been hundreds upon hundreds of
movies set in Nazi Germany.
What
stands out to me with Jojo Rabbit’s
setting, instead, is when exactly
it’s taking place. When we join the story, the war is in its last year. The
Allies are fighting back in the west and the Soviets are marching in from the
east. There are plenty of people who can see the writing on the wall. When the
Hitler Youth go into the woods for army training, Captain K mutedly goes
through the motions of acting like the situation is still “Rah rah, Nazis
forever!”, but his “rousing” speech is repeatedly interrupted by deadpan
disclaimers that the Third Reich isn’t as unstoppable as everyone has been
saying. He knows that the Nazis are running on fumes and basically coasting
until the end.
So we’re
beginning with a Reich that’s already dying. The film will culminate with the
Americans invading Berlin, the Hitler Youth sending children out to fight U.S.
soldiers in desperation because they’re the only ones left. Jojo’s friend Yorki
will be confused, not sure how the mighty Germany ended up with the entire
world against it (except for Japan, which he doesn’t understand because “they
don’t seem very Aryan.”) After all the posturing and propaganda, Hitler’s reign
ends with a whimper.
But for
most of the movie, even though the tide is very definitely coming in, Jojo
doesn’t see it like that. He’s a child, and Nazi Germany is all he’s ever
known. He absorbs state propaganda like a cross between gospel, fairytales, and
superhero comics. The Third Reich is everything to him, and as the inevitable
marches towards Berlin, he only sees an empire that will never die. This
heightens the dramatic irony. Even though we know merely as a matter of history
that Germany will lose the war, in this film, we actually see it in the process
of happening onscreen, but Jojo spends much of it none the wiser.
This also
makes a big difference when it comes to Elsa. When we meet her, she’s not a
girl going into hiding, or even one who’s gone into hiding. She’s been in hiding, for years. She’s already lost and continues to lose so many people, and
it’s been ages since she stood in the sunlight. She’s been shuffled from hiding
place to hiding place, passed from friends to friends of friends and beyond.
When Jojo meets her, it’s a complete revelation, but for her, she’s already
been doing this for a long time.
One final
benefit, I think, of the time setting, is this. We see Nazi Germany dying and
backed into a corner, weakened but also still dangerous. Though it won’t win,
it doesn’t stop lashing out. Again, this is reflected in how the children are
sent in to fight, cheerfully handed suicide grenades and told to “go hug an
American.” We see it too in Jojo’s imaginary Hitler. While he spends most of
the film being buffoonish and petulant, he’s always at his most genuinely-scary
when his position in Jojo’s regard is threatened. In much the same way, the
Third Reich’s death rattles are perilous in its desperation.
