Eavesdropping At The Movies

Its intentions are good, but we have trouble with Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi's comedy about a young boy in Nazi Germany, a fanatical member of the Hitler Youth, who discovers a Jewish girl being given safe harbour by his mother. Our reservations stem from the state of the world and culture in which the film has been made, in which fascism is resurgent and increasingly worth taking seriously. We discuss comedy's ability to puncture that at which it takes aim, Mike arguing that we like to overstate its power, José lamenting cinema's unwillingness to take today's fascist figureheads on directly - by comparison, satirising Hitler and the Nazis is a safe choice. Mike criticises the film's superficiality, finding that its depiction of the Nazi regime is skin deep, merely built on signifiers with which we're familiar - there's no attempt here to explore Jojo's psychology, or how and why he's been taught what he has. José argues that the film makes its Nazis too likeable, too goofy; the film wants to offer us a mess