電影《兔嘲男孩》影評：[Film Review] Jojo Rabbit (2019) 7.9/10

You cannot not hark back to Roberto Benigni’s well-wrought laughter/lachrymose diptych LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997) when you are watching JOJO RABBIT, the former (which this reviewer just re-watched recently on the big screen), albeit often too facile in its second-half concentration camp tall story, holds firmly the distinction of infusing a modicum of hope and innocence in the face of inconceivable man-made horror and adversity, and Taika Waititi’s sixth feature strives for the same aim, but by dint of a droll satire embedded with a cutesy Wes Anderson-esque mise en scène.

10-year-old Johannes 「Jojo」 Betzler (Davis) has been weaned on the Nazi propaganda, and is mad keen to drink the Kool-Aid for Adolf Hitler, who also materializes as his imaginary friend (Waititi, flexing his acting muscles of reifying a preteen’s whimsical figment), and knocks the cherubic, specky Yorki (a scene-stealing Yates delivers one-liners like a deadpan comedian, awash with nonchalant self-knowledge and delight) down a peg on Jojo’s best-friends list. After a mishap in the Hitler Youth camp, Jojo is injured and returns home to his mother Rosie (Johansson), only to find out that she hides a Jewish girl Elsa (McKenzie) in the attic. In order not to implicating his mother, Jojo initiates a rapprochement with Elsa that he will not inform the authority of her identity, provided that Elsa helps him to write a book about Jews, which she condones with contained ebullience.

But with the Third Reich in its last gasp, life in this unnamed German town soon devolves into terror, disenchantment and eventually the street-level last resistance facing the advancing Allies, yet, relentlessly taking Jojo’s and his only standpoint to contemplate a bigger, chaotic milieu, JOJO RABBIT knows all too well how to thaw the sticking point (squeezing some comedic elements out of the deplorable warfare), firstly, from the outlook, the film is a corker of production design and period costumes, suffused with rectilineal alignments, bright palette, fashionable outfits.

Secondly, applying a refined cast to the WWII template, JOJO RABBIT puts everyone in their wheelhouse of either perverse blitheness or sparkling wackiness: Oscar-nominated Johansson is particularly heartwarming and admirable as a virtuous, lively mother who is frustratingly befuddled by her own son’s indoctrinated idolatry, but never hesitates to give him her best under the precarious circumstances, and makes cogent references; McKenzie also flouts the hapless assumption of a girl in hiding, her Elsa is feisty, proactive, sensible, only revealing her wounds and grief in moderation, but not without a sense of humor and teasing provocation; Sam Rockwell again substantiates his chameleon-like faculty as the war-weary German captain Klenzendorf, turns out to be an ordinary hero designed with a fetching queer proclivity; however, the film is first and foremost, a showcase for the child actor Roman Griffin Davis, so animated, high-spirited but he switches through the different tenors of Jojo’s emotional upheavals with such facility, levity and gravity, it is almost too awesome a debut performance for any kid bent on making good in this cutting-edge line of work.

Systemically, what does JOJO RABBIT differ from Anderson’s MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012) is down to the shifting tonality, however kooky, chipper, there is no way the film can steer away from an impending tragedy that will strike Jojo so hard that he might never recover, in the most harrowing moment, happily chasing a blue butterfly, all of a sudden, Jojo falls in with something which also doubles as a potent mnemonic for viewers, and the camera firmly sticks to Jojo’s eye-level, without revealing the upper part (when the 「thing」 becomes 「person」), as far as satires go, Waititi’s undivided tact manifests itself appealingly (albeit the mean-spirited USA/USSR dichotomy) throughout this slightly twee re-imagination of the historic period that should never be effaced from any human being’s memory, the disillusion of blind faith and radical ideology, to search humanity in every blinking eyes and appreciate the freedom that you can dance whenever you feel like.

referential entries: Waititi’s HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE (2016, 7.3/10); Wes Anderson’s MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012, 7.8/10); Roberto Benigni’s LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997, 8.4/10).