電影《兔嘲男孩》影評：Editing Analysis

Jojo Rabbit tells the story of a young German boy who finds his mother hiding a Jewish girl at home while dealing with his imaginary best friend Adolf Hitler.

The scene that some Nazi soldiers come to Jojo’s house to do a routine inspection uses a fast pace to mock the greetings of the Nazis. The greeting line 「Heil Hitler」 is repeated more than 30 times in less than 2 minutes. It cuts quickly back and forth between both sides of the greetings to create a sense of satire and humor.

The film is quite straightforward, simply a linear story from Jojo’s viewpoint: join the camp, get injured, find out the Jewish girl at home, mom dies, the war happens and ends. It helps the film as the audience gets a better sense of how Jojo is growing up from these incidents, along with the change of the relationship with his imaginary friend. In this way, the audience can feel more close to Jojo by watching him growing up.

The film chooses some music back in the 60s and 70s and the lyrics help advancing the plot.

It opens with <Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand> performed by The Beatles. Along with the actual video clips from World War II, it creates a sense of nostalgia and quickly brings the audience to the story setup. The lyrics 「Gib Mir Deine Hand」 appear with the clips of loyal Nazi German who raise their hands for Hitler. The music and image together provide a background of why Jojo attends the Hitler Youth and why he has an imaginary best friend Adolf Hitler.

In another scene when Jojo and mom ride back home after chatting about life after the war along the river, it uses the song <Mama>, recorded by Roy Orbison in 1962. While the music plays, a truck of soldiers back from the battlefield pass by. They are exhausted, but when Jojo’s mom says to them: 「now go home and kiss your mothers」, they look happier. It’s a little bit of family time from the war and Hitler, foreshadowing how Jojo’s opinion towards Hilter changes with the love from his mother.

The song <Everybody’s Gotta Live>, recorded by an American rock band in 1974, starts after Jojo’s mother dies and ends with the first bomb of the last war. The lyrics 「she said if you're with me I’ll never go away」 tells how Jojo is recovering from his mother’s death, and 「everybody’s gotta live, everybody’s gonna die」 introduces the resolving war scene.