2019 comedy, dir. Taika Waititi, Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin
McKenzie: IMDb /
allmovie. A young boy
learns about life from his good buddy Imaginary Hitler… in late-war
Germany.
There is clearly a market in film for performances by child
actors of characters who are basically a bit rubbish at everything
they do. (See also Stand By Me.) That market does not include me.
Which makes it more difficult to appreciate the rest of what's going
on. There's a story to be told about Jojo's mother, who is performing
the role of a good Nazi woman (including to him, because he's
swallowed all the propaganda whole) while working for the Resistance,
but we only see a few flashes of that story. There's another story to
be told about Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), clearly so
incompetent that he's been left in charge of the Hitler Youth in this
small town rather than be thrown into the suicidal defence of the
homeland. There's even a story about Elsa, the Jewish girl whom Jojo's
mother is hiding in their house. But we get everything from Jojo's
point of view, and limited by his thoughts, and this simply doesn't
manage to be very interesting.
Yes, we can work out that Imaginary Hitler is Jojo's substitute for
his absent father. Yes, he gradually comes to realise that Jews are
not the slavering monsters of his propagandistic education but actual
people (especially if they're pretty and he's feeling the first
stirrings of puberty). Hurrah, I guess. But it's all so crude and
basic that it has nothing to say to me beyond the obvious.
I can't say this is a bad film, but clearly I'm missing whatever point
it may have. The novel Caging Skies from which this story was
adapted did not include Imaginary Hitler at all, and wasn't a comedy.
Would that have worked better? I really don't know.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.