Summary
The film opens with Jojo Betzler, a young German boy aged ten who is a patriotic Nazi youth in Germany during World War II. Jojo is very sweet and innocent, but also obsessed with Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany. He often imagines that Hitler is with him, giving him advice and acting as a kind of voice of reason in his life, urging him to be more patriotic and become a better Nazi. "I don't think I can do this," Jojo says to imaginary Hitler in the opening scene. Hitler urges him that he is up to it. In the opening sequence of the film, we see Jojo running through the streets as a German version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles plays. Over this opening sequence we see footage of Nazi rallies.
Jojo and his best friend Yorki, a portly and humorous young boy, are going away to Nazi training camp when the film begins. There, the one-eyed Captain Klezendorf and his assistant, Finkel, with whom he seems to be having a romantic affair, lead Nazi youths in training. They are accompanied by Fraulein Rahm, another ruthless Nazi officer. The officers are strict, but buffoonish, and Jojo is determined to be the best Nazi youth at the camp. Klezendorf walks all of the Nazi youths through what weapons and tools they have been equipped with including their daggers, Deutsches Jungvolkdagers, which they are meant to always have with them.
In class, Rahm teaches the boys about Jewish people, whom she say descended from a man who mated with a fish. She then tells them that they are going to burn books, and the children burst into an excited cheer. That night, Yorki and Jojo talk about how they want to kill Jewish people with their daggers. Yorki asks Jojo how he would know who is Jewish, and Jojo tells him that Jewish people smell like brussels sprouts.
One day at camp, some older boys challenge Jojo to kill a rabbit on the spot in the middle of a large forest. Jojo hesitates and is much too frightened to kill the rabbit, so the other Nazi youths make fun of him, calling him "Jojo Rabbit." Humiliated, Jojo runs away into the forest, where he runs into his imaginary-friend-version of Hitler. Hitler encourages Jojo to go back and try again, reminding him that being called a "rabbit" isn't the worst thing in the world, and that the humble rabbit can outwit his enemies.
When Jojo goes back to the group, having been summoned by Yorki, he tries to prove himself to the older boys. As Klezendorf is going to show the other Nazi youths how to throw a grenade, Jojo grabs one and throws it into the forest. At first, it seems like Jojo will have a moment of glory, but the explosive bounces off a nearby tree and falls directly in front of Jojo, exploding instantly. Jojo is taken to the hospital, where he endures facial surgery that leaves him with large scars. He also has a limp.
Jojo goes home with his kind-hearted mother, Rosie, who nurses him back to health. Rosie is very loving and tells him he will heal soon enough, but Jojo is sad that he will not be able to join Hitler's personal guard. She convinces Jojo to come with her to Klezendorf's office. There, Rosie knees Klezendorf in the crotch for allowing her son to get injured. She then insists that Klezendorf and the others look after Jojo during the day and make him feel included.
Klezendorf introduces Jojo to the others, telling them that he has been demoted for letting Jojo get hit by the grenade. Rahm suggests that Jojo can help them by "walking the clones," and points to a group of blonde clones sitting nearby. She also says he could deliver conscriptions and hand out propaganda. Rahm tries to give Jojo a gun, but Rosie stops her from giving it to her son.
After he has hung up some propaganda, Jojo finds his mother, who is looking at a group of resistance workers who were hanged by the Gestapo. Rosie urges him to look, and he asks her what they did. "What they could," she replies, and they go home.
Analysis
The film begins with the rather controversial and off-color premise of an adorable little boy who idolizes the leader of the Nazi party, Adolf Hitler. Hitler exists in the public imagination as the ultimate villain, a eugenicist who represents all that is evil in the world; rarely is he depicted in films as anything other than evil. Director Taika Waititi sets up a premise that he knows will be ethically difficult to digest as a way of bumping up the satirical nature of the film. It is difficult to reconcile the humor and levity of the script with the fact that the protagonist loves Hitler, but Waititi sets up a story that walks a thin line between irreverence and good humor and invites the audience to laugh at the more farcical elements of a figure like Hitler.
Further complicating the irreverence of the film is the fact that the protagonist is a young boy with a particularly appealing and angelic face. Waititi juxtaposes Jojo's innocence and idealism with the horrors of Nazism to show the ways that nightmarish political campaigns can corrupt even the purest, while also suggesting that purity of appearance does not necessarily translate to pure politics. Jojo and his friend, Yorki, are exceedingly charming and cute, caricatures of 10-year-old delight, but their allegiance is with Adolf Hitler. A cognitive dissonance between our perception of the children as innocent and our perception of them as politically malevolent emerges, contributing further to the shock value of the satire.
Visually, the film is crisp and often quirky, with quick cuts, whimsical angles, and zippy camerawork. This only heightens the comical and satirical nature of the film, in that the aesthetic world of the film is defined by an intersection of Wes Anderson-esque fancifulness, children's storybook majesty, and the aesthetic trappings of a Nazi film. The tonal dissonance of light and dark is reflected in Waititi's visual and design palette, which can feel like something out of a Lewis Carroll novel, but gets subdivided by darker and more sobering images of violence perpetrated by the Nazis.
Jojo is passionate about his country and becoming the best Nazi youth he can be, but he is also not a very good fighter and proves to be quite squeamish when it comes to committing the murderous tasks that are required of him. When tasked with killing a rabbit, Jojo becomes overwhelmed and goes running into the forest, humiliated by his inability to be the heartless and bloodthirsty Nazi he so dreams of being. Then, when he tries to redeem himself by throwing an explosive into the forest, he clumsily throws it against a tree, resulting in his own injury. Jojo's lack of athleticism and inability to live up to his own expectations make him an endearing protagonist who is struggling to achieve his ambitions, even if those ambitions are morally reprehensible.
Humorously enough, Jojo's vehement Nazism is contrasted with his gentle mother's sympathies with the resistance. There is wry irony in this situation, in that one would not expect the son of a more radically-minded woman would become such a vehement Nazi, and Waititi plays up the juxtaposition between a fascist child and a left-leaning mother by showing the ways that Rosie is intimidated by her 10-year-old and does not respect his political philosophies.
