Rapid Response: Jojo Rabbit (Patreon)

A genuinely rapid response because I just got out of the cinema after seeing the latest film from one of my favourite directors, Taika Waititi. I went in a little concerned because reviews have been split and the subject matter could not be more sensitive, especially for a comedy. Personally, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. It is laugh out loud funny, with outrageous slapstick humour, and yet it never feels disrespectful. Partly that's because those moments are well balanced out with genuine horror and sadness - there's no underselling of what's going on here. But the film's trump card is the child's point of view, which allows a more objective viewpoint - children only know the world they grow up in as they observe it and as it is drummed into them by adults, and the film sees its title character's certainties about the world slowly eroded. Far from being offended by the film's take on the history, I found myself more profoundly moved by its humanity than I have been by many dramas on the same subject. 

I don't want to say too much about it because it would be an easy one to spoil, but  my take-away was that for all its wartime setting and the surrealism of its premise, this is in the end a film about childhood and growing up. rb