Nothing makes sense anymore.
Yeah, I know, definitely not a good time to be a Nazi.
So, this is a weird one. And I don’t mean that in a good way, really. If I were to review all of Taika Waititi’s films, I could easily start every review with “So, this is a weird one,” because all of his movies are, to a lesser or greater degree, weird. Usually though, they’re weird in a brilliant, compelling, genius kind of way. This movie has some of that brilliant kind of weirdness. The very premise itself is that kind of weird; it’s a dark comedy about a young Hitler Youth and his imaginery friend, Adolf Hitler. That’s weird in a great way. The execution, unfortunately, is . . . well . . .
Okay, there are things I really, really liked about this movie. The best thing about it is undoubtedly Roman Griffin Davis, who is a ball of charisma and fun as the main character. This movie absolutely depends on that lead performance. With the wrong kid in that role, this whole movie falls completely to shambles; hell, it very nearly does with the RIGHT kid in the role. Griffin Davis is absolutely perfect in his boyish exuberance and also in his profound self-seriousness. He’s excellent. I liked some of the other performances in the film as well. Archie Yates is absolutely brilliant as Jojo’s friend, Yorki; any time he’s on screen, I was laughing. Scarlett Johansson gives a really vibrant and energetic performance as Jojo’s mother; she really commits and goes all the way with the performance. And Thomasin McKenzie brings a kind of strange, unexpected energy to her performance as a Jewish girl in hiding. I liked the strength of her character, her steadfast refusal to ever be a victim. And Stephen Merchant gets off a great cameo as a leering SS Officer; the sequence of his squad being forced to repeatedly go through a litany of “Heil Hitlers” every time a new character enters the room is the movie at its funniest, lampooning, not the moral horrors of the Nazi regime, but the brain-numbing stupidity of its bureaucracy and groupthink. The film has a fair amount of funny scenes. The scene where Jojo steals a hand grenade is absolutely wonderful as it goes and then when it takes a twist you don’t expect, it suddenly becomes hilarious. And Waititi’s Hitler is sporadically funny.
But this brings us the things that I think don’t work. The movie wants to be a zany comedy and it pulls a lot of that off. But then it also wants to be a dark story of the horrors of the Nazi regime. And, look, it gets a few things right about that too; an early scene of Johansson forcing her young son to confront the hanged bodies of resistance fighters really lands hard and feels absolutely right. But then the movie also wants to be a feel good story about the power of love to overcome, even in times of oppression. And, let’s be honest, it gets basically nothing about that right. Looking at the arc of Waititi’s Hitler is kind of instructive here.
There’s a lot of power in making something the object of mockery, so I don’t want to downplay the significance of the way the film makes Hitler a ridiculous figure through Waititi’s zany performance. Waititi gets some decent laughs of that original premise, though admittedly fewer than he should probably be able to get. As the film progresses, Waititi’s Hitler becomes increasingly bad tempered as he sees Jojo starting to change, to doubt the way of life he has always believed in. There’s an opportunity here to go really dark with Hitler as a figure of abuse and Waititi seems to want the film to go dark, but he pulls the punch with Hitler and instead makes him a sulky, kind of petulant figure. Again, there’s a virtue here, the virtue of revealing that these terrifying figures of history are, ultimately, bratty children. So I try to give things the benefit of the doubt when Waititi goes that way instead of taking Hitler down a genuinely ugly and threatening path. I wonder though what a more nuanced writer might have done with the scene when Hitler returns after “his” death; the opportunities are endless: psychotic rage perhaps or maybe he’s a sniveling coward or maybe something else. But certainly something besides the slapstick stumblebum he is in the scene as we get it.
Maybe I’m expecting more than Waititi than I should; some people out there are probably screaming at their computer screens that Waititi is a farcical filmmaker with an essentially comedic worldview and I shouldn’t expect him to bring a lot of depth. But, look, I was more deeply invested in the emotional journey of Viago in What We Do in the Shadows than I was in any of the characters in this movie; Waititi is capable of layering in a lot of emotional subtlety but he just really doesn’t here. To the degree he tries, things get a little cringy even. I liked Sam Rockwell’s character initially and it plays to Rockwell’s strengths at the beginning. He’s a burn-out, a guy who was a golden boy once, but now he’s just disheveled and bitter. The Aryan Ubermensch after he lets himself go, you know. But I don’t know what Waititi is after with that character by the time the movie is over. We’re supposed to cheer, I think, when he’s able to “embrace his queer identity” or whatever that costume is supposed to mean and we’re supposed to feel bad when he dies because, well, he was one of the GOOD ones. Nazis, I mean. One of the good Nazis. One of the good Nazis. You know, a thing that doesn’t exist. Didn’t then, doesn’t now. Never will. You can make a Nazi character psychologically complex, even morally complex; Brando’s character in The Young Lions is a perfect example of a Nazi character that you’re capable of having complicated feelings about. But Sam Rockwell, much as I love him, is no Brando; more importantly, the writing isn’t there. Waititi wants the character to be complicated, but he instead makes him into God only knows what.
Well, I’ve spent more time on this movie than, in my opinion, it really deserves. I doubt I’ll think about this movie much in the years to come. I’ll just forget most of it, I think, which is too bad. It’s the only real misfire in Waititi’s career in my opinion. I don’t like to criticize a movie because it’s not the movie I wanted, if you know what I mean. And maybe some of what I’m doing here falls under that. But I think that everything I wanted the movie to do, Waititi also wanted it to do; I don’t want this movie to be a different movie, I want it to be a BETTER movie. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – thematically muddled, tonally scattershot, occasionally inept movie boasts some fine performances and some nice laughs, but it wants to be, and could have been, much more. 2 ½ stars.