World War Two Archives

Jojo Rabbit

Posted on 8th December 201930th April 2020 by Jack Hawkins

Jojo Rabbit is like watching a sixth form revue whose student cast has just finished the CliffsNotes history of Nazi Germany and decided to play it for self-satisfied laughs. Now, Taika Waititi’s offbeat humour may have worked for Thor but it does not work for Nazism; his shtick is far too lame and toothless to produce anything nearing satire. And this is what Waititi thinks he has made, satire. It is a high-minded ‘anti-hate’ piece aimed squarely at contemporary right-wing populists. A worthy target, many would agree, but this edgeless juvenilia won’t challenge their beliefs for a moment.

The film’s milky satire is doubly disappointing, for the Nazis – both the first wave and their pathetic admirers – are very sensitive to parody. Charles A. Ridley realised this back in 1941, when he edited footage of Nazi processions from Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) to fit the tempo of the Lambeth Walk, which one Nazi Party member had dismissed as ‘Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping‘. When Joseph Goebbels saw Ridley’s film, he was reportedly so furious that he burst out of the screening room – all 5ft 4 of him – and expressed his impotent rage by ‘kicking chairs and screaming profanities’. Alas, Jojo Rabbit is unlikely to rankle the contemporary far-right in such a fashion.

Parody aside, the central conceit of Waititi’s film is a tired morality tale. The story concerns Jojo (Roman Griffin), a 10-year-old boy whose imaginary friend is none other than Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi). A committed member of the Hitler Youth, Jojo’s fanaticism is challenged when he discovers his mother has given refuge to a young Jewish girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), who hides in the rafters of the house. What are the odds that Jojo slowly warms to Elsa and sees the inhumanity of Nazism? That’s right, it’s essentially American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998) thrown into a dull stew of Life is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni, 1998) and third-rate Mel Brooks.

However, trite narratives can be buoyed by strong performances, witty dialogue – all manner of things. But in Jojo Rabbit there is nothing more than a litany of tired jokes and perfunctory German accents, with the worst of all coming from Rebel Wilson – the corpulent comedian of the moment. Negligibly better is Sam Rockwell, who coasts along as Captain Klenzendorf, a washed-up veteran. Waititi himself features as Adolf Hitler, in a performance that may have been daring 80 years ago but still wouldn’t have been funny.

A notably bad cameo comes from Stephen Merchant, who plays local Gestapo leader Captain Deertz. It is Deertz and his men who are most guilty of the film’s tiresome “Heil Hitler” gag, which consists of the characters repeatedly saluting Hitler to each other in a convivial manner. Clearly, Waititi thought this gag was a real winner, for in one scene each man of Geertz’s crew greets Jojo and Klenzendorf with cheeky salutations to the Fuhrer – it is an insufferably naff attempt at parody.

But remember, Jojo Rabbit isn’t just a parody, it’s an ‘anti-hate satire’; it’s here to help, to educate. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Waititi said, ‘there’s a danger we will forget the events of World War Two and there is another, deeper danger that some of those things will repeat themselves.’

This is an utterly risible statement. How can Waititi expect his film to comment on reality when it bears no relation to it? Jojo Rabbit is a facetious mess that presents Nazi Germany as a wacky pantomime full of goofy caricatures – it couldn’t complement even the most junior history syllabus. After all, the Gestapo did not consist of lanky, bumbling fools; they were sadistic thugs who maimed, tortured and killed – and that should be made abundantly clear to any student of history.

It would be unfair, however, not to mention the few, minor strengths. Scarlett Johansson gives the best performance as Rosie, Jojo’s mother. She has a ballsy eccentricity that steals several scenes, especially one in which she pretends to be Jojo’s absent father. There’s also Yorki played by Archie Yates, who shows a knack for dry humour that could bode well for the young actor.

But make no mistake, Jojo Rabbit is an abject failure. With its witless script laced with cringeworthy modern slang, you’ll find sharper humour in a YouTube Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004) parody. And as a commentary on racism, there is more satire in five minutes of Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2013) than the entirety of Jojo Rabbit. Waititi said that his film will ‘piss off a lot of racists’, but with an offering this milquetoast I’m afraid that’s just not going to happen.

Jojo Rabbit is in UK cinemas Wednesday, January 1st. On VoD on Monday, April 27th.

The Keeper (Trautmann)

Posted on 3rd April 201915th June 2021 by Jeremy Clarke

Set in WW2 and its aftermath in Britain, this looks at first sight like a football movie. However, it becomes something else altogether by taking a long hard look at the plight of a person living in another country that’s heavily prejudiced against his own. Sadly one doesn’t have to look very far in present day, hostile environment Britain to see that such attitudes are currently very real and out in the open. This means that although this ostensibly covers real life events from over half a century ago, certain elements will likely resonate with contemporary UK audiences well beyond football fans.

German infantryman Bert Trautmann (David Kross) is captured by the British in WW2 and sent to a PoW camp just outside Manchester. Despite the presence of a few hardcore Nazis among the prisoners, most including Bert are ordinary Germans caught up in the conflict. Nevertheless, the English sergeant who runs the camp would have all of them shot were the decision his and makes their lives as difficult as possible.

However Bert has something specific in his favour: for as long as he can remember, he’s loved playing football. A chance sighting of his goalkeeping skills by visiting shopkeeper and amateur team manager Jack Friar (John Henshaw) leads to Bert’s helping out at Jack’s shop although in reality he’s there to be the local team’s new goalie. Despite anti-German prejudice from Bert, his daughter Margaret (Freya Mavor) and members of the football team, Bert’s determination to make things work off the field and his footballing skills themselves lead not only to his eventual signing by Manchester City but also to romance, marriage and family life with Margaret.

The widespread hatred of the Germans by the English during and after the War here serves as the backdrop to Bert’s relationships with others. On an individual level, he always has to start by winning people over before they can accept him. Jack is motivated by the fact of his team’s current goalie not being very good rather than any altruistic desire to help an enemy alien find acceptance in England’s green and pleasant land. Margaret likewise dislikes Bert and his fellow countrymen for what they’ve inflicted on her country and countrymen, but being confronted with a real life, breathing human being forces her to re-examine the ideas that everyone around her unquestioningly accepts.

Such tensions are equally evident on a wider social level. Jack first presents Bert to the team as someone who can’t speak with a scarf round his throat, correctly guessing not only that the other players won’t take kindly to the German’s national identity as soon as he opens his mouth and speaks with an accent but also that they’ll be rapidly won over if they see him in action in goal. And when Bert turns professional his Man City career is dogged for some while by that city’s Jewish community leaders’ understandable misgivings regarding his presence.

Overall, the film has much to say about how peace, forgiveness and reconciliation can broker a path through seemingly intractable and divisive prejudices to a much better place. It also delves into Bert’s internal torment as to whether he could have done more to change the outcome of an incident in his past when a superior German officer stole a football from a Jewish boy, teased him and then shot him dead. This memory periodically surfaces in Bert’s head until, in the final reel, events take an unexpected turn to put Bert and Margaret’s marriage under severe stress.

Working through these difficult and sometimes painful issues is underscored at the end as crowds of fans sing Abide With Me, a Christian hymn that’s been wrested away from its church roots and come to represent a deep spiritual truth about British people gathering together to watch, support and enjoy football. This in turn comes to stand for an acceptance of those who are different within wider British society. A helpful parable indeed for the UK’s present, troubled times.

The Keeper is out in the UK on Friday, April 5th. Watch the film trailer below:

The Eyes Of Orson Welles

Posted on 3rd August 201813th August 2018 by Jeremy Clarke

This takes the form of a letter, as in, a letter to Orson Welles read out by director Mark Cousins on the film’s soundtrack as the film proceeds. According to the press blurb, Cousins never wanted to make a film on Welles feeling that numerous books and documentaries had already said everything there was to say. But then Cousins was presented with an unexpected opportunity. He was given access to a box of hitherto unseen drawings, paintings and sketches by the great man. These, he felt, gave him a way to represent a side of Orson which hadn’t really been seen before.

So Cousins starts off in New York to Albioni’s doom-laden Adagio, today a familiar film music staple which was first used in Welles’ screen adaptation of one of the 20th century’s great dirty texts, Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial (1961). Welles himself, and the wider body of work which bears his name, is another of those dirty texts and Cousins proves himself exactly the person to have another crack at documenting him with the drawings and paintings from the box the perfect vehicle for that journey. For the newcomer to Welles it’s a great starting point; for the more knowledgeable viewer there’s a wealth of never before seen material here.

The whole breaks down into separate sections discussing Welles with regards to Pawn, Knight, King and – in a less chess-referenced epilogue – Jester.

The Pawn section deals with common people, starting with his mother Beatrice, A Christian Unitarian activist who got herself elected and ensured “a Christmas gift for every child” making a huge political impact on her son.

The more complex section on the Knight deals with several aspects of Orson’s love life – among them visual loving, chivalry and death/guilt. Up pops the four in a bed revelry from Shakespeare/Falstaff vehicle Chimes At Midnight (Welles, 1965) and a drawing of a devil who visits Welles when his then wife Rita Hayworth is absent. No drawing of Rita, but numerous clips from the film he built around her, The Lady From Shanghai/1947, including the transcendent sequence where whilst lying on the deck of a boat she requests a cigarette and the camera framing her face moves to follow down her arm to a cigarette coming into her hand which she then brings back up to her face.

As for the King,in the opening minutes there’s an unspoken reference to Donald Trump. The current Potus is reminiscent of various despotic characters created by Welles: newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane/1940), murderous monarch Macbeth (1948), racketeer Harry Lime (The Third Man, Carol Reed/1949) and corrupt cop Hank Quinlan (Touch Of Evil/1960). Cousins suggests current the state of the world would fascinate Welles whose formative years included the 1930s’ stock market crash, the Great Depression and the rise of fascism which lead to WW2.

The rather different Jester section has Welles (voiced by Jack Klaff) writing back to Cousins, suggesting that all the world’s a circus. Cousins’ imagined Welles throws up various ideas that don’t fit the film’s thesis – the japes of Welles’ home made Too Much Johnson (1938), the absurdist world of Mr. Arkadin (1955) and a series of drawings of St. Nicholas which gradually turn Santa Claus into a drunkard with a bottle.

It all works extremely well as a film, whether you already know Welles or not. That said, the wealth of material here cries out for additional exposure in other media – a book of pictures, an art exhibition or an interactive website. You can see that just from watching the trailer. For the moment, though, this film version will do just fine.

The Eyes Of Orson Welles is out in the UK on Friday, August 17th.