Can Taika Waititi’s Next Movie Make Adolf Hitler Charming?
A Hollywood favorite is about to tackle the ultimate problematic character. In his new film Jojo Rab..
A Hollywood favorite is about to tackle the ultimate problematic character. In his new film Jojo Rabbit,Taika Waititi will play Adolf Hitler. Well, sort of.
Waititi—whose father is Maori and mother is Jewish—will not be playing the actual leader of Nazi Germany, but rather a German, World War II-era 10-year-old boy’s imagined version of Adolf Hitler, whom the kid invents because he misses his own father. Influenced by Nazi propaganda, the boy imagines an amalgamation of his father and Hitler. As the director told TheWrap on Wednesday, “It’s my version of. . . a lonely boy’s best version of his hero, which is really his dad.”
A description obtained by TheWrap further clarified: “This is not the Adolf we know and hate, this guy is goofy, charming, and glides through life with a child- like naivety.” An early logline for the film from 2012 describes it like so—though the script certainly could have changed over the past six years: “After being severely hurt by a grenade at Hitler youth camp, a prideful and nationalistic ten-year old boy discovers that his mother is hiding a fifteen year old Jewish girl in their house.”
TheWrap also provides a more current synopsis:
JOJO RABBIT, by Taika Waititi (“Thor: Ragnarok,” “Hunt for the Wilderpeople”), blends his signature humor, pathos, and deeply compelling characters in a World War II satire about a ten-year-old boy who, ridiculed by his peers and misunderstood by his mother, can’t quite figure out how to fit in. As the naïve young German struggles to understand his place in an increasingly Fascist regime, he resorts to an imaginary friend who can offer advice and help him cope.
The film comes from Fox Searchlight—which, thanks to a recent merger, will soon be under the auspices of Disney, the studio behind Waititi’s November hit Thor: Ragnarok. It’s an interesting clash of brand and material, to say the least.
This material would be tonally challenging under any circumstances, especially given the charged current political climate in the U.S. and abroad—though there is, of course, plenty of precedent for films using humor to address Hitler, including Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 comedy-drama The Great Dictator and the works of Mel Brooks, most specifically The Producers. Waititi’s film may also be of a piece with the surrealist 2015 German comedy Look Who’s Back, which imagined Hitler returning to his homeland decades after World War II. Upon its release, that movie became the No. 1 film in Germany. With its apparent tender streak, Jojo Rabbit could deliver something entirely new—and if anyone’s capable of pulling off this material, it’s probably Waititi.
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com. She was formerly an editorial assistant at Slate and lives in Brooklyn.
