Jojo Rabbit: A cheeky masterpiece

Jojo Rabbit (2019) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, disturbing images and violence
By Derrick Bang

You’re unlikely to see a more audacious film this year.

The slightest misstep — the most minute mistake in tone — and director/scripter Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Christine Leunens’ Jojo Rabbit would slide into puerile bathos or unforgivably heinous poor taste.

Having just discovered that a young woman (Thomasin McKenzie, as Elsa) has been
concealed behind the wall of an upstairs bedroom for an unknown length of time,
impassioned Hitler Youth acolyte Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) is uncertain how to
handle this potentially dangerous situation.

Such a delicate tightrope walk … which Waititi maneuvers with impressive grace, skill and cunning.

Along with his unerring handling of a note-perfect cast.

Satires about Adolf Hitler are rare, and for obvious reasons; the very notion is an artistic mine field. Charlie Chaplin pulled it off, with 1940’s The Great Dictator; so did Mel Brooks, with his Oscar-winning script for 1967’sThe Producers. And now we have an even more daring and impudent skewering of the dread Teppichfresser.

Ten-and-a-half-year-old Jojo Betzler (precocious Roman Griffin Davis, in a stunning acting debut) is introduced as he stares at his reflection in a mirror, dressed in Nazi finery. “Today you join the ranks of the Jungvolk!” he proudly tells himself. “You are in peak mental and physical condition. You have the body of a panther, and the mind of … a brainy panther. You are a shiny example of shiny perfection!”

The setting is the quaint (fictitious) town of Falkenheim, Austria, years into the repressive Nazi rule. Although all signs point to the war’s imminent conclusion, the naïve and credulously gullible Jojo has waited to be old enough to embrace the pervasive propaganda against which he has grown up, by joining the Hitler Youth. He and best friend Yorki (Archie Yates, endearingly cherubic) are tremendously excited by the weekend of “training” that will transform them into hard-charging Nazi warriors.

Except that things don’t quite work out that way. 

The training camp is overseen by the wearily cynical Capt. Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), who’d prefer to lead men to “glorious death” at the front, rather than shepherd “a bunch of little titty-grabbers.” He’s assisted by loyal acolyte Freddie Finkel (Alfie Allen, late of Game of Thrones), far more faithful than intelligent; and Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson, whose deadpan slow takes are to die for), ever-willing to accept and spread the most absurd Nazi myths.

Trouble is, Jojo’s inherently sensitive nature is completely at odds with the Nazi “Aryan ideal” he’s so desperate to mimic. The crunch comes when, as the youngest and clearly most intimidated boy in the group, he’s ordered to demonstrate his ferocity … by killing a rabbit.

Leave No Trace: Compassionate character study

Leave No Trace (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for dramatic tension
By Derrick Bang

Some films are anchored by powerful storytelling, others by delicately shaded performances.

This is one of the latter.

Hoping to evade well-intentioned welfare agents — and police — who are determined to
enforce the structure of a "socially normal" life, Will (Ben Foster) and his daughter Tom
(Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) seek a railroad car they can hop, in order to escape the city.

Leave No Trace is another quietly intimate drama from writer/director Debra Granik, best known for 2010’s Winter’s Bone (which, it must be remembered, “introduced” Jennifer Lawrence to the movie-going public). Although lacking that film’s atmosphere of dangerous intensity, Granik’s newest endeavor — also co-scripted with Anne Rosellini, and adapted from Peter Rock’s 2009 novel, My Abandonment — is no less compelling, with its thoughtfully sensitive depiction of people surviving on society’s margins.

Rock based his novel on a 2004 article in The Oregonian, published after a man and his adolescent daughter were discovered in Portland’s Forest Park, where they had spent four apparently content years in a homemade shelter. Local authorities, sharing conventional society’s wariness of such “fringe” behavior, attempted to “mainstream” the duo; the rational behind such a decision — and its aftermath — shaped both Rock’s book and Granik’s absorbing big-screen adaptation.

Her film can be viewed as a close cousin of 2016’s Captain Fantastic, with its depiction of a stubborn single father attempting to raise his six children under similarly off-the-grid circumstances. But Leave No Trace eschews the flamboyance of a patriarch as charismatic as Oscar-nominated Viggo Mortensen; the relationship here between Will (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) is much gentler and understated.

The dynamic also is different. Despite her youth, Tom is equal parts peer and offspring. She’s able to challenge her father, albeit cautiously; he listens, sometimes acquiescing. Even so, he remains a taciturn closed book. If her questions cut too close to the bone, he turns them around.

“What’s your favorite color?” she impulsively asks, during what seems a mutually candid moment.

“What’s yours?” he replies, after a moment of silence.

The film’s captivating first act — beautifully lensed by cinematographer Michael McDonough — depicts what has become a daily survival routine, in this gorgeously carpeted forest setting: the search for edible vegetation; waterproofing repairs to their shelter; the gathering and shaving of wood, for fires over which to cook their meals; the application of clothing and additional blankets, as nighttime temperatures drop. Their adeptness at these many tasks bespeaks considerable experience, and we wonder precisely how much. Months? Years?

It’s not all work. They play chess, Will coaching his daughter in the game’s complexities. They read whatever books come to hand. Tom speaks well, is intelligent and reasonably well-rounded, given the circumstances. When they need basic supplies and provisions, they carefully depart the park and walk into the city, where Will has established a rather novel method of making money.

Their discipline, while shopping, is uncomplaining: an essential distinction between “want” and “need.”