The new Disney comedy: Hitler, the children's friend

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"Right now, all hate-trained groups enjoy their moment of glory. We live, in fact, a time similar to what Europe suffered in the 1930s." The quotation marks are from a Polynesian born in Wellington (New Zealand) and of Jewish descent. His name is Taika Waititi and for a few days he is the most cited person at the Toronto Film Festival .

Before Sunday night he was the most irreverent and provocative director of the film scene. And all this for the possibility of a film, Jojo Rabbit , which was announced as a "Nazi comedy" in which the director himself plays Adolf Hitler.

Then and with the tape already released, there is no way to agree. There are those who call him a bluff , a water gun, to dress in the suit of provocation, what does not happen to be a condescending product designed for the Oscars and so that the more or less modern public, more or less hipster , is It feels good and, above all, it feels very intelligent. Others remind you that according to what things you are not kidding. And the latter prefer a bit of calm: it is only fiction and it is the power of fiction to force things to be seen again and in another way. And here, the movie meets and, at times, disarms.

From a strictly argumental point of view, the film is limited to describing in a tone between naive and only dazzled, the entry into the adulthood of a child. The peculiar and source of both the controversy and the many nerves is the environment. We are in Nazi Germany, the kid belongs to the Hitler youth as before he did the philosopher Jürgen Habermas or the Nobel Günter Grass and, in the absence of the father, he resorts to the figure of the Führer as his only and paternal imaginary friend.

The idea is taken from Christine Leunens' novel The caged sky . It is not, as someone has run to point out in a wrong way and torticera, neither of The boy in the striped pajamas nor, for not moving from the cinema, of Life is beautiful . As much as in the three there are kids with big round eyes. Here the tragedy, that there is, runs inside . The other, that of the Holocaust, remains on the sidelines.

The kid attends to the name of Jojo Betzler and is interpreted with a certainty near the astonishment by the chaplinesco child actor Roman Griffin Davis. The nickname and name of the film will fall on him when he refuses to comply with the Aryan ritual of slaughtering a rabbit. Later, his entire brown world will fall apart when he discovers that his liberal and charming mother played by Scarlett Johansson hides a walled Jewish girl at home as if it were Anne Frank herself.

Great too Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie . How to match everything learned about the evil of the Jews with the normality and beauty of their new discovery? And it is about this question about which Waititi strives to raise a story with manners and archetypal forms despite its obvious exception, say, historical.

To understand the noise of the controversy so important is the argument as, more generally, the environment. The producer is Fox and Fox for months is Disney . And now the first question: Is the mouse house compatible with a comedy with the Holocaust in the background? As soon as the merger was announced, Variety published that several Disney executives were not comfortable with the idea. The news ran to be denied by Waititi himself. Not in vain, the director of blatantly acid comedies such as What we do in the shadows or Hunt for the Wilderpeople, on the hunt for humans , is also the superheroic Thor: Ragnarok and therefore also responsible for the 850 million collection worldwide That is, Disney owes him a lot and he has shown a sense of risk developed by choosing precisely this project when he could have done any other.

The truth is that the film alternates delirious moments (that initial montage linking the Nazi greeting with I Want to Hold Your Hand of the Beatles) with a story so calculatedly neutral and aseptic that it would be said to be conventional. And in the same way, it appropriates somewhat fraudulently the ideology of Wes Anderson ( Moonrise Kingdom is too present) while exploring so provocatively original and deeply emotional terrain. It could not be otherwise. All this without giving up offering a unique variant of the universe of Roahl Dahl that can not help but fall in love. Jojo Rabbit grows when he frees himself from worrying about what he is telling and becomes entangled in his doubts when he becomes aware of the looks that judge her.

The tone of criticism has basically been divided into two. On the one hand, there are those who expected more. They are the same ones that cite The Great Dictator , of Chaplin, or the number Spring for Hitler of The Producers , of Mel Brooks, as a test of contrast. For all of them, Waititi has done nothing other than set a trap for the viewer to laugh without feeling guilty about it. When should On the other, very much in the line of the offended professionals that populate the networked world, Waititi frivolizes about what he should not. Neither he nor anyone. Talking in times of the Holocaust about anything other than the horror of the Holocaust is also not allowed.

The director defends himself in his own way. "It is vital that we continue telling these stories and that we do it in the most interesting and ingenious way possible. If that means adding humor and absurdity, then so be it, " he said in an interview on the same day of the premiere in anticipation of what was It came over him. And it came.

The funny thing is that it gives the impression that in certain forums Waititi is not allowed what, judging by other recent productions, seemed surpassed. Not long ago, in 2015, German cinemas released a satire that obeyed the title of Er ist wieder da (He has returned) , by David Wnendt, and that used the miraculous return from the dead of Führer himself to ironize on conservative policies and xenophobes from much of Europe. And not so far away is Jojo Rabbit .

Waititi says that the idea of ​​interpreting Hitler himself came later . That was a suggestion from the producer that he first joked and then as an exercise of responsibility. The fact is that each of his interventions with a thunderous English stranger are simply delusional. It is an imaginary Hitler who, in his own way, is nothing more than a projection of all the fears, insecurities and weaknesses of the protagonist. But, just a moment, wasn't the real Hitler also exactly that?

The film, in short, is debated against the discovery of a hoax and in favor of the possibility of growing in spite of everything . Yes, it is a fairy tale, but, and judging by the dust that moves in its path, it is also the obvious witness that there are wounds that remain uncured. And, therefore, should return to them. And again.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• culture
• movie theater
• Disney
• Adolf Hitler
• Films
• Cineseries
• Cinema and Series

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