Jojo Rabbit
Let’s leave aside the extravagant vanity and stupidity of this, a project that seems as much an excuse for Waititi to clown around in Führer cosplay as to indulge his worst and most juvenile tendencies: the twee coming-of-age story, the playful mocking that ultimately coalesces into love. Let’s even excuse the utterly incoherent at best, downright fascistic approach to Nazism, which doesn’t so much dismantle the very real and very dangerous ideology as it presents it baldly and plainly, hoping that the viewer will find these hideous statements and behaviors from cuddly and/or blasé puppets hilarious. Jojo Rabbit would be utterly irredeemable if it just stuck to its proudly “anti-hate satire” formulations and its virtually nonexistent comedy, but it somehow manages to sink lower, into simpering, sappy romance.

Much of Jojo Rabbit is almost literally cloistered, as at least half of the film takes place solely within the eponymous character’s home, where he co-habits with both his vaguely antifascist mother and a teenage Jewish girl. Like with everything in this, Waititi’s approach comes off as maddeningly incoherent, going as far to employ a terribly overextended use of every horror movie trick in the book to accompany her first scene. But slowly, gradually, the true intent is revealed: despite her experiences fleeing the rot of fascist power, she is as flat and childlike as everyone, the object of affection — laid out oh-so-helpfully with paper-animated butterflies — and just another figure for Jojo to latch onto. In doing so, her inherent identity, which has caused the gassing of her parents and her present fearful existence, is all but erased, seemingly replaced uncomfortably with the role of both mother and lover. And in a film that refuses to reckon whatsoever with the horrors of fascism, that lies about the nature of ideologies, that closes itself off from any interesting or subversive view of the modern world, such a grievous conflation is just left there, as abject as anything in this monstrosity of a film.

Martin Eden
It’s crucial that, for all of the political rabble-rousing Martin does in writing and speech over the course of this film, his prose writing, which appears to be a true cornerstone of his success, is relegated in small snatches, only fitfully represented. As shown in his previous work, especially Lost and Beautiful, Marcello’s sensibility is never settled but always restless, and paradoxically the seeming strictures of a narrative format only amplify his tendencies. In this particular case, his penchant for archival footage is weaponized for a specific intent, taking on the immense task of capturing the undeniable power of Martin’s writing. By juxtaposing the bits of writing with longer, more abstruse moments of perhaps-found, perhaps-created shots of mundane life, Marcello both creates an emotional and an intellectual bond, reaching across class and time to conjure up an ever more complicated, beautiful feeling.