Jojo Rabbit: ‘(I) Probably Deserved That’

I’ll try not to give too many spoilers, because there are some unexpected, heart-wrenching twists in the movie that my wife and I watched while flying an almost empty plane from San Francisco to Dallas on our way home during a pandemic last week.

Have you seen “Jojo Rabbit?” If not, it’s a movie that is worth your socially isolated time. You’ll laugh, but dang, you’ll also cry. I’ve seen World War II through the eyes of a kid before (“Hope and Glory”), but never one through the eyes of a child like Jojo.

Not everybody who you grow to love in this strange, heartwarming movie about a fanatical Nazi in the Hitler Youth who has Adoph Hitler as his imaginary stand-in father friend will make it to the movie’s end. Wars are like that.

This is a movie about Nazi Germany, but mostly about how a child’s world is always warped and shaped by those around them, how their perceptions are different from ours, and how coming of age sometimes means learning that what you loved when you were young is not always true.

And I did not realize that Hitler in the movie was played by the Jewish actor who also wrote the script, based on a book.



And, although it was made in those happy days before Covid-19 was a thing, it felt to me like the movie was a decent analogy for our lives today. The war is the pandemic. The ghost in the walls is socially isolating. Not everything makes sense, and not everybody makes it to the finish.

But, if despite the heart-breaking tragedy you have to endure, you survive the crisis and come out into the world on the other side, what’s next?

Endure the slap, if you deserve it. Jojo did.

Then, dance.