Messy Jojo Rabbit misses the sweet spot between farce and gravitas

Taika Waititi and Roman Griffin Davis in Jojo Rabbit. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.

Jojo Rabbit is a mess, albeit a mess made with affection and care. Writer/director Taika Waititi sometimes gets across some of the points he wants and landing a couple of effective punches, but ultimately cannot maintain the gravitas he wants and needs. Jojo Rabbit is disappointing, but in a fairly interesting way. 

The film stars Roman Griffin Davis as the eponymous Jojo, a 10-year-old wannabe Nazi living in a quiet German village with his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson). After an incident with a grenade ends his dreams of serving Hitler, Jojo volunteers to work around town for the insouciant Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), his assistant Finkel (Alfie Allen), and Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson). Jojo is prone to an active imagination and many misperceptions about the Jewish people, which are spurred by frequent conversations with an imaginary Hitler (played by Waititi). Jojo's life shifts dramatically once he finds the young Jewish woman Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) hiding from the Nazis in his home. Elsa's presence begins to shift Jojo's perspective on everything he knows, just as the war winds down and his village succumbs to chaos. 

There's a fair amount going on with Jojo Rabbit, and Waititi does pull some of it off. The film is fine as a coming of age story, even though the main character is a stone's throw away from being a Nazi. There's a nice little theme about finding heroism in the small moments, whether it's secretly placing anti-Nazi propaganda around town or expressing oneself amid tyranny. Waititi has some good points about how little effort it takes for outright stupidity to evolve into commonplace evil; it's easy to make fun of folks who believe Jewish people have horns, at least until they start slaughtering them based on that belief. The film's farcical nature cuts deepest with this point, due in part to the timeliness of such ideology. 

It's difficult for films to shift between absurdity and seriousness given how far the gap is between the two. Waititi, to his credit, sometimes succeeds at doing exactly that. One sequence in particular, a sequence where Jojo Rabbit takes a “heil Hitler” joke and turns it into a menacing moment for Elsa, is quite striking. It's a really stunning moment in which the films reminds viewers the initial the joke comes from a rather dark place and comes with terrible consequences. When Jojo Rabbit makes contact with its target, it hits with precision and force. But the film's batting average is right around the Mendoza line, failing more often than not to square up on those little moments of insight. The final battle scene, the moment when Jojo witnesses the consequences of his dreams, lacks the effectiveness found in the far smaller moment below. It's more silly than stern, suffering from the Life is Beautiful problem of taking an atrocity too lightly. 

The biggest issue with Jojo Rabbit is Waititi himself. His imaginary Hitler shifts the film's otherwise absurdist tone toward twee and cute, adding more layers to the film's constant tonal shifts. The violence meant to jolt the audience loses its effect because the tone is already too far above the grand for viewers to land in the midst of the horror. Having Hitler as an imaginary friend is the film's selling point, yet it's a joke doesn't go anywhere of interest. And his Hitler isn't an interesting take on the character; Mel Brooks took a similar approach around 50 years ago to much greater effect. Making Hitler flamboyant is also an easy choice, a simple way of converting a horror villain into a silly little thing. Jojo Rabbit has a lot of these uninspired decisions as lazy shorthand to the audience. Captain Klenzendorf's motivation for casually ignoring Nazism starts off as a really interesting study of a warrior no longer allowed to fight, but ends up as a gay joke. The soundtrack is uber literal, ending with the most obvious David Bowie song imaginable because lazy thematic resonance. This film is, or at least should be, more interesting than these choices. It should challenge the audience more often than it does, give them room to reflect a little about why they're laughing at the jokes. Jojo Rabbit ultimately loses its focus and can't deliver the knockout punch it winds up to strike.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 108 minutes

Genre: Comedy

tl;dr

What Worked: Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Some Themes

What Fell Short: Taika Waititi's Hitler, Tonal imbalance, Banality

What To Watch As Well: The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Producers

Confusion reigns in beguiling Lighthouse

Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse. Image courtesy A24.

Reality is at best a concept in The Lighthouse. The film sees it as a thing that possibly exists, perhaps a baseline for comparing behavior, then tosses gasoline onto that otherwise intangible possibility and lights it ablaze. Because, ultimately, whether or not its protagonist can differentiate between what is real and what is in his imagination is irrelevant. Just searching for that dividing line between them is a horrifying, dangerous endeavor that consumes even the sturdiest of souls. 

The Lighthouse stars Robert Pattinson as Ephraim Winslow, a young lighthouse keeper apprenticing under the boisterous Tom Wake (Willem Dafoe). The two must spend a month tending a lighthouse on an island somewhere in New England, with Winslow stuck doing the grunt work for Wake as Wake tends to the light. They survive the month alone, but a massive storm delays their transport off the island. Time becomes impossible to track for Winslow, who begins seeing strange things around the lighthouse, including some rather odd behavior from the mysterious Wake.

Perhaps Wake is not acting so strangely, which he brings up to call out Winslow's loss of sanity. Or Winslow is perceiving the situation correctly; there are odd things afoot on this island and the secret lies in the light. What is clear is Winslow's perspective is unreliable, which puts the audience in a similarly foggy place. Director Robert Eggers (who wrote the film with his brother Max) prefers to keep the audience in the dark, showing Winslow as a hard and dedicated worker, only to tell that he is a drunken, lazy oaf unworthy of trust. What The Lighthouse shows and what it tells are fascinating contrasts that cause the mind to do breakdown a little as it tries to process this conundrum. And it doesn't really matter, because Eggers' focus is on the chaos wrought by isolation and paranoia. Lying underneath every moment is a layer of tension waiting to burst, with Winslow and Wake perpetually a wrong comment or valve release away from snapping. Eggers uses the sound of the lighthouse and the island as a means of increasing that tension, bumping the volume of the diegetic noises to perhaps tease at a slip in control of reality for Winslow. The island is too small to escape from the noises, creating a sense of dread and terror. 

 

The only thing Winslow can rely on is his stormy relationship with Wake. Once the film enters act two and the liquor begins to flow The Lighthouse shifts into a relationship drama between Winslow and Wake. They spend much of the second act oscillating between friendship and fighting, affection and outright hatred, both attracted and reviled by the existence of the other. The most intense moments from The Lighthouse come following the moments of sweetness. Winslow and Wake open themselves up emotionally – Winslow by revealing a dark secret, Wake by showing vulnerability when Winslow derides his culinary skills – and inevitably the other finds a way to utterly decimate the other's feelings. Each feels betrayed by the only one they care about, the cruelty of their words heightening the film's intensity and providing justification for the vitriol they spew at one another. Invectives thrown by a stranger cause minimal harm, but harsh words from a loved one cut to the core of one's being. This is by far the funniest part of the film as well. Pattinson and Defoe have a fascinating patter and ramp up the tenderness and vitriol, with Eggers' script adding nice touches of era-appropriate verbiage. 

The relationship between Winslow and Wake ultimately falls apart as most relationships do when neither person can trust the other wholesale. All Winslow can do is search for the truth about the island and what Wake does at the lighthouse alone at night. Winslow seeks the light desperately, hoping its secrets can reveal some truth about the island. The Lighthouse takes elements of a few myths of the sea along with some Greek stories that serve as an omen for the lost Winslow. Ultimately Winslow's quest for knowledge becomes his downfall, suffering a fate akin to that of the bringer of light onto earth, destroyed by his curiosity and hubris.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 109 minutes

Genre: Horror

tl;dr

What Worked: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, tension, humor

What Fell Short: A little too long in the third act

What To Watch As Well: Jacob's Ladder, The Shining

Poor choices doom confused Joker

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

Little about Joker is truly remarkable besides Joaquin Phoenix's grueling performance in the eponymous role. Otherwise, the film is too wrapped up in social commentary to understand the topic of conversation. This film is lost in itself, selling itself to a disaffected group with a message as clear as mud. Joker is a mess, a tone-deaf, piece of work from a filmmaker trying to punch far above his weight class.

Joker stars Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, a lonely clown who lives with his delusional mother (Frances Conroy) and dreams of standing onstage with talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Stuck in a rut, Arthur is given a new look at life following an incident on a train, leading him down a path of self-discovery and into the atmosphere of single mother Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and wealthy Gotham magnate Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen). As Arthur spirals into insanity and into his role as the Batman's greatest foe, he becomes an accidental symbol for a movement that will have immeasurable consequences on Gotham's future.

And it's all kind of dull. Phoenix is great in his role, but the character is not designed to be particularly engaging or interesting. Joker needs its star to be charismatic, to provide a reason why so many people devote their lives and livelihoods to a maniac. How the film explains it is a little too easy and a little too convenient, dashing the mystery from the character and scrubbing Joker's intelligence and dangerous spontaneity. Joker is a monster, yet the film's attempt to humanize him makes him predictable and simple, with nary a surprise to be seen. Instead, Arthur Fleck is a victim of an uncaring system, the kind of person who falls through every imaginable loophole until he finally snaps. Despite acts of cruelty and several moments of self-inflicted stupidity, Fleck is among the forgotten, a man abandoned by a system quickly tearing itself asunder. Even his first murder begins as an act of self defense that includes haphazard symbolic lighting effects because it seemed like something Scorsese would do. The sympathy belongs to a white man burdened by loneliness and the absence of a strong father figure. He is a victim because director Todd Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver view such a person deserving of sympathy while denying similar views for the women and people of color who populate this film. The biggest tragedy Joker depicts is society failing the poor white men, and the film never bothers to wonder why that is a problem.

Joker really wants to be one of those movies that has something important to say, but it's terrible at conveying anything with a modicum of clarity. This stems from Phillips and Silver lacking a clear perspective of what they want to convey with their film. This film wants to be taken so, so, so, seriously, screaming for somebody to hear the big important thing it has to say about how bad society is. Many movies like Falling Down, Taxi Driver, Fight Club, and a whole slew of others have done such messages before. Yet those films had clarity in their points and an understanding their protagonists are not decent human beings pushed too far, but delusional beings whose violent tendencies and bad choices make them more relatable than likable. Joker focuses so much on the societal failures it never engages with the faults of Arthur Fleck, painting his violent streaks with a sense of unearned catharsis.

The overarching issue is how far Phillips wanders out of his comfort area. He's a competent director within a certain genre, but is otherwise incapable of putting together a piece as complicated as Joker should be. It's clear he's seen the movies he's copying – tossing De Niro in as a talk show host is a clear nod to The King of Comedy – without understanding the message or the themes, let alone how to adequately light someone to reflect a destructive mental state. The films he wants to copy are subtle and pointed, never blaring out the message louder than it needs to be. Phillips doesn't do subtle, which infects the film score to a rather nasty degree. Joker is all over the place because its director cannot settle on what he wants his film to be. A good Joker film could happen, but it requires someone with greater talent than Phillips to do it.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 121 minutes

Genre: Drama

tl;dr

What Worked: Joaquin Phoenix

What Fell Short: Writing, directing, soundtrack, tone

What To Watch As Well: Taxi Driver, Fight Club