The Genius of Jojo Rabbit

I have been sitting on this for a while. First, because MCN was in the midst of being rebuilt and I wasn't writing formally when I first saw Jojo Rabbit. Then because I was so incensed about the attacks on the film that I didn't want to mix the sweet and the rancid. (I will fail to fully separate them here. Apologies.)

Taika Waititi, in adapting a not-funny book about The Nazi Era, Christine Leunens' "Caging Skies," makes a remarkably universal film by setting the coming-of=age story amidst one of the least universal moments in world history.

There is no gray for most people when it comes to Nazi Germany. It is remembered as the singular definition of the evil of which humans are capable. As a result, even normally sophisticated thinkers, Jewish and not, have a tendency to throw up an emotional wall when any conversation about the Nazis takes any kind of turn that is less than traditional. I would argue that those viewers, no matter how much I otherwise admire them, exit the experience …