It’s utterly brilliant.
It’s very rare that I use this description.
Roman Griffin Davis plays JoJo, aged ten, who idolises Hitler in the last period of World War Two until his fantasy meets reality.
He expresses a range of emotions eloquently.
It’s this combination of his interior imaginings at odds with nazi brutality that is so unusual and telling.
A few stereotypes are effectively blown- a nazi soldier saves a Jewish child, a Jewish teenage girl in hiding threatens a German child with his own knife.
Early on JoJo sees a row of hanged victims and asks his mother what they did. She replies “what they could’.
The tying of shoe laces recurs as a symbol.
When the Americans and Russians arrive the myths previously told about Jews are repeated about them. A nazi woman says,’ we must kill everyone who doesn’t look like us’.
It’s a story with terrible tragedy and pain told in a quirky satirical way that makes it all the more powerful.
The soundtrack incongruously but beautifully uses songs from the Beatles and ‘ Everybody’s
gotta live, Everybody’s gonna die’ by the band Love,1974
As we helplessly see the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the oppression of Palestine, the endless repetition of stupid destruction, it’s a film to treasure.
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