Hitler is presented as a comic character in ‘JoJo Rabbit’ – but do filmmakers risk trivialising his evil actions by humanising him?

People’s memories of the homicidal insanity are clearly receding into the distance if Hitler is now able to feature in films like Taika Waititi’s, as the young hero’s imaginary best friend, says Geoffrey Macnab

‘JoJo Rabbit’ director-star Taika Waititi as a comic version of Hitler (Twentieth Century Fox)

Hitler is back on screen... again. One of the most fiercely debated films at the Toronto Film Festival last week was New Zealand actor-director Taika Waititi’s satirical new comedy JoJo Rabbit. It is about a nervous young boy in the Hitler Youth in late wartime Germany who negotiates his way through life with the aid of an imaginary friend, none other than the Fuhrer himself (played by Waititi). This is the Third Reich used for a coming-of-age story, a Nazi movie with the flavour of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾.

Scarlett Johansson plays the boy’s mum. While Hitler advocates genocide, she is hiding a young Jewish girl to keep her out of the Nazis’ hands.

Understandably, the film (which receives its UK premiere at the London Film Festival next month) has split opinion. At a pre-festival press briefing, LFF artistic director Tricia Tuttle described it as “really funny and moving ... a satire about challenging hate” and as “terrific filmmaking”. Director-star Waititi called it “a love letter to mothers”. In his Toronto press conference, he justified the decision to make a heart-tugging family comedy set against the backcloth of Hitler, antisemitism and the Holocaust. “We have to keep remembering and keep finding new and inventive ways of telling the same story so children can listen and grow and move forward unified and with love in the future,” Waititi said.