'Montage interdit' is the title of two essays from the French film critic André Bazin (1918-1958), first published in the Cahiers du Cinéma in 1953 and 1957 and merged and reprinted as a single essay in the 1975 collection of his essays Qu'est-ce-que le Cinéma?. Bazin, a great admiror of the Italian neo-realism, argued that since it was cinema's vocation to produce a faithful reproduction of reality, the unity of space and time should be preserved as much as possible: editing was to be avoided whenever and wherever possible. His favorite stylistic devices were therefore the deep-focus shot (that allows a clear vision of the scene from the front plane all the way to the background) and the so-called plan-sequence that continuously - that is, without interruptions - follows the movements of the characters. However, Bazin was enough of a realist to realize that following the logic of this argument the ideal film would be a complete reproduction of the existing world and that this ideal of a 'total cinema' is nothing but an illusion. He therefore concluded another of his essays, Ontologie de l'Image Photographique' with the resignation: "D'autre part le cinéma est un langage," acknowledging that film, in order to be able to tell something about the world, needs to abstract from it to a certain extent.
Film as an integral reproduction of reality, and film as a medium that selects and re-arranges parts of that reality (whether as it is or artificially created) to create a virtual world, tell a story, or even build an argument, those are the two main conceptions of film that have dominated allmost all of its history, from its early beginnings with the completely opposite approaches of the medium by the Lumière brothers on the one hand and Méliès on the other. In these digital time and days Bazin's 'Mythe du Cinéma Total' (the title of another one of his essays) has migrated to immersive 3D Virtual Reality (where, for the time being, it still remains a myth), and the plan-sequence has become an obligatory staple of FPS and other kinds of computer games. At the same time digital technologies have made film loose it's innocence of objectivity and have at least made film's 'ontological vocation' to faithfully reproduce reality highly problematic. Digital technologies have severed the 'ontological' bond (Bazin) between photographic and filmic images and the reality in front of the camera lens, making any digitally produced photograph or film image suspect of manipulation and outright forgery. In these circumstances, the deep-focus shot and the plan-sequence have lost much of their attractiveness even for 'realist' filmmakers.
Given this contemporary context, Sam Mendes' 1917 (UK/USA, 2019) is a remarkable attempt to re-animate the realistic aspirations of a 'total cinema' by reconquering the plan-sequence from VR and videogames and using it to allow cinema-goers to immersive themselves in the realities of the First World War (WWI) front by following two British soldiers, Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) who have to cross a no-man's land between the allied and German troops in order to deliver an urgent message to Colonel MacKenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) in (what seems to be) a single, uninterrupted shot. Mendes is certainly not the first director who attempted to create the illusion that a full-length feature film was recorded in just one shot. Already in 1948, Alfred Hitchcock undertook such an endeavour in his film THE ROPE (USA, 1948). In order to circumvent the technical limitations of that time, that allowed only for takes of ten minutes at the max, he had his camera land on a dark surface - such as the back of a black jacket - every ten minutes in order to conceal the necessary cut. Digital technologies have, of course, delivered cinema from such constraints and make it theoretically, if not in practice, possible to continuously film characters or real people for in principle infinite stretches of time.
However, as perhaps Bazin already surmised, and as Mendes' film probably unwillingly demonstrates, the film aesthetic issue of an integral, continuous and realistic 'total' rendering of a narrative world is not a technological, but a conceptual and experimential one. A comparison with Hitchcock's THE ROPE makes this clear already. In THE ROPE the suggested duration of the single shot (or presented as such) matched the about eighty minutes of the presented story: the length of screen time, the time the presented story took, and the time of recording/showing the story (or, in more technical narratological terms, the times of story, plot and discourse) were identical. In 1917, however, the length of the seemingly single shot and the length of screen time are - or at least meant to seem - identical and take about two hours time but the story time is about twenty-four hours and thus largely exceeds both shot and screen time. The challenge Mendes and his camera man Roger Deakins set themselves is not primarily a technological one - although, of course, the project raised many technological challenges as well - but a dramaturgical and narrative one: how to compress a story that unfolds in about twenty-four hours into a two-hour movie and at the same time creating the illusion of an uninterrupted continuity?
Mendes solves this conumdrum, maybe quite predictably, by stretching and compressing time in ways that seem quite natural and therefore are almost unnoticeable. A good example of this strategy can be found already at the beginning of the film. The film opens with a low shot of flowers in a meadow in which, as the camera reveals when it pulls back, Blake and Schofield are taking a rest. They are disturbed by an officer who summons them to General Erinmore's (Colin Firth) headquarters and the camera then follows them on their way over the meadow and into the trenches to the place where Erinmore resides. During the first part of this walk, Blake and Schofield exchange stories and jokes, and together with the continuity of the shot this suggests that story, plot and discourse time are identical, and this impression is only corroborated by the walk through the narrow trenches where they constantly stumble on and exchange scoldings and greetings with other soldiers. What could be a more natural continuity than that of an uninterrupted conversation between two soldiers? But the distance between their initial position and the entrance of the trenches would presumably longer in the story world and take more time to cover than the distance covered by the two soldiers during their conversation. Story time, that is, is longer than the plot and discourse time, or the story time is longer than the shot and screening time.
The same trick is used later in the film when Schofield gets a lift in the back of a military lorrie in which his fellow soldiers kill the time by impersonating a not very beloved officer. Again, the continuity of the conversational exchanges together with the continuity of the shot suggests a convergence of shot and story time, but in the story world the ride is likely to have lasted hours rather than minutes: the continuity of human interaction, that is, is used to conceal a divergence of story time and shot/screening time. Another, quite obvious example occurs when Schofield is temporarily unconscious after having been hit by a German sniper. When the camera slowly approaches Schofield he (also slowly) regains consciousness, but again, his state of unconsciousness has in all likelihood taken much longer than the few minutes the camera uses to approach and find him. It is probably no coincidence that Schofield then tries to consult his wrist watch only to find out that it doesn't work anymore: time keeping is paradoxically almost impossible in this supposedly single-shot movie.
There are other means by which the film attempts to make the spectator feel that she is permanently in the position of a direct wittness of the events that unfold in front of the camera. The film, for instance, seems to start in media res: the main characters Blake and Schofield are from the first minute summoned into action without there being any introduction of the characters or the circumstances in which they find themselves, of the place where the action develops, of the state in which the war is: the spectator is thrown into the characters' world as if she had dropped from the sky and simply has to go along with the characters and events without asking too many questions. But this is not too hard a condition because the movie itself doesn't raise too many questions itself either. The film tells a very classical and straightforward story along the well known pattern of a journey with a well defined goal (a message has to be delivered at the other side of the no-man's territory) and on the way the hero(s) has/have (they don't make it both of them) overcome obstacles and difficulties, none of them beingvery surprising for spectators who are a bit familiar with the genre (the Brits are the good guys, the Germans are the bad guys, the hero is resilient, persistent and determined, human and compassionate as demonstrated when he gives away his food to a French woman and a baby, and will prevail in the end). It is probably no coincidence that most reviews are rather brief in the narrative department of this movie.
The critical question, then, is whether or not the attempt to immerse the spectator into the reality of this WWI movie and make her share the experiences of the main characters has succeeded? Maybe because of the witholding of background information on the characters - in order to create that in medias res feeling - and the lack of any psychological deepening of their personalities on the one hand, and the meticulous but also rather sanitized recreation of the war zone and its props, it is hard not to constantly have the impression of being a tourist in an open space museum where WWI is being re-enacted. It is maybe also because of the familiarity of the narrative pattern itself - probably deliberately chosen so the spectator will have no problem identifying herself with the hero - that most of the attention is drawn to the backdrops and, not in the least, the technical audacity of the movie. The movie gives the feeling of being taken on a tour of which the main character is - indeed - the main character and the camera is the guide ('come, now I'll show you this, and now look there, and please, see how astonished our main character is', etc.). Instead of becoming immersed, a spectator will probably rather have the feeling of being an outsider or a guest in a world that remains alien to him or her. When it comes to immersion in the realities of WWI, Peter Jackson's THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD (UK/New Zealand, 2018) did a much better job with it's colorized film footage and added sound track.
By attempting to overcome the paradox of filming a twenty-four hour adventure in a two-hour single shot and thus creating a greater sense of immersion into the story world and proximity to the characters of this world, Mendes actually has achieved the inverse. Instead of immersing the spectators into the story world, the film constantly invites them to scrutinize the movie for cuts or traces of editing, and instead of focusing on the endeavours of the hero, the film draws attention to the technical virtuosity and brilliance of the camera work. Maybe the story has been kept deliberately as shallow as it is: instead of making the spectators forget that they are watching a movie - the holy grale of transparency of all media - the film prowdly displays the craftsmanship of it's makers, from director to camera man, sound engineers and set designers. And it is probably a characteristic of this digital age that even or may especially films made with a realistic intention are being scrutinized for traces of technological manipulation. In that sense, 1917 is a kiss of death.
Friday, January 10, 2020
Monday, January 06, 2020
JOJO RABBIT (Taika Waititi, Czech Republic/New Zealand/USA, 2019)
Although JOJO RABBIT (Taika Waititi, Czech Republic/New Zealand/USA, 2019) is, at first sight, a coming-of age-movie set in the final days of the Third Reich, the opening of the film already makes it clear that the story is not limited to that particular historical moment or place. The opening sequence mixes historical footage of nazi rallies with the Beatles song "I wanna hold your hand", thus overlaying the images of the images extatic young girls in nazi attire with reminiscences of images of hysterically screaming Beatles fans. Moreover, although English is the language spoken in this film, the written and printed texts are all in German, as if the movie wants to make clear that the props and settings are situated in a historical place and time, but that the movie addresses itself to a much wider and not place and time bound audience. And if this is not enough, the attitudes, behaviors and wise cracks of Nazi officers at the Hitler Jugend camp would not be misplaced in an American youth camp but probably very much out of order in a real Hitler Jugend camp. Nazi Germany, that's what apparently these stylistic elements are to convey, is nothing but a more or less accidental set piece for a more general, if not universal truth this film attempts to convey. JOJO RABBIT chooses Hitler's Germany because its extreme conditions provide a suitable background for the parable the movie wants to tell.JOJO RABBIT may look like a film about Nazi Germany, but it really isn't.
That things may be different from how they appear to you is basically the lesson that the film's main character Johannes AKA Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), a ten year old Hitler Jugend enthusiast, learns during the dying days of the Third Reich. In the first scene one sees Jojo preparing for his inauguration as a member of the Hitler Jugend (HJ) by rehearsing the answers to the questions of his entree exam and the obligatory 'Heil Hitler' salute. The adult man in Nazi uniform of whom only the torso fits is captured by the frame who puts the questions, compliments Jojo for his right answers and corrects his 'Heil Hitler' salutes, turns out to be no one less than Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi) himself, although it becomes immediately clear that - again - this is not a Hitler who actually exists in the film's story world but just an imaginary friend of the little boy who is invisible for the other characters in the film.
And here again the film hints towards realities that extend beyond the historical place and time of the movie's story and draws a parellel with the contemporary world. Indeed, Jojo's imaginary friend Adolf Hitler who gives him advice, praise, encouragements and guidance functions as a substitute for his absent father whom Jojo believes to be fighting for Germany in Italy against the allied forces. Social scientists have argued that in contemporary post-patriarchal societies the authority of the father has diminished (they have become 'papa's', as Milan Kundera once wrote) and that in the absence of a strong father figure with whom they can not only identify but against whom they can also oppose themselves in order to develop their own identities young men (and women) become susceptible for authoritarian leaders of the populist type, even - or maybe precisely because - they tell lies and actually incite them to act against their own interests.
That is exactly what Hitler does to Jojo. When Jojo gets scolded as a coward on the HJ camp because he is not capable of killing a rabbit and flees into the woods, Hitler stops him and tells him that 'rabbit' is a name of honour because instead of being cowardly, bunnies have to be smart, fast and skillful in order to survive in a world full of large and strong predators. Encouraged by Hitler Jojo then runs back to the camp where there is a lesson in grenade throwing going on, picks the grenade out of the hands of captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), and throws it away. Unfortunately, the grenade hits a tree, bounces back and explodes at Jojo's feet, which leaves his face marked by scars ("My face looks like a street map," as he says to his mother Rose (Scarlett Johanson)) and forces him to quit the camp and convalesce at home. And even more seriously, it is his imaginary friend who fills his head with not only an exaggerated patriotism, but also with the outrageous Nazi ideas about Jews.
And here is where another character comes into Jojo's life. Once forced to stay 'home alone' during his recovery from the grenade accident, he discovers that his mother has a shelter to the Jewish girl Elsa (Thomasin MacKenzie), who like Anne Frank hides in a room behind a wall from her German persecutors. Clever as Jojo Rabbit is, he immediately understands the predicament they both find themselves in: if he turns Elsa over to the Gestapo, she will denounce his mother as her protector and if Elsa would tell Jojo's mother that he has discovered her, Rose will see herself forced to send Elsa away. In this stalemate it is best for both parties to leave things as they are. Soon, however, Jojo sees this situation as an opportunity to use Elsa as a first-hand source of information for the book he intends to write on all things Jewish. Elsa complies, regurgitates the whole repertoire of anti-semitic myths and imagery from the Nazi-propaganda, and offers Jojo to draw a picture of the dwellings of Jews in his sketch book. When Jojo sees that she has drawn his portrait with the caption "Stummkopf", she simply remarks that that's where those Jews from the anti-semitic propaganda live: in his head that is - as she doesn't know - controlled by his imaginary friend, the xenofobic populist leader avant la lettre.
Gradually, Jojo then starts to learn that the world might be a bit different from how his imaginary friend wants him to see it. He finds out that his mother is working with his father for the resistence, and discovers her dead body hanging on the gallows on the market square of their village. When the Gestapo knock on the door to search their house and Elsa has to reveal herself, she pretends that she's Jojo's sister (in fact, Rose has taken her into her house because she was a friend of and ressembled her deceased daughter) and shows the latter's ID to prove that. As she later, as the Gestapo's and captain Klenzendorf who joined the company later, have left that she has given up a wrong date of birth to Klenzendorf's question, she and Jojo realize that Klenzendorf was not that hard boiled Nazi but instead actually saved Elsa and Jojo. And when the village is finally liberated by American and Russian troops, Jojo initially refuses to bring this news to Elsa because it would mean that she was free to go outside, realising that he cares more for her than his Nazi convictions would allow him. With respect to Jojo, then, Elsa moves from the position of foe to friend to sister to wanna-be lover to perhaps a substitute mother When they are at the verge of leaving the house into the now again free world, Jojo ties the laces of his mother's shoes that he has given to Elsa - itself a reversal of the service Rose offered to Jojo at several occasions in the film - and once outside, Elsa does what Rose had said she would do first thing when they would be free: dance. The engine of this move are not the erronous thoughts about Jews or the superiority of the Arien race, but - as his mother had predicted him - physical feelings of love ("butterflies in your belly"). Love, that is, is eventually the force that overcomes all ideological oppositons and differences
It looks as if Waititi was not content with telling this story in a straightforward way - although the film has a pretty linear and far from convoluted storyline - but also wanted to weave the movie's theme into the style and form of the film itself. The opening sequence - already confusing because of its mixture of historical footage of Nazi rallies with a Beatles song - may suggest that the film will be a sort of historical costume drama, but the very first scene that already introduces a weard kind of Hitler warns the spectator that this is not your customary WWII drama. However, once tuned for a comedy - with perhaps not the most tastful choice of subject matter - shots of corpses hanging from a gallow on the town's market square, and later the image that shows how Jojo recognizes the shoes of Rose next to his head, as she hangs dead from the gallows, delicately not shown in a full body shot) the spectator is again to be made aware that this is not your average comedy either. The film swtiches from hillarious scenes as those in the HJ camp in the beginning of the film or the endless exchanges of 'Heil Hitler' salutes in the scene where the Gestapo's and captain Klenzendorf meet in Jojo's house which reminds one of the British TV series ALLO ALLO (UK, 1982-1991), to dramatic scenes as just described, to melodrama and musical in the final scenes with Jojo and Elsa. Even dramatic scenes as the conquering of the village by American troops that have a flavor of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (Spielberg, USA, 1998) are interspersed with comical moments as when Klenzendorf and his deputy Finkel (Alfie Allen) storm the invading allied forces in the super-hero-avant-la-lettre outfits designed by Klenzenberg, perhaps thus demonstrating the rags from which fantasy figures as those that populate the Nazi ideologie are really made of.
The film thus provides a rollercoaster experience in which the spectator is swung back and forth between Charlie Chaplin's THE GREAT DICTATOR (USA, 1940), Ernst Lubitsch's TO BE OR NOT TO BE (USA, 1942), Volker Schlöndorff's DIE BLECHTROMMEL (BRD/France/Poland/Yugoslavia, 1979), ALLO ALLO, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, Tarantino's INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (Germany/USA, 2009) and pick your own favorite war drama or comedy. Although these unexpected shifts and turns in mood and style may be intended to produce a sort of a Brechtian Verfremdungs-Effekt, one may wonder if Waititi has not overreached himself because instead of provoking a critical stance on the part of the spectator the film runs the risk of leaving the latter in a state of disarray, wondering not onl what this film is all about, but also what sort of film this actually is. And it does not really help that Waititi chose Nazi Germany as the backdrop for his supposedly time- and placeless - but therefore also rather shallow - universal message, because in spite of all the efforts to lift the theme above the specific historcal context of the final days of the Third Reich, that subject matter is simply too much charged with unique drama and oppressive memories from which it is impossible to abstract away. Although physical feelings like 'butterflies-in-your-belly' may eventually overcome ideological and political oppositions and differences, laughter is probably not the best means to get rid of false imaginary friends.
That things may be different from how they appear to you is basically the lesson that the film's main character Johannes AKA Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), a ten year old Hitler Jugend enthusiast, learns during the dying days of the Third Reich. In the first scene one sees Jojo preparing for his inauguration as a member of the Hitler Jugend (HJ) by rehearsing the answers to the questions of his entree exam and the obligatory 'Heil Hitler' salute. The adult man in Nazi uniform of whom only the torso fits is captured by the frame who puts the questions, compliments Jojo for his right answers and corrects his 'Heil Hitler' salutes, turns out to be no one less than Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi) himself, although it becomes immediately clear that - again - this is not a Hitler who actually exists in the film's story world but just an imaginary friend of the little boy who is invisible for the other characters in the film.
And here again the film hints towards realities that extend beyond the historical place and time of the movie's story and draws a parellel with the contemporary world. Indeed, Jojo's imaginary friend Adolf Hitler who gives him advice, praise, encouragements and guidance functions as a substitute for his absent father whom Jojo believes to be fighting for Germany in Italy against the allied forces. Social scientists have argued that in contemporary post-patriarchal societies the authority of the father has diminished (they have become 'papa's', as Milan Kundera once wrote) and that in the absence of a strong father figure with whom they can not only identify but against whom they can also oppose themselves in order to develop their own identities young men (and women) become susceptible for authoritarian leaders of the populist type, even - or maybe precisely because - they tell lies and actually incite them to act against their own interests.
That is exactly what Hitler does to Jojo. When Jojo gets scolded as a coward on the HJ camp because he is not capable of killing a rabbit and flees into the woods, Hitler stops him and tells him that 'rabbit' is a name of honour because instead of being cowardly, bunnies have to be smart, fast and skillful in order to survive in a world full of large and strong predators. Encouraged by Hitler Jojo then runs back to the camp where there is a lesson in grenade throwing going on, picks the grenade out of the hands of captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), and throws it away. Unfortunately, the grenade hits a tree, bounces back and explodes at Jojo's feet, which leaves his face marked by scars ("My face looks like a street map," as he says to his mother Rose (Scarlett Johanson)) and forces him to quit the camp and convalesce at home. And even more seriously, it is his imaginary friend who fills his head with not only an exaggerated patriotism, but also with the outrageous Nazi ideas about Jews.
And here is where another character comes into Jojo's life. Once forced to stay 'home alone' during his recovery from the grenade accident, he discovers that his mother has a shelter to the Jewish girl Elsa (Thomasin MacKenzie), who like Anne Frank hides in a room behind a wall from her German persecutors. Clever as Jojo Rabbit is, he immediately understands the predicament they both find themselves in: if he turns Elsa over to the Gestapo, she will denounce his mother as her protector and if Elsa would tell Jojo's mother that he has discovered her, Rose will see herself forced to send Elsa away. In this stalemate it is best for both parties to leave things as they are. Soon, however, Jojo sees this situation as an opportunity to use Elsa as a first-hand source of information for the book he intends to write on all things Jewish. Elsa complies, regurgitates the whole repertoire of anti-semitic myths and imagery from the Nazi-propaganda, and offers Jojo to draw a picture of the dwellings of Jews in his sketch book. When Jojo sees that she has drawn his portrait with the caption "Stummkopf", she simply remarks that that's where those Jews from the anti-semitic propaganda live: in his head that is - as she doesn't know - controlled by his imaginary friend, the xenofobic populist leader avant la lettre.
Gradually, Jojo then starts to learn that the world might be a bit different from how his imaginary friend wants him to see it. He finds out that his mother is working with his father for the resistence, and discovers her dead body hanging on the gallows on the market square of their village. When the Gestapo knock on the door to search their house and Elsa has to reveal herself, she pretends that she's Jojo's sister (in fact, Rose has taken her into her house because she was a friend of and ressembled her deceased daughter) and shows the latter's ID to prove that. As she later, as the Gestapo's and captain Klenzendorf who joined the company later, have left that she has given up a wrong date of birth to Klenzendorf's question, she and Jojo realize that Klenzendorf was not that hard boiled Nazi but instead actually saved Elsa and Jojo. And when the village is finally liberated by American and Russian troops, Jojo initially refuses to bring this news to Elsa because it would mean that she was free to go outside, realising that he cares more for her than his Nazi convictions would allow him. With respect to Jojo, then, Elsa moves from the position of foe to friend to sister to wanna-be lover to perhaps a substitute mother When they are at the verge of leaving the house into the now again free world, Jojo ties the laces of his mother's shoes that he has given to Elsa - itself a reversal of the service Rose offered to Jojo at several occasions in the film - and once outside, Elsa does what Rose had said she would do first thing when they would be free: dance. The engine of this move are not the erronous thoughts about Jews or the superiority of the Arien race, but - as his mother had predicted him - physical feelings of love ("butterflies in your belly"). Love, that is, is eventually the force that overcomes all ideological oppositons and differences
It looks as if Waititi was not content with telling this story in a straightforward way - although the film has a pretty linear and far from convoluted storyline - but also wanted to weave the movie's theme into the style and form of the film itself. The opening sequence - already confusing because of its mixture of historical footage of Nazi rallies with a Beatles song - may suggest that the film will be a sort of historical costume drama, but the very first scene that already introduces a weard kind of Hitler warns the spectator that this is not your customary WWII drama. However, once tuned for a comedy - with perhaps not the most tastful choice of subject matter - shots of corpses hanging from a gallow on the town's market square, and later the image that shows how Jojo recognizes the shoes of Rose next to his head, as she hangs dead from the gallows, delicately not shown in a full body shot) the spectator is again to be made aware that this is not your average comedy either. The film swtiches from hillarious scenes as those in the HJ camp in the beginning of the film or the endless exchanges of 'Heil Hitler' salutes in the scene where the Gestapo's and captain Klenzendorf meet in Jojo's house which reminds one of the British TV series ALLO ALLO (UK, 1982-1991), to dramatic scenes as just described, to melodrama and musical in the final scenes with Jojo and Elsa. Even dramatic scenes as the conquering of the village by American troops that have a flavor of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (Spielberg, USA, 1998) are interspersed with comical moments as when Klenzendorf and his deputy Finkel (Alfie Allen) storm the invading allied forces in the super-hero-avant-la-lettre outfits designed by Klenzenberg, perhaps thus demonstrating the rags from which fantasy figures as those that populate the Nazi ideologie are really made of.
The film thus provides a rollercoaster experience in which the spectator is swung back and forth between Charlie Chaplin's THE GREAT DICTATOR (USA, 1940), Ernst Lubitsch's TO BE OR NOT TO BE (USA, 1942), Volker Schlöndorff's DIE BLECHTROMMEL (BRD/France/Poland/Yugoslavia, 1979), ALLO ALLO, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, Tarantino's INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (Germany/USA, 2009) and pick your own favorite war drama or comedy. Although these unexpected shifts and turns in mood and style may be intended to produce a sort of a Brechtian Verfremdungs-Effekt, one may wonder if Waititi has not overreached himself because instead of provoking a critical stance on the part of the spectator the film runs the risk of leaving the latter in a state of disarray, wondering not onl what this film is all about, but also what sort of film this actually is. And it does not really help that Waititi chose Nazi Germany as the backdrop for his supposedly time- and placeless - but therefore also rather shallow - universal message, because in spite of all the efforts to lift the theme above the specific historcal context of the final days of the Third Reich, that subject matter is simply too much charged with unique drama and oppressive memories from which it is impossible to abstract away. Although physical feelings like 'butterflies-in-your-belly' may eventually overcome ideological and political oppositions and differences, laughter is probably not the best means to get rid of false imaginary friends.
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