Is Jojo Rabbit Based On A True Story ?

Jojo Rabbit, written and directed by the celebrated director Taika Watiti is a peculiarly tasteful movie. It is also an atypical subject for a director like him. He is mainly known for his quirky humour  and wild storytelling. I would describe this movie as a mix of genres despite of the fact that it is largely comic. You will see it change genres from comic to horror to drama to war and this hotchpotch seems to work greatly.This movie has also won Oscar 2020 for the best adapted screenplay and was nominated in many other categories.

                                              

The story revolves around Jojo Betzler ( played by Roman Griffin Davis ) who is a boy of 10 and the setting is of World War 2, Germany. Jojo idolizes Adolf Hitler and dreams of  being Hitler's personal guard one day. He also has an imaginary Hitler always guiding and walking around him, played by the very Taika Watiti. Jojo joins the rigorous training of army but faces a lot of difficulty there as he is frail and also gets bullied by the bigger boys. However he is still very admant on serving Hitler. To his surprise, one day he finds a Jew girl living in the attic of his house and also realizes that she is being hidden there by his own mother( played by Scarlett Johansson ). Being Oblivious of Jews, he is terrified of her. Now this phase is very intelligently portrayed by the director as he incorporates all kind of the then prevailing stereotypes about Jews in a clever way. Jojo pursues to write a book on Jews including all of their deepest darkest secrets which mainly includes things that one would find about fallen angels in the Bible; like ( they have horns, they sleep upside down like a bat and that they have the ability to read each other's mind). Making them as much inhumane as possible. Soon Jojo's mother dies as she was a part of the resistance against war and the war begins. I have to say that the war is one of the most impactful sequences of the movie. The way Jojo walks down the street with all kinds of horrible things happening around him is a spectacle. I personally find the particular scene very heart wrenching where the German personals send little kids with grenades and firearms to the frontline as if they are some toy soldiers in a game. But still Watiti manages not to end the story on a very dark note.

                                             

The movie is adapted from the book 'Caging Skies' written by the Belgian New Zealander novelist Christine Leunens. Taika in an interview said that he had come across this book through his mother. As she was reading this book and suggested him to read it. He also said that when he read the book it felt like a movie to him and hence he decided to make a movie on it. However, the actual book is very different from the adaption. Taika gives his own premise and touch to the movie making it less serious and light hearted than the book. Although the writer said that "we both love a fine balance between humour and comedy" I feel like their humour is very dissimilar. Jojo in the book is much mature both in age and thought. The story is however fictional but is inspired from a true event. The writer said that she came up with the thought of writing on this theme because of the war stories that she heard from his grandfather. She in an interview says- "memories from (my) grandparent's generation, from my parent's generation. Really horrific memories, they've become a part of my memory." She also met a French woman who gave her the story in the book. The french woman's family had hidden a Polish man in their house during the war, she fell in love with the man and later when the war ended, she got married to him. Although the writer decided to give a bleak end to the story of the book where Jojo and Elsa's relationship ends in despairing circumstances; after Elsa finds out that Jojo had been lying to her for the past 4 years that Germany won the war only to not let her go.