Billed as an “anti-hate satire”, this is
the kind of audacious moviemaking that dares anyone to be indifferent. It has certainly succeeded in provoking
highly polarized reactions among critics (ratings on metacritic.com range from
91% to zero). Quirky Kiwi director Taika
Waititi is of mixed Maori and Jewish heritage and has spent time in Germany. He
was undoubtedly aware of the risks in doing a parody of Nazi rule but doubles
down by himself playing a mock version of Adolph Hitler who appears as the imaginary
friend of a swastika-loving 10-year old boy “JoJo” (Roman Griffin Davis). JoJo’s lack of killer instinct gets him
tagged as a scared “rabbit” in a Hitler youth camp run by a cartoon-like Captain
Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell). While “Adolph” is there to encourage the boy’s
Nazi zeal, JoJo discovers a very different reality at home. Indeed his mother
Rosie (Scarlett Johannsen) is hiding a teenage Jewish girl Elsa (Thomasin
McKenzie) who destroys JoJo’s hateful stereotypes. JoJo doesn’t want to put his devoted mother in
danger, and the human connection he develops with Elsa becomes the antidote to
the poisonous propaganda that has been drilled into him.
Loosely
based on the Christine Leunens’ novel Caging
Skies, this is material replete with caricatures and exaggerated sendups
that can easily backfire. Waititi’s aim
is to hold Nazism up to ridicule and to use JoJo’s childish susceptibility to
it to warn against tolerating today’s insidious far-right forms of hate. Not everyone will appreciate this
deliberately offensive humour for its subversive intent. Toronto festival audiences gave the movie an
enthusiastic embrace and the “people’s choice” award. I had a similarly positive reaction but I also
understand why it will leave some viewers with a bad taste. See it and be the judge. A-
This is very much a passion project for
Edward Norton, not only as writer-director-producer but also as lead actor in
the title role of Lionel Essrog, a
loner-type private eye (“gumshoe”) afflicted with Tourette syndrome that
results in compulsive spastic twitches and spoken outbursts, especially when
stressed (chewing gum and smoking marijuana helps to control the urges). That
gets Lionel the label of “freak show”.
But he has remarkable powers of memory that have made him a valuable
asset to a detective agency run by Frank Minna (Bruce Willis). Because Lionel grew up in a Catholic
orphanage he’s the “motherless Brooklyn” whom Frank has taken under his
wing. Norton’s screenplay is adapted
from the eponymous novel by Jonathan Lethem, except that Norton has moved the
action back from the 1990s to the New York City of the 1950s.
The
other central character and chief antagonist is the ruthless city planner and
power-broker Moses Randolph, a role based on the real-life legendary “master
builder” Robert Moses whose grand visions sometimes ran roughshod over
low-income communities (notably infrastructure projects resulting in the
clearance of “Negro slums”). Randolph is played with tycoon menace by Alec
Baldwin. (It’s probably no accident that
he’s currently known for his wicked impersonations of Donald Trump on “Saturday
Night Live”.) Randolph has some dark
secrets he wants to keep hidden. He also
has a strained relationship with a brother Paul (Willem Dafoe) that erupts
periodically. When Frank is shot and killed
by thugs while following a case, Lionel sets out to put the pieces
together. A reference to “Formosa” leads
him to an African-American jazz club in Harlem where he encounters Laura Rose
(Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an activist for housing rights. Another clue is discovered inside Frank’s
hat. Lionel is on a trail that leads to
Randolph, with dangerous consequences from which he must protect Laura Rose.
The
movie’s sprawling narrative struggles somewhat to hold all of these elements
together. Nonetheless Norton is
effective as the eccentric character of Lionel who goes where the evidence
leads. And as much as the cinematography and soundtrack evoke a bygone era, the
moral of the story is a timely reminder of how power corrupts. B+
Comments
Post a Comment