Nazi satire ‘Jojo Rabbit’ wins top prize at Toronto Film Festival
“Jojo Rabbit” won the Toronto International Film Festival’s top honor on Sunday, scoring a major win for director Taika Waititi as Hollywood’s award season heats up.
The festival’s People’s Choice award has a history of predicting Academy Award success. Over the past ten years, almost every Toronto audience award winner has gone on to be nominated for best-picture at the Oscars.
“Jojo Rabbit” is a coming-of-age comedy about a 10-year-old boy growing up in Germany during World War II who finds out his mother, played by Scarlett Johansson, is hiding a young Jewish girl.
Throughout the film, Jojo confides in his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler, who is played by Waititi.
Read more: Movies under Hitler — between propaganda and distraction
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Anti-Semitism in 16th-century Prague
One of Germany’s most famous silent films, “The Golem: How He Came Into the World,” was made in 1920. Paul Wegener directed and played a leading role in the film set in 16th-century Prague. The Jewish ghetto is in danger and the emperor order the Jews to leave the city. Only the mythical Golem can help. It’s one of the earliest films to address the persecution of Jews.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Persecution of Jews in 1920s Vienna
Based on a novel by Hugo Bettauer, “The City Without Jews,” is an important example of how films have taken on anti-Semitism. The Austrian-made film is set in Vienna in the 1920s and shows how the residents held Jews responsible for all social ills. Critics, however, have lamented the film’s use of anti-Semitic cilches.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Fine line between tolerance and clichés
Four years earlier in 1916, the American director DW Griffith had created the monumental historical film,”Intolerance.” The story explains historical events over the course of four episodes, taking intolerance to task. Yet in a scene showing the crucifixion of Jesus, Griffith employed Jewish stereotypes. As a result, critics have also accused “Intolerance” of demonstrating anti-Semitic tendencies.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Ben Hur through the decades
“Ben Hur” was first made in 1925, but has been reinvented many time since then. It tells the story of a conflict betweet Jews and Christians at the beginning of the 1st century. Jewish prince Judah Ben Hur lives in Roman-occupied Jerusalem as a contemporary of Jesus Christ. The way the Jewish-Christian relationship is showed in the Ben Hur films remains a topic of discussion today.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
A trial and pogrom in 1880s Hungary
Although hardly known today, GW Pabst’s “The Trial” (1948) is an astounding early example of how the cinema reacted to the Holocaust. Filmed in Austria just three years after the end of the war, Pabst tells a true story set in 1882 in Hungary. A young girl disappears from her village and Jews are blamed. Tragically, a pogrom follows.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Broaching the truth
“The Trial” remained an exception. After the war, it took the film industry in Europe quite some time to deal with the subject. The French director Alain Resnais was the first to address the Nazi genocide in 1956, in the unsparing 30-minute documentary “Night and Fog.”
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Bringing the Holocaust to TV
It wasn’t until the 1978 television mini-series “Holocaust” was made that the genocide was brought to the broader public. The four-part US production directed by Marvin J. Chomsky tells the story of a Jewish family that gets caught in the cogs of the Nazis’ genocidal policies.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Steven Spielberg’s ‘Schindler’s List’
Fifteen years later, American director Steven Spielberg was able to accomplish on the big screen what “Holocaust” had done for television audiences. “Schindler’s List” portrayed the brutal reality of the Nazis’ anti-Semitism in Germany, but also in Eastern Europe, spotlighting the unscrupulous SS offcer Amon Göth.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Claude Lanzmann and ‘Shoah’
French director Claude Lanzmann harshly criticized Spielberg’s drama. “He did not really reflect on the Holocaust and cinema. The Holocaust cannot be portrayed,” he said in an interview. Lanzmann himself took up the subjects of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in a completely different way – through long documentaries and essay films such as “Shoah” and “Sobibor.”
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Humor and the Holocaust
Italian comedian and filmmaker Roberto Bengini took a daring approach in his film on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. In 1997, “Life is Beautiful” premiered, telling the fictional story of Jews suffering in a concentration camps. The humor he wove throughout had a liberating effect.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Roman Polanski’s ‘The Pianist’
An equally moving film by Polish-French director Roman Polanski was released in 2002. In “The Pianist,” the fate of Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman during the war years of 1943-44 was brought to the big screen. The project allowed the director, whose mother and other relatives were deported and murdered by the Nazis, to work through his own family’s past.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Anti-Semitism and Jesus the Jew
Films about the life of Jesus Christ often come up in discussions about anti-Semitism in cinema. Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), for example, has been accused of reinforcing anti-Semitic clichés, particularly in scenes in which Jews are indirectly associated with greed.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Mel Gibson’s scandalous ‘The Passion of the Christ’
Much more controversial was the film that Australian Mel Gibson released two years later. Both Christians and Jews accused Gibson of explicit anti-Semitism in the film, saying he didn’t counter the implications in the New Testament that Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus (who himself was Jewish). In public, Gibson likewise used anti-Semitic speech.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Turkish anti-Semitism
Audiences and critics alike decried the anti-Semitism in the Turkish film, “Valley of the Wolves.” The action-packed movie version of a TV series of the same name showed a battle between Turkish soldiers and Israel. The film employed “anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic stereotypes and was inciteful,” according to several organizations.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
WWII still a challenge for filmmakers
Just how difficult it can still be to address the subject matter of World War II is evident in the response to a three-part German TV series from 2013, “Generation War.” The series follows a handful of German soldiers fighting on the eastern front. It was criticized in Poland for anti-Semitism and was said to have represented the Polish resistance.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
Hannah Arendt and ‘the banality of evil’
Margarethe von Trotta’s film about Hannah Arendt was well received in 2012. The director sketched a balanced portrait of the philosopher and publicist who, in the 1960s, grappled with a figure who was largely responsible for the Nazi genocide: Adolf Eichmann. Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to explain anti-Semitism clothed in seemingly harmless bureaucracy.
-
Anti-Semitism in film before and after the Holocaust
The ‘Wonder Woman’ controversy
Because the protagonist of the current Hollywood super hero hit “Wonder Woman” is played by Israeli Gal Gadot, the film was not shown in a number of Arab countries. Gadot herself had served in the Israeli army and defended her experience. Not showing “Wonder Woman” is anti-Semitic, according to the public sentiment in Israel.
The festival’s audience cheered Waititi’s “anti-hate satire,” while critics gave it mixed reviews.
The New Zealand filmmaker, who is known for directing “Thor: Ragnarok” and “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” also took home the festival’s director award.
“Jojo Rabbit” beat out runners-up “Marriage Story,” director Noah Baoumbach’s divorce drama starring Johansson and Adam Driver, as well as Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Parasite” from South Korean director Bong Joon-ho.
Meryl Streep won the festival’s inaugural actress prize for her role in the Panama Papers thriller “The Laundromat,” while Joaquin Phoenix took home the inaugural actor award for his leading role in “Joker.”
The winner of last year’s People’s Choice award, “Green Book,” later snagged best-picture at the Academy Awards.
rs/aw (AP, AFP, Reuters)
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/nazi-satire-jojo-rabbit-wins-top-prize-at-toronto-film-festival/a-50442532?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf