【Contains spoilers】
Jojo is a small Nazi youth soldier with clear blue eyes, curly blond hair, and two small rabbit teeth. He always likes to speak in an adult's tone. Thanks to the brainwashing at school, he is an extremely ardent Nazi fan - he plays with a saber before going to bed, longing for one day to fight the enemy, his best friend is the Führer, and only hopes to kill those evil Jews with horns on their heads , won the favor of the head of state, and sat and drank tea with him. Young soldiers in uniform uniforms learn to wrestle, march, use weapons, throw a book into a bonfire that seems to engulf the sky and dance wildly, getting caught up in a frenzy that they can't find the source of. . The fire stars flew all over the sky, covering the sky outside the tent like fireflies. It's a pity that he was "not born at the right time". The German Empire at that time had already started to go downhill, facing the imminent defeat, but he didn't know it, and recklessly started his most thrilling days.
One day, JOJO cut through the wallpaper of the attic with a saber at home, only to find that it was a dark room. He walked in tremblingly, and in the corner was Elsa, an older, thin girl, staring at him with piercing eyes. JOJO panicked, because he knew it was something scarier than a ghost - a Jew. But this Jew was nothing like what was written in the book: she was, like him, a person through and through.
Little JOJO lured Elsa's boyfriend's letter and asked Elsa to tell him all about Jews. Little JOJO always asked himself how to distinguish between Jews and his own, but found that even adults could not answer his questions. If the Jews were not human, how could they be human? JOJO draws everything in a small book, looking forward to publishing this amazing masterpiece one day, but his relationship with Elsa is heating up, and a different kind of emotion is also in his heart, and it begins to shake everything he has learned. knowledge and beliefs.
JOJO's mother Rosie is an anti-war who loves freedom and peace. She is naughty and charming, kind and strong. She even takes on the responsibility of her father. She teaches JOJO to learn to be grateful for life in the most difficult times. It is a gift from God. His mother told him that the most powerful force in the world is love, and when it comes quietly, you can always know it from the throbbing of your heart, as if there are thousands of butterflies filling their stomachs and flapping their wings. The red dancing shoes of the mother by the river clucked, adding a different light to the life of little JOJO, and also giving Elsa hope to live, looking forward to one day leaving the dark room and looking directly at the tiger eyes, leaving a few romantic affairs in Morocco.
In the middle and late stages of the film, the color of the picture suddenly changes to a dark blue and gray cool tone. A shiny blue butterfly appeared in front of JOJO's eyes. He chased forward and was led into the sun. When he turned his head, he found his mother's pair of red dancing shoes. He looked up at the hanging rack, and his eyes immediately filled with tears. He once asked what the people who were hanged there had done, and the mother only said sadly and helplessly: they did their best. The butterfly is like a symbol of Elsa, taking him away from the political fanaticism and ruthless Nazis, into a warm world without fighting and discrimination, but also taking him to the tragedy of his mother. He sat under the hanging rack for a day, helpless and puzzled, and finally he could only vent on Elsa. He picked up the saber and stabbed Elsa in the shoulder, but he was half helpless and half powerless, leaving only a small gap. That night, the two siblings snuggled up and listened to the continuous bombardment and the continuous flow of military planes outside the window. Elsa quietly talked about her dead parents. The two of them only had each other to rely on, and they moved forward with the pain of the past. Go, longing for the sunshine of freedom to shine on them again.
The movie starts from JOJO's point of view, so such a serious topic is also treated with a gentle and witty attitude, although tragedy still happens all the time under the cover of childishness and ignorance. Even the Hitra in his fantasy seemed a bit cute: he was always pacing the room at a loss, asking JOJO to smoke when he panicked, and JOJO's transformation was also demonstrated by his interaction with Hitra. From the beginning Hitler encouraged him to shout Heil Hitler firmly, from the end he angrily stared at Hitler with bullet holes and said fuck off Hitler, like a pony crossing a river, Jojo himself learned how to see How the world sees Jews.
Every character in the movie is unique and kind of cute. Kind people help him JOJO through difficulties time and time again, and the attitude of different people in this era has also been fully demonstrated.
For example, Fraulein, who always spreads strange rumors about Jews and Russians, seems stupid and seems to be an accomplice in this chaotic era, and even throws weapons at the end to all the young soldiers she sees and let them go into battle. The enemy is even more terrified.
Another example is that Captain K, who was depressed because he lost an eye in the war, has long sneered at what the Nazis did, and only wanted to wear his own designed uniforms in battle and don't wear the pink inverted triangle medal. (symbol of homosexuality), to be who you really are. He also pulled JOJO in the end and saved his life, letting Jojo pretend to be a Jew to escape and be buried in the coalition's full anger against the Germans. The identity that needed to be hidden in the past has now become a life-saving charm, which once again highlights the irony of war and racial discrimination, but it is only a winner and a loser.
Another example is JOJO's "second best friend" little fat Yorkie, who was taken to the battlefield in a paper uniform. Although he was always ignorant and slapped in the face, he could always save his life, sober but with A bit of a cute little child pretending to be an adult, saying 'it's definitely not a good time being Nazi'.
At the end of the day, I was thinking, why make a movie like this. Why use the perspective of a child to restore such an unforgettable history, such a turbulent era. How to tell new stories is always a challenging topic - and through Jojo's eyes, we not only see the absurdity and badness of the adult world, but also see that the characters in this story never succumb to fate easily and do their best Struggling appearance. The brilliance of human nature is always manifested in the darkest times. The love, kindness, strength and hope in it are like the cannon fire that illuminates the whole dark night and shines brightly.
Borrowing the ending of the movie also ends this article:
Let everything happen to you:
beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
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