Long ago, turning Nazi Germany into a joke was verboten. Or, at least, it seems like it was; it’s actually hard to imagine a time when that was the case. Charlie Chaplin made Hitler into a figure o…
, it’s like a Wes Anderson movie set during the Third Reich. The opening-credit sequence hits a note of rock ‘n’ roll effrontery that I hoped would continue, as the Beatles’ German-language rendition of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” plays over documentary clips of World War II Germans raising their hands in the “Heil Hitler!” salute.
Once you get used to this rather affable satirical Hitler , which takes all of two minutes, he’s not what I would call bombs-away hilarious, unless you’re the sort of person who still thinks “Springtime for Hitler” is outrageous. Then again, the ultimate intent of the comedy in “” isn’t to make us laugh. It’s to get the audience to flatter itself about liking a movie that pretends to be audacious when it’s actually quite tidy and safe.
Why is she hiding her? Because she’s a German civilian who appears to be as progressive in her attitudes as Elizabeth Warren. That’s the sort of black-and-white psychology this movie has. Elsa is kind of like Anne Frank , but the complication in her relationship with Jojo is this: The boy knows only what he’s been taught — and what he’s been taught is that Jews are inhuman.
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